D61+LIVE Science & Technology Showcase Event – It’s a wrap!

September 21st, 2018

The D61+ LIVE event hosted by CSIRO’s Data61 in Brisbane on Sep 18 and 19 brought together more than 2,000 people from corporates, SMEs and startups, universities, government and schools for a science and technology showcase and to discuss the future of Australia amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Experts from research, government and industry shared thoughts and insights about Australia’s future as well as solutions and actions organisations need to adopt to remain competitive during the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres, collectively referred to as cyber-physical systems.

Some of the highlights included a presentation by Adrian Turner, CSIRO’s Data61 CEO, with the launch of the Digital Innovation Report, a new landmark report from AlphaBeta Advisors, commissioned by CSIRO’s Data61. The report outlines Australia’s next billion dollar industries and strategic areas where we can succeed in creating data-driven industries that will drive jobs and growth by building on our core strengths as a nation and improving collaboration between research and industry.

“Every sector of the global economy has been re-defined as a result of digital science and technology and the extensive use of data,” Adrian Turner, CEO at CSIRO’s Data61, said.

AlphaBeta Director, Dr Andrew Charlton, said digital innovation has created enormous value globally and accounts for around 11 per cent of GDP in advanced economies, amounting to an annual value of $6 trillion. However, Australia has lagged our peers in capturing these benefits.

Australia’s strongest opportunities are in focusing R&D investment and applying digital innovation to existing industry strengths where key drivers of competitiveness are already in place such as strong domestic markets and in high quality basic research.

The report identified eight high-potential opportunities for Australia in digital innovation, set to be worth $155 billion annually in the Asia- Pacific region over next decade: precision healthcare, digital agriculture, data-driven urban management, cyber-physical security, supply chain integrity, proactive government, legal informatics, and smart exploration and production.

“Data61 is helping Australian organisations capture the opportunity of digital innovation by bringing the ecosystem of government, industry and academia together to create new value,” Mr Turner said. An example of such is the Data61 national digital challenges program, which is designed to facilitate stronger collaboration between research, government and industry on strategic and national data-driven challenges to accelerate large scale outcomes.

Both Dr Charlton and Mr Turner called out the need for a much stronger export focus of national digital innovation, noting that Australia had few global scale native digital firms.

Other highlights included the announcement that Data61 has joined Finch and the United Nations in its mission to use machine learning to remunerate animals for their appearance on television and in films.

“[The Lion’s Share] is a great example of using machine learning and artificial intelligence not just for productivity gains, but also to create new value that wasn’t possible before,” said Mr Turner.

The Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group’s robots were also on display during the event, with many riding one of our autonomous vehicles and watching our legged robots transverse rough grounds.

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