Cultural Heritage and Community Responsibility: Insights from Barada Barna

Barada Barna Aboriginal Corporation provide specialist cultural heritage and support services to corporations and individuals, particularly in the resources sector within the QCD2016/007 Native Title Claim area.

Mipela and Barada Barna have worked together on various projects over the years.

Recently Graham Budby, Director at Barada Barna Aboriginal Corporation, visited the Mipela team and presented an overview of the Cultural Heritage Services his team delivers across more than 20 mining, gas, and exploration tenements on Barada Barna country. Their work ensures companies meet their obligations under the Cultural Heritage Act 2003. It was insightful for the Mipela team to hear how tools such as the X-Info Suite play a central role in supporting compliance and day-to-day operations.

In more detail, Mipela provide Barada Barna with a data management regime for cultural heritage that is technically sound and business based. X-Info Suite provides Barada Barna with risk reduction, improved coordination of field teams and cost savings, not just in cultural heritage management but also in any other project component or process that might depend on cultural heritage clearance.

Field workers can capture information, photos, videos and audio recordings using mobile data capture app, X-Info Aware. Any information captured in the field is immediately sent to a cloud hosted server and made available for consumption by all users of X-Info Suite. X-Info Aware also has an offline capability that captures the data point in time in remote areas with poor data connectivity, automatically caching the data back to the cloud hosted server as soon as the mobile device returns to mobile or wireless coverage. Using tools like X-Info Aware significantly expediates the notification and assessment of any cultural heritage finds.

“By moving to digital mapping and recording, it has made the process of doing our Cultural Heritage surveys and Cultural Heritage clearance work more streamlined and efficient,” said Graham Budby.

As with its other cultural heritage clients, Mipela looks forward to an ongoing successful relationship where continuous improvements can be made to these processes into the future.

Written by Karen Thompson