Spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) are fundamental to enabling informed decision-making across a variety of industries and sectors, but has primary relevance for managing land and land-related resources. Given the focus on cities in meeting future sustainable development goals, SDIs will be increasingly prominent in supporting the identification and management of urban-related issues such as water, energy, infrastructure and transportation, but also in the implementation and governance of urban policies aimed at supporting cities' performances across a range of liveabilty dimensions including economic impact, social equity, housing, accessibility to infrastructure and services and public safety.

This paper describes a new research initiative funded by the Australian Research Council that will support the development of an SDI to support urban analytics and urban research capabilities focused on Australian cities. This is a timely development for Australia, which is not only one of the most urbanised countries in the world, but is also witnessing high levels of growth rates in its urban areas uncommon in western developed countries. The Urban Analytics Data Infrastructure (UADI) intends to support multi-disciplinary, cross-jurisdiction, national-level analytics and through the design of its architecture, seeks to provide the urban research community with a digital infrastructure that responds to current challenges related to data access, sharing, analytics and application. Importantly, the UADI will build on significant existing urban research infrastructure, specifically the Australian Urban Research Information Network and its nationally federated Data Hubs. This is both critical and core SDI development for Australia, and will advance governments, industry and academia in undertaking more advanced data-driven modelling to support sustainable development in Australia’s cities.