In May 2015 the SA Government issued a remarkable media release announcing a NNTT ILUA over the Coober Pedy Precious Stones Field and that “the agreement provided certainty for opal mining operations in Coober Pedy and meant it was business as usual for opal miners”.
When existing restrictions are taken into consideration the quoted statement is largely true. New prospectors are required to sign up to the ILUA and are given a complicated paper map that is not easy to interpret or use in practice. There is an online pdf version of the map available. An extract of agreement with AMYAC Corporation and the Antakirinja Matu-Yankunytjatjara People is also available.
So how is this relevant to ZGUS? The main working area of the Coober Pedy Opal Fields has many areas with excellent 4G mobile coverage, particularly south west of Cobber Pedy town.
ZGUS is making available soon a web browser usable map server for the Coober Pedy Opal Fields area that is location aware and zoom level aware. The location aware features are usable on mobile phones, meaning that if enabled on mobile phone the map will show you your current location on a base map with additional features that can be selected for display in the Coober Pedy Opal Fields area.
The server generated base map is selectable. For the ZGUS map server base maps are generated, as needed, from raw OSM data of anywhere in Australia. Once generated the maps are stored in a cache to avoid regeneration. All base maps are selectively overlaid, in the Coober Pedy Opal Fields area, with map information from various additional sources. These additional sources include the main working area, mining act reserved areas, Woomera prohibited area, three relevant Native Title area (including AMYAC Areas A and B), paved roads, some tracks, the dog fence and the historically meaningful informally named Opal diggings areas where there are surface mullock heaps and shaft holes.
This online server is an adaptation of a server customised to run on cheap low power ARM based portable computers, useful when out of mobile range and so Internet range. The service has been demonstrated running on a very low resourced US$10 computer that use very little power and accessed from a mobile phone. While the initial map generation on such cheap computers is very slow (can be several minutes), generated maps are cached and are shown very quickly subsequently. More expensive portable computers (well under US$100) dramatically improve map generation time.
Users can easily switch between various base map layers to compare the base maps from various sources, including satellite base maps. When using a portable server out of mobile range then only one base map is available: from the customised OSM data based map server running on the portable computer.
There is still improvements to be made, largely cosmetic and some minor issues to be fixed. Also an explanatory document and tutorial still needs to be written.
While the level of detail included might make using the maps sound complicated, the online maps are very easy to use in practice and the learning curve is very short. All the controls are overlaid on the map: there is no navigation to another page to change any settings. All the setting changes are immediately visible.
When ready the online location of the server will be announced. In the meantime if anyone would like to have a go using the current test version please contact us at zgus.com for the location.
ZGUS is engaged in a lot of other work, including a rehaul of website so we cannot say when the public version of the Coober Pedy Opal Field maps will be announced, other than soon. The map server is part of a larger server project relevant to using devices with customised interfacing in the field where there is not necessarily Internet access.