Live NSW Gravity Model
The gravity model of NSW provides critical geoscience information. The model helps to plan state infrastructure projects and manage natural hazards and resources.
What is the Live NSW Gravity Model?
Gravity is not uniform – it varies depending on what is underground. The Live NSW Gravity Model accurately measures the Earth’s gravity to capture high-quality, high-density gravity data across the state.
Watch a video about the gravity model project:
Live NSW Gravity Model
Capturing the gravity data
Data collection, as part of the latest Live NSW Gravity Model project, began in 2022. A plane with a gravity sensor flew in lines every 2km across NSW. The model now includes gravity data across all of NSW and the ACT – more than 800,000km². As gravity doesn't change, the data captured need only be collected once.
Previous datasets were limited and used mixed data from land, satellites and planes, collected over several decades. Most of the data was collected earlier than 1992, before Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning, and is much less accurate.
Benefits
The Live NSW Gravity Model project will enable more accurate height measurements, improving how the terrain and water flow are modelled. This leads to better decisions about land management and use.
Highly accurate gravity data can improve:
- exploration and management of groundwater stores
- bushfire and natural disaster recovery efforts
- large infrastructure projects
- property, construction, agriculture, mining and surveying
- flood mapping
- future resource investment opportunities, which can support regional jobs and economic growth
- discovery of high value minerals, such as gold and copper
- risk reduction of new mine sites in unexplored areas.
The model can provide an accurate foundation for 3D and 4D digital twins to be built on.
Data availability
The raw gravity datasets are available through:
- Spatial Collaboration Portal
- MinView - Geological Survey of NSW’s (GSNSW) online mineral viewer
The data will be available through the National Geoscience Database and the GADDS data portals managed by Geoscience Australia, supporting mineral resource exploration and groundwater studies.