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Dr David Lemon

Principal Research Scientist

https://people.csiro.au/l/d/david-lemon

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Contact details:

GPO BOX 1700
CANBERRA ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA

Biography

David joined CSIRO in 2005 to take leadership of a spatial analysis research group within the, then, Land and Water Division as well as to lead the design and development of the information infrastructure components of CSIRO's Water Resources Observation Network (WRON) initiative.

Since that time, he has held many leadership roles within CSIRO. He currently leads the Environment Business Unit's Social and Strategic Design Tam.

David's research interests focus broadly on the nature of data (especially geospatial data) and data and information supply chains for the purposes of sharing data. He designs and leads projects aimed at creating new environmental information products, developing information models and systems for sharing environmental information as well as systems for managing environmental information.

Over his career he has contributed to many significant environmental projects including the National Land and Water Resources Audit (2000-2003), the Murray Darling Basin Sustainable Yields Project, the Water Information Research and Development Alliance and the Bioregional Assessments program. David also helped create and led an international working group on water information standards under the auspices of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)

David is regularly called upon as a trusted advisor with respect to the design and development of environmental data sharing/data management systems.

In his time at CSIRO, teams under David's leadership have:

  • produced the first one-second Digital Elevation Model of Australia
  • developed the Water Data Transfer Format (WDTF) for exchange of water data for the Bureau of Meteorology
  • developed the international water information exchange standard: WaterML2.0 which has now been adopted by a number of countries around the world.
  • developed the model and methods that underpin the Australian Hydrological Geospatial Fabric (Geofabric), a specialised geographical information system that shows the links between important features of Australia’s water system
  • delivered new systems for discovering environmental information across multiple data catalogues
  • delivered the data management systems that underpinned the Bioregional Assessments program
  • introduced the concepts of social architecture to the environmental information infrastructure community in Australia
  • designed and developed the Australian Government's Location Index (Loc-I) data integration capability
  • developed a maturity model to support continuous improvement of software development practices within teams delivering critical environmental modelling capability

Fields of Research

Current Roles

  • Research Team Leader
    Social and Strategic Design

Academic Qualifications

  • 1997

    PhD
    UNSW

  • 1991

    BSurveying
    UNSW

Professional Experiences

  • 2005-2020

    Research Stream/Group Leader
    CSIRO

  • 2000-2005

    Senior Project Manager
    Sinclair Knight Merz

Achievements and Awards

  • 2018-2018

    Chairman's Medal
    CSIRO

  • 2016-2016

    Medal for Impact
    CSIRO

  • 2008-2008

    Chairman's Medal
    CSIRO

Other highlights

  • 2009-2012

    Co-chair OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group

  • -2013

    Fellow of Peter Cullen Tust

Community and Corporate Citizenship

  • 2020-2023

    Deputy Site Leader: Science (Black Mountain)