ASDST Artefacts Current Model: Aboriginal Heritage Site Likelihood in NSW

The Aboriginal Sites Decision Support Tool (ASDST) provides raster GIS layers predicting the likelihood of Aboriginal site features across New South Wales. The current Version 7.5 suite, produced by the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment in 2020, includes separate models for ten feature types like stone artefacts, rock art, and burials at 50-meter resolution. Cell values range from 0 to 1000, indicating relative likelihood, and layers are available in both pre-colonisation and current landscape forms.

Use Cases

• Assess landscape planning impacts on Aboriginal heritage based on predictive likelihood layers.
• Prioritize survey areas for cultural heritage based on the survey priority map (drvd_srv) and reliability model (drvd_rel).
• Model accumulated historical impacts on Aboriginal sites by analyzing the difference between pre-colonisation and current feature likelihoods.
• Compare the predicted distribution of specific Aboriginal site features, such as stone quarries (STQ) or scarred trees (TRE), across NSW.

Strengths

• Provides predictive models for ten distinct Aboriginal site feature types, including artefacts, rock art, and burials.
• Offers two temporal perspectives: pre-colonisation likelihood and current landscape likelihood for each feature.
• Includes derived products for accumulated impact (drvd_imp), model reliability (drvd_rel), and survey priority (drvd_srv).
• Uses a standardized likelihood scale from 0 to 1000 across all layers for relative comparison.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale statistical analysis.
• The data is specific to New South Wales, Australia, limiting geographic generalizability.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (formerly Department of Planning, Industry and Environment).

Collection Method

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

Time Range

Models reflect conditions as of 2020 (Version 7.5), with a historical perspective pre-dating European colonisation.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-13 04:25:11.067329; freshness should be verified.

Geography

State of New South Wales, Australia.