Tai On Chan’s scientific contributions

Virtual Australia is not a well-defined or agreed concept. This discussion paper conceptualises Virtual Australia as a ‘virtual [digital] model containing and representing all non-trivial objects and their contextual environment – from blue sky to bedrock – in real world Australia’. It describes a scenario for Virtual Australia, one or two decades from now, in which the locations and conditions of non-trivial objects and their environment are updated automatically through a combination of remote sensing and wireless communication technologies in support of a ‘Supranet’. It then examines the concept of the ‘Supranet’ – a pervasive information network based largely on wireless technology linking the physical world to a virtual model in real time – and develops and discusses three principal characteristics of the Supranet: the ability to have or collect specific information (know); the ability to process information (think); and the ability to communicate that information. If, in the near future, any or all non-trivial devices are to some extent able to know, think and communicate, the potential for object autonomy will be realised.