ASDST: Aboriginal Sites Predictive Models for New South Wales

The Aboriginal Sites Decision Support Tool (ASDST) extends the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System (AHIMS) by illustrating the potential distribution of Aboriginal site features. It includes predictive raster GIS layers for ten feature types, such as stone artefacts and rock art, in both pre-1750 and current landscape forms. The suite was produced by the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, with Version 7.5 released in 2020 at 50m resolution covering the extent of New South Wales.

Use Cases

• Assess landscape planning risks based on predicted likelihood of Aboriginal site features.
• Prioritize survey areas based on the survey priority map (drvd_srv) derived from model reliability and data gaps.
• Model accumulated historical impacts (drvd_imp) by comparing pre-colonisation and current feature likelihoods.
• Evaluate the reliability of predictive models for specific site types using the environmental distance algorithm (drvd_rel).

Strengths

• Covers ten distinct Aboriginal site feature types, including stone artefacts (AFT), rock art (ART), and burials (BUR).
• Provides models at two time periods: pre-1750 and current landscape, enabling temporal analysis.
• Offers a 50-meter spatial resolution in its latest Version 7.5, an improvement over the previous 100-meter resolution.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and source bias inherent to the underlying AHIMS records.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Collection Method

Derived predictive models from site features recorded in the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System (AHIMS).

Time Range

Models represent pre-1750 and current (circa 2020) landscapes.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 21:42:35.821677; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Covers the full extent of New South Wales, Australia.