ASDST: Aboriginal Sites Predictive Likelihood Models for New South Wales

A suite of raster GIS models predicts the likelihood of Aboriginal site features across New South Wales. The Aboriginal Sites Decision Support Tool (ASDST) contains separate layers for features like stone artefacts, rock art, burials, and scarred trees, with versions for pre-colonisation and current landscapes. The Department of Planning, Industry and Environment produced the current Version 7.5 in 2020 at 50-meter resolution.

Use Cases

• Assess landscape development impact based on predictive models of Aboriginal site feature likelihood.
• Prioritise heritage survey areas based on the survey priority map (drvd_srv) and reliability model (drvd_rel).
• Model accumulated historical impacts (drvd_imp) by comparing pre-colonisation and current feature likelihood layers.

Strengths

• Contains separate predictive layers for 9 distinct Aboriginal site feature types.
• Provides both pre-colonisation and current landscape models for comparative analysis.
• Spatial resolution improved from 100m to 50m in the 2020 Version 7.5 update.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, being specific to New South Wales.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Derived from the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System (AHIMS) using predictive modelling.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 19:32:43.833589; freshness should be verified.

Geography

New South Wales, Australia