The digital and real worlds are combining forces after devastating floods to help direct the clean-up and rebuilding, and prevent future communities from being put in harm's way.
Geoscape Australia's powerful datasets are being used in the far north and will be crucial for developing climate resilience, according to CEO Dean Capobianco.
Near real-time geospatial flood intelligence from the little-known organisation's data is supporting emergency response efforts amid widespread flooding from ex-tropical cyclone Jasper.
"Where the information is being used is to understand what's been affected at any given point in time," Mr Capobianco, a former Olympian and tech industry veteran, told AAP.
"We play a pretty critical role in being able to understand what's happening."
Working with the data, micro-satellite company ICEYE produced detailed reports and before-and-during animations as Jasper unleashed a year's worth of rain on parts of Queensland.
The clean-up has begun but some communities will take months to recover after infrastructure damage.
Owned by state, territory and federal governments, Geoscape holds detailed data on roads, trees, buildings, millions of addresses, solar panels and even swimming pools across Australia's land mass - some five per cent of the world's land area.
"Our job is to make that data useful," Mr Capobianco said.
But rather than creating datasets and putting them on a shelf for customers to find, they are working with industry and government to try to solve problems, including housing affordability and access to insurance.
Modelling digital cities can support decisions about where to put housing, aligning it to existing infrastructure to avoid future bottlenecks or danger, and allow industries to identify and avoid areas likely to be most affected by noise.
Geoscape's data also enabled people to apply for border passes during the pandemic.
"We have really started to forge a relationship with government in the last couple of years, and these big themes around climate management or resilience have been a big focus of ours," Mr Capobianco said.
"We can serve a purpose and have a real impact."
