Initiatives
NZSKAIC is currently working on a series of initiatives designed to realise the aims of the organisation, including:
NZ SKA Strategy Development
NZSKAIC facilitated two workshops with all NZ SKA participants to define our strategy for participation in SKA and related activities. The NZ SKA strategy is regularly re-assessed to ensure alignment with Australian efforts and achievement of NZ objectives.
Mapping NZ SKA Capability
This initiative, one of the key outputs developed in the strategy initiative, is intended to create a model for managing participation of many organisations in very large projects such as SKA over long timeframes, which require development of new and unique solutions.
This initiative is being conducted with NZ Trade and Enterprise, in coordination with MED and aims to create a model to:
- Help address the complexities and uncertainties of the leading edge nature of SKA.
- Show the potential role for SMEs to contribute innovation critical to success of the SKA initiative.
- Assist in mapping project opportunities and capability development demands, and matching these with relevant firm capabilities.
- Describe the ‘ecosystem’ of participating firms and provide strong foundations for a robust process to work with potential participants and identify relevant capability.
- Demonstrate thought leadership toward a more robust and coherent framework that underpins the engagement between industry and the over-arching SKA governance, the SKA Project Office, and the international community of scientists, engineers and research teams.
This initiative will provide a basis for anticipated further stages of industry engagement by NZSKAIC, including mapping additional relevant sectors of potential strength.
Developing SKA Data Management Solutions
A key challenge arising from SKA is the ability to manage the huge volumes of data the instrument will produce.
NZSKAIC is working with NZSKARD and other industry and research collaborators to address this huge challenge, through a research and development programme to construct a new framework to automate aspects of very high volume data management and; to increase scientist productivity.
NZSKAIC will also investigate how this framework can be extended to other sectors of the New Zealand economy with similar requirements for processing large volumes of data from instrumentation/sensors to enhance decision making ability and performance.