A new way of seeing Australia: from postcode averages to address-level insight

A new way of seeing Australia: from postcode averages to address-level insight

What if we could understand access to services—not at the level of broad regions or statistical averages—but for every single home in the country?

In this seminar, Deakin University Professor Neil Coffee (and ACHR Adjunct Professor)  introduces a major step-change in how we measure and map population, health, and service access in Australia. Drawing on a groundbreaking ARC-funded eInfrastructure, this work moves beyond decades-old spatial approaches to deliver something far more powerful: address-level intelligence for 10.8 million dwellings nationwide.

This new Residential Dwelling Reference Frame (RDRF) combines geospatial data with advanced spatial microsimulation to generate detailed population and accessibility insights for every location. The result? A platform that allows researchers, policymakers, and industry to model real-world access to healthcare, education, and other essential services with unprecedented precision.

This new Residential Dwelling Reference Frame (RDRF) combines geospatial data with advanced spatial microsimulation to generate detailed population and accessibility insights for every location. The result? A platform that allows researchers, policymakers, and industry to model real-world access to healthcare, education, and other essential services with unprecedented precision.

The implications are significant:

• Better policy decisions grounded in real patterns of access and need

• More equitable service planning, especially in rural and remote areas

• New research possibilities that overcome long-standing limitations in spatial analysis

This talk will showcase how the infrastructure works, why it matters, and how it is already being used in practice. It marks the beginning of a shift away from blunt administrative boundaries toward a more accurate, responsive, and policy-relevant evidence system.

Whether you work in research, government, or industry, this session offers a glimpse of what the next generation of population data—and decision-making—looks like.