Nicole Vaughan
November 29, 2024

Brisbane visual communication company Spatial Media to bring to life Australia’s first offshore windfarm

Spatial Media has won the opportunity to create a visual engagement portal to support the development of Australia’s first offshore windfarm, Star of the South, to be located off the south coast of Gippsland, Victoria.

Spatial Media has won the opportunity to create a visual engagement portal to support the development of Australia’s first offshore windfarm, Star of the South, to be located off the south coast of Gippsland, Victoria.

Star of the South could generate up to 2.2 GW of new capacity, powering around 1.2 million homes and supplying up to 20 per cent of Victoria’s electricity needs.

Partnering with Veris, Australia’s leading provider of spatial data services, Brisbane-founded Spatial Media overcame competition from 20 Australian and international organisations to secure the contract.

This has seen the firm bring the project to life and create a range of digital assets and tools that will ensure the benefits of the project are articulated for stakeholders and communities.

Co-founder and Managing Director Jai Eakin said Spatial Media is providing a complete package of digital and virtual and augmented reality assets including a website, videos, augmented reality, and interactive 3D modelling, as well as community consultation analytics.

“With Star of the South in the feasibility and development phase, Spatial Media’s visualisations are critical in telling the story of the project and ensuring support for a landmark renewable energy project,” he said.

“Our visualisations are much more than just creating long boring flythrough videos; we are bringing the project to life before any construction has begun.

“This includes launching with an interactive web portal featuring a virtual tour, rendered images from different viewpoints along the coast, explainer videos including an interactive 3D model of a wind turbine, a video tour of the wind farm on a boat, and a video walking along the beach.

“The visualisations are valuable engagement tools allowing the Star of the South team to effectively communicate and consult with Traditional Owners, stakeholders, local communities and landholders.”

Mr Eakin said Spatial Media’s technology would also play a key role in the community consultation process for the Star of the South project.

“Consultation with the community is a key aspect of the environmental assessment and governmental approval processes, which is where Spatial Media’s proprietary community engagement software, Community Analytics (CA), comes in,” he said.

“This real-time interactive software provides an accurate visual simulation of the proposed designs prior to construction, giving stakeholders an unparalleled level of realism from the shape of the sand dunes to the ocean’s buoyancy.

“The analytics within this platform will allow Star of the South to easily gain detailed statistical data and direct feedback from the community on the proposed project.

“This will provide the project team with a better, deeper understanding of their stakeholders - introducing analytics on all digital tools to enable a data driven approach to stakeholder engagement and public participation in the project.

View the Star of the South Portal at https://caportal.com.au/sots/offshore-wind

ENDS

About Spatial Media Spatial Media has become one of Australia’s leading visual communications companies. As the creators of the Interactive Engagement Portal & Digital EIS with Community Analytics (CA) immersive stakeholder engagement and public participation is at the cornerstone of the company.

From launch, their interactive engagement portals have revolutionised how organisations and project teams can effectively communicate complex ideas with internal and external stakeholders, specific affected communities and the wider public.

Spatial Media’s proprietary community engagement software, Community Analytics (CA), is a market leader; offering project collaborators bespoke intuitive platforms upon which they can tell their story, ask for feedback, and engage with their customers. The CA platform integrates mobile and desktop data capture tools with a web-portal content management system (CMS) and integrated analytics, conveyed through beautiful geo-spatial insight dashboards.

The company has been involved in some of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects throughout Australia, including.

The Western Sydney Airport,
Brisbane Airport’s second runway,
• WestConnex
• M12 Motorway,
The Western Harbour Tunnel/Beaches Link,
• The Westgate Tunnel Project,
Sydney Metro West,
Snowy Hydro 2.0 and many more

About Star of the South Star of the South is Australia’s first offshore wind project, proposed to be located off the south coast of Gippsland in Victoria. Star of the South would help meet energy, emissions reduction, and economic goals by supplying secure, reliable and affordable power into the future. Star of the South has the potential to power 1.2 million homes, or nearly 20% of the State’s energy needs.

The project is in the feasibility phase with environmental assessments currently underway to support planning and approvals. If Star of the South is approved and proceeds to construction, works could start by the middle of this decade with full power before the end of the decade. https://www.starofthesouth.com.au/

Press Contacts Taylor Whyte Communication Manager Elevate Communication Phone: 0431 068 296 Email: taylor@elevatecom.com.au

from our clients

Spatial are my go-to for solutions

Spatial are my go-to for solutions nobody has dreamt up yet! They have an incredible knack for combining tomorrows tech solutions with creativity, intuitive UX and analytics. The results are engaging interfaces that are impactful and ultimately bridge the gap between project and stakeholders.
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Kate Kernaghan, Company Director, Factotum Communications

They look tremendous, the team have done amazing work!

Our booth very popular - the corflute poster was so incredible to point at our ideas, even at a concept level. Well done to you and the Spatial Media team!
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Rainer Knobloch, Co-Founder - Strategy and Operations

It was a pleasure to work with everyone

Spatial Media masterfully brought our CETO wave energy technology to life and provided a glimpse into how we're harnessing the immense power of the ocean to create clean, renewable electricity. Thank you to Spatial Media - Visual Engagement Solutions for their incredible work on this animation!
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Brighid Jay, Chief Commercial Officer, Carnegie Clean Energy

A very straightforward and fun process for EnergyAustralia

From the initial kick off meeting to the final video, it was a very straightforward and fun process to work with Spatial Media. The final video is outstanding and really helped bring the project to life for our stakeholders. Highly recommended.
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Matt Bruers, Development Director, Wooreen BESS, EnergyAustralia

Top shelf solutions for North East Link project

Spatial Media offers top shelf solutions that help tell the often intricate stories around the construction of major infrastructure. From animations to 3D models, dealing with Spatial has been seamless, and the end results have been first class.
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Jamie Aldridge, Communications Manager, Spark – North East Link – D&C 

Airside Driving Simulator an important part of the training program

It can be storming outside. It could be night time. Any time of the day or night we can create these simulations. It’s very flexible.
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Niel Young, Training Coordinator, Brisbane Airport

Enhancing and innovating communication for Melbourne Airport

Spatial Media is an excellent partner and we’ve been impressed by the work the team has produced for Melbourne Airport to help inform our travellers and community about our terminal upgrades and new runway. They are great to deal with and deliver a polished product with creative thinking and a can-do attitude.
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Andrew Lund, Head of Media and Communications, Melbourne Airport

They are our go to tech-savvy experts with huge amounts of creative flair!

COVID19 social distancing restrictions made having our large scale community event nearly impossible, so we decided to take our face-to-face event online. Spatial worked really closely with us to develop the concept, design and platform that would host our virtual community event. The Spatial team are exceptionally creative, with a fantastic ability to bring your idea to fruition in a way you never thought possible. They made our pen on paper scribble into something that over 45k stakeholders visited online, more than what we could have reached in person. Thank you
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Emily Divitaris, Senior Communications Advisor, WestConnex

Valuable long-term partnership with Brisbane Airport Corporation

The Spatial Media team are always professional, well organised and continuously deliver high quality content pieces on time and on budget. They bring new ideas to the table and constantly adapt to changing requirements. I would highly recommend Spatial Media to all.
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Lauren Graham, Head of Commercial Marketing, Brisbane Airport Corporation