Environment and Climate Research Infrastructure survey

What is ECRI?

ECRI supports research across a broad range of research topics including atmospheric climate research, terrestrial, marine, coastal, freshwater and ocean environments, biodiversity and biosecurity, and the built environment.  

The 2021 National Research Infrastructure (NRI) Roadmap identified world leading, cutting edge and integrated ECRI as a step-change area. The Roadmap recommended an uplift in ECRI geared towards collecting data for diverse Environment and Climate (E&C) research and predicting future changes. This focus for ECRI was recognised as a critical underpinning to address Australia’s adaptation strategy and unprecedented challenges due to changes to our climate and environment.

The Government invested approximately $117 million to uplift ECRI as part of the 2023 National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) Funding Round. 

In the forthcoming 2025 NCRIS funding round, a small proportion of the $435 million investment will be available for ECRI funding which will be considered alongside the concurrent National Digital Research Infrastructure Strategy (NDRI), Translational Research Infrastructure (TRI) and Workforce Research Infrastructure funding opportunities. 

What feedback are we asking for?

We are looking for feedback from the research community to test our draft themes in ECRI needs. We identified these draft themes and trends based on initial consultations with the research and innovation community and are now seeking to hear from a broad range of stakeholders whether these themes reflect the sector’s needs.  

The draft themes are listed below.  

How will we use your feedback?

In the first instance, your feedback will inform the 2025 Investment Plan in response to the 2025 NCRIS guidelines.  The 2025 NRI Investment Plan will provide initial ECRI funding to address smaller-scale priority needs within ECRI or larger-scale priority needs that may draw from the NDRI, TRI or Workforce step changes.  

The outcomes of this consultation may also inform:

• the development of the 2026 NRI Roadmap  
• potential future investment in subsequent investment plans.

Themes of ECRI need  

Theme 1 – ECRI should be underpinned by staff with appropriate expertise  

Highly skilled, expert personnel are essential to operating the nation’s ECRI. The expertise required is broad and can include skills such as software engineering, domain expertise in environment and climate research and data management and synthesis.

Approaches to address staffing needs could include both domain specific initiatives and NRI-wide initiatives.  

Theme 2 – E&C researchers need observation and monitoring capabilities provided by ECRI

The observational and monitoring capabilities provided by ECRI produce continental-scale, nationally significant data sets that enable E&C research. These capabilities are broad and include observation and monitoring in domains such as terrestrial, ocean and coastal systems, the atmosphere and emissions levels, the built environment, geology and geophysics and biodiversity.  

ECRI also plays a critical role in observation and monitoring data curation and management (including underlying HPC-D) across the “dirt to desktop” pipeline. These data capabilities cannot be decoupled from the physical observation and monitoring capabilities. Additionally, ECRI’s data curation and management capabilities expand research observation and monitoring capabilities by making previously collected data, including existing industry data, accessible and useful to researchers where appropriate.

However, there are gaps and fragmentation within our observational and monitoring capabilities where limited data is collected. This in turn can limit the potential of Australian E&C research. Enhancing observation and monitoring capabilities can include both new monitoring observation and monitoring equipment and improving coordination and linkages in existing capability. This capability is closely linked to the data and compute needs necessary to capture, store, curate and process observation and monitoring data (addressed in theme 4).

Theme 3 - ECRI needs partnerships with First Nations peoples and appropriate governance mechanisms to promote the Principles for Indigenous Data Governance

Australia’s ECRI has a significant role in promoting and sustaining, ethical and responsible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' research.  

It is of critical importance that ECRI continues to establish formal partnerships and shared decision-making with First Nations People. Efforts should be made to ensure that relevant ECRI investments are led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, particularly via community representative organisations.

Australian ECRI also plays an important role in using, promoting and sustaining the CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. The CARE Principles should be considered in any uplift of ECRI capability.

Theme 4 – E&C researchers need data management and stewardship capabilities (including access for HPC-D to process data)

FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) and CARE data sets are critical for E&C research. ECRI provides and enables much of the critical national-scale data sets to E&C researchers, as well as processes (and reprocesses), and curates E&C data at all processing levels (including raw and unprocessed data). This processing and curational capability allow machine-to-machine readability and AI-readiness at scale to enable modern cutting-edge E&C research. Providing these large-scale datasets relies on large computing and access to HPC-D capabilities to process the raw data.  As highlighted in theme 2, these data capabilities and pipelines cannot be decoupled from the physical observation and monitoring capabilities provided by ECRI.

ECRI also plays a critical role enabling and promoting FAIR and CARE data in E&C research more generally. This is done through multiple activities including the production, analysis, storage and maintenance of critical FAIR and CARE data sets, promoting and enabling the uptake of best practice, the provision of data frameworks, management of sensitive data, aggregating data from diverse sources and access and sharing of data. Data processing capabilities, data frameworks and data pipelines are foundational to ECRI.  

Uplift in data capabilities (including underlying HPC-D) continues to be necessary to manage the increasing data needs of E&C research and to enable opportunities and advantages of AI/ML for E&C research.  

Please note – these needs will be considered in the context of the needs identified in the NDRI Strategy.

Theme 5 – E&C researchers need access to E&C modelling, (including access to the necessary underlying HPC-D)

E&C researchers need increased E&C modelling capabilities in order to make predictions. Uplift to Australia’s E&C modelling capabilities could include better coordination of modelling capabilities to improve sharing and reduce duplication of effort, refinement and expansion of existing models, development of new models and uplift in underlying HPC-D capabilities.  

Please note – these needs will be considered in the context of the needs identified in the NDRI Strategy.