AURIN

AURIN: Australia’s Urban Intelligence Network

AURIN is a national collaboration delivering e-research infrastructure to empower better decisions for Australia’s human settlements and their future development. Australia’s population is likely to double by mid-21st century. The vast majority of people will be living and working in urban environments across Australia’s diverse cities and towns, and 7 out of 10 people will be concentrated in just 5 mega-metro regions. This presents big challenges for the nation, its states and territories, and local communities. These settlements are complex. Understanding how they function and planning for their future development is crucial. That requires access to massive amounts of data and sophisticated analytical and modelling tools to adequately address key issues such as investment in the infrastructure required to enhance productivity, providing access to affordable housing, informing policy, achieving greater efficiencies in energy and water consumption, and enhancing health and well-being.

The AURIN Portal, is delivering access to diverse data from multiple sources, and is facilitating data integration and data interrogation using open source e-research tools. This generates meaningful knowledge – urban intelligence – the evidence base for informed decisions for the smart growth and the sustainable development of Australia’s cities and towns.

Funded by the Australian Government through the Education Investment Fund, and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS), the $28 million AURIN initiative is building the e-research infrastructure to enable better understanding of the current state of Australia’s cities and towns and to meet the challenges they face. Led by The University of Melbourne, AURIN collaborates with more than 60 institutions and data providers across Australia.