Western Australia’s WAVE vegetation mapping project has picked up a second award in the space of only three months.
The WA Vegetation Extent (WAVE) Pilot has received a Government Innovation Award in the 2026 WA Innovators of the Year Awards.
The project was one of nine winners and two runners-up selected out of 152 entrants.
This comes on top of Merit Award it picked up in the People and Planet Solution of the Year category at the 35th Annual WAITTA INCITE Awards, as Spatial Source reported back in August.
The WAVE Pilot team has developed an AI-powered workflow that interprets the context, texture and structure of entire landscapes rather than individual pixels.
This has involved training machine-learning and pattern recognition systems to analyse satellite imagery in order to recognise where native vegetation is, where it isn’t and how it changes over time.
By recognising patterns across whole scenes, WAVE can more accurately identify native vegetation in sparse and complex environments where conventional approaches struggle.
This is particularly important for Western Australia. The state’s vast size — 2.5 million square kilometres — and ecological diversity have historically made vegetation mapping difficult, time-consuming and expensive.
The WAVE Pilot has tested whether emerging technologies can help bridge this gap and provide more frequent, transparent and consistent information to support better decision-making.
Led by the Western Australia Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, the project’s partners are:
- Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage
- Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions
- Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development
- Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration
- Department of Fire and Emergency Services
- Landgate
- Environmental Protection Authority
“For 20 years, the WA Innovators of the Year Awards have celebrated the ingenuity, ambition, and talent of Western Australians,” said Western Australia’s Science and Innovation Minister, Stephen Dawson.
“This is an extraordinary milestone and reflects the strength of our state’s innovation ecosystem and the people working to shape its future.
“Congratulations to this year’s winners and runners-up, whose innovations demonstrate the important role local businesses and entrepreneurs play in developing new ideas, technologies, and solutions to real-world problems.”
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