The Boating Industry Association has joined with the boating app DECKEE to establish a Boating Data Service in Australia.
The new service called BIA Data will offer insights and analysis of privacy-protected boating activity and behaviour informed by GPS movement capture and boater data inputs.
BIA CEO Andrew Scott said quality on-demand data sourced at a Local Government Area level nationwide is key for evidence-based decision making in both the private and public sectors.
“We are thrilled to be collaborating with DECKEE in provision of privacy appropriate, anonymised boating activity data with social and economic trends analysis,” Scott said.
“BIA Data will empower governments, corporates, consultants, investors, researchers and the boating industry to better understand waterway activity down to local community levels and support informed decisions to improve economic, safety and environmental outcomes for all.”
DECKEE CEO Mike McKiernan said BIA Data leverages the activity uploads of DECKEE members nationwide, anonymized and aggregated to protect privacy, to bring the process of gathering boating activity insights into the modern age.
“With thousands of new activities added every month, DECKEE’s data set of billions of deidentified GPS points offers an entirely new way of understanding and analysing boating patterns at a local level,” McKiernan said. “This technology allows us to produce actionable information such as activity trends based on watercraft types and boaters interests, infrastructure usage, time on water, launch and destination sites, and identification of risk areas and economic opportunities.”
Since its launch in 2019, the free DECKEE app has been used by over 500,000 boaters across Australia and is able to provide representative samples of boat usage by LGA, Region, State or Nation.
BIA Data is available now as off the shelf outputs by LGA. BIA Data can also cater for custom data reports upon request.
For more information about BIA Data, navigate to biadata.org.au.
For information on boating go to: discoverboating.com.au.
