July News from Urban Intelligence
Bringing you the latest updates straight from our Canberra HQ! 🏛️🇦🇺 We’re here, as always, to help clients achieve great things and overcome all hurdles.
👇 Take our tools for a FREE test drive today! 👇
🌐 http://daassist.io 🤖 http://daaisy.io
New tool coming soon – Planda.au 🐼🗺️
You may have heard about our third tool under development - Planda.au is coming soon. It’s not a plan, it's not land, it's not a DA….it's PLanDA!! A tool to help you find hidden value💎 in sites in the ACT.
What’s new with DAAISy? ⚡🤖
We continue to add depth and capability to DAAISy:
Expanded geospatial data 🌐 - Daaisy now integrates with more of Urban Intelligence’s internal geospatial databases, enabling richer site-level data, including development feasibility indicators like canopy cover, easements, frontage, slope and more. Users can also query nearby points of interest such as centres and schools, and their distance from a given site.
Daaisy will support Planda as it does DaAssist with an internal interface.
Re-Planning Agent architecture - Daaisy’s internal workflow has been upgraded to a Re-Planning Agent architecture, improving retrieval accuracy and the relevance of responses.
More complete knowledge base 📚 - Previously skipped map information within knowledge base documents has now been processed and is now available.
📸 Expanded Input Support – DAAISy now accepts image uploads alongside existing PDF support! 🧠
Smarter Planning – The Planner module has a much clearer picture of available data before forming its steps, leading to highly targeted, hyper-accurate responses. 🔍
Smarter Retrieval – Finding the exact data you need just got easier:
- 🔑 Keyword Search: Queries involving specific legislation, technical terms, and named entities are now incredibly precise.
- 📄 File Search: Questions are matched directly to the most granular, relevant sections of a document.
- 📚 Complete Coverage: Referenced sections and chapter-level context for legislation and planning documents are now captured in full!
🏡 How big is the missing middle opportunity! 🏡
Major milestone for Canberra! The ACT Government approved its landmark missing middle housing reforms, with the ACT Legislative Assembly officially passing the changes on June 12, taking effect from 1 July 2026. 🎉
To help articulate this massive opportunity, we've mapped out exactly how many RZ1 and RZ2 blocks will now be eligible for 'missing middle' housing. Keep an eye out for our upcoming deep-dive post! 🗺️📈
BTW the major plan amendment to ACT Territory Plan to implement the missing middle changes has now been incorporated into Daaisy’s body of knowledge, noting consequential amendments to different subordinate legislation will roll out over coming months.
More interesting stuff we're reading 👾
Looking for some weekend reading? Here are a few fascinating finds from around the web:
· The YIMBY Melbourne pro-housing 🏠 affordability think tank and advocacy group launched the Australian Zoning Atlas. This is a groundbreaking nation-wide map that classifies and compares residential planning controls across Australia.
· 📊 Dataset Finder: Ever used Google’s canned 'Dataset Search' tool? It’s a game-changer for sourcing clean data! Check it out here 🔍
· 🛰️ Space Tech: A brilliant CBR firm is bringing almost real-time satellite imagery to the mix. Read the Spatial Source feature 🌍
· 🏠 Housing Strategy: A deep dive into the national landscape, explaining the core challenges we face: Homes for Australia: A National Plan. 📜
· 🗺️ Geospatial ML: Curious about training geospatial ML models when samples are scarce? This is a must-read: Small Data, Big Maps on Towards Data Science
· The Australian Government is starting to see the benefits of the geospatial push.
· 📉 Global Economics: The IMF has made some investigations into the consequences of housing affordability challenges.
· 📊 Something a little bit different, for our capability stack: How AI is disrupting enterprise resource planning.
· 🗺️Time for a 3D Cadastre? (A land administration system that records who has rights, restrictions, and responsibilities for a parcel in 3D space)