NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD)
SharkSmart NSW: Critical Public Safety Platform
The Brief
An enterprise digital ecosystem delivering mission critical public safety alerts and cross agency coordination for NSW’s Shark Management Strategy.
SharkSmart is NSW Government’s authoritative platform for shark risk management and public safety coordination across NSW waterways. Operated by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), the platform supports real time shark detections, incident management, beach closure coordination, and public alerting as part of the statewide Shark Management Strategy. The platform serves as critical public safety infrastructure requiring high availability, data security, and coordinated information sharing across multiple government agencies and operational partners.
Digital Ecosytem
Realtime Alerts
Mobile Resources
Platform Capabilities:
- Mission Critical Public Safety Infrastructure
- Cross Agency Data Sharing and Coordination
- Real Time Detection and Alert System
- Enterprise Grade Security and Compliance
”Improving people’s education and awareness of shark behaviour helps to reduce their risk of a shark encounter in NSW waters
Project Overview
A proven, reliable platform operating continuously for over 12 years as critical government infrastructure.
Mobiddiction has partnered with NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development for over twelve years to deliver and continuously operate the SharkSmart platform. This long term engagement demonstrates the platform’s reliability, operational maturity, and ability to evolve with changing government requirements and technological advances. SharkSmart is built on Mobiconnect, our ISO 27001 certified enterprise platform, ensuring compliance with NSW Government information security requirements and providing the governance controls necessary for handling sensitive operational and public safety data.
The platform operates as mission critical infrastructure where system reliability directly impacts public safety outcomes. High availability, secure data handling, audit logging, and disaster recovery capabilities are fundamental to the platform’s architecture, not optional features. The SharkSmart platform has acquired signoff by the Enterprise Architecture Review Board for major updates, with Mobiddiction working closely with NSW Government digital and cyber security specialists to ensure ongoing compliance with enterprise standards and security requirements.
The program includes public SharkSmart mobile apps for iOS and Android – including Apple and Android watches – and a SharkSmart PRO app for DPIRD staff and other authorised platform users such as drone operators, SLS NSW, drumline operators, and shark meshing contractors. These apps all connect to the SharkSmart platform via secure APIs.
Cross Agency Coordination and Role Based Access Control
Secure information sharing across multiple government agencies and operational partners with granular access controls.
SharkSmart supports complex multi agency coordination requiring sophisticated role based access control across organisational boundaries. The platform manages secure data access and operational permissions for multiple stakeholder organisations including Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), contracted drumline operators, shark meshing contractors, Surf Life Saving NSW, Surfing NSW, aerial drone surveillance operators, and Innovasea listening station technology providers.
The Mobiconnect web admin dashboard provides a flexible user and identity module, allowing users and roles to map to organisational structures across not just DPIRD but also external organisations like Surf Life Saving. Each organisation and user role has appropriate access to relevant operational data, incident information, and alert management capabilities based on their responsibilities within the Shark Management Strategy. This granular access control ensures operational data security while enabling coordinated response across agencies.
The platform includes workflow management and approval processes for incidents and alerts, allowing some users to report incidents and have them published in real time, while other less trained or trusted users have their reports go into a moderation and approval queue requiring more senior signoff before publishing those alerts. This tiered approach balances rapid response for time critical safety information with appropriate governance controls ensuring alert accuracy and reliability. The platform maintains full audit trails of user actions, approval workflows, and data access, meeting government accountability and compliance requirements.
Real Time Detection, Incident Management and Public Alerting
Integrated detection systems delivering time critical alerts to operational teams and the public.
The platform integrates multiple real time data sources including tagged shark detections from acoustic listening stations, verified shark sightings from beach patrols and aerial drone surveillance, beach closure notifications from SLS and local authorities, and incident reports from operational partners. This integrated approach provides a comprehensive situational awareness picture for both operational coordination and public safety communication.
When tagged sharks are detected by listening stations in NSW waters, the platform processes detection data and delivers real time notifications to subscribed users based on their location preferences and favourite beaches. Beach closure information is coordinated across agencies and published through public facing channels ensuring timely community awareness. Incident alerts support operational response coordination across Surf Life Saving, local councils, and DPIRD response teams.
The alert distribution system supports multiple delivery channels including mobile applications, web platforms, mobile push notifications, and smartwatch alerts, ensuring critical safety information reaches the public regardless of their preferred device or connectivity situation.
Enterprise Platform Foundation
Built on Mobiconnect, our ISO 27001 certified platform designed for government and enterprise requirements.
SharkSmart is built on Mobiconnect, Mobiddiction’s proven enterprise application platform specifically designed to meet government and large organisation requirements for security, compliance, auditability, and long term operational support. The platform operates within our ISO 27001 certified Information Security Management System, addressing NSW Government information security requirements including data encryption, access controls, security monitoring, and incident response procedures.
The platform architecture supports high availability requirements for critical public safety infrastructure, with redundancy, automated failover, and disaster recovery capabilities ensuring continuous operation. Australian cloud hosting ensures data sovereignty with all operational data, detection records, and incident information remaining within Australia’s geographical borders. Comprehensive audit logging captures all user actions, data modifications, and system events, supporting government accountability and compliance obligations.
Regular security assessments, vulnerability management, and proactive platform maintenance ensure the system remains secure and reliable over its operational lifetime. Our ongoing support model includes incident response, performance monitoring, capacity management, and continuous enhancement aligned to evolving government requirements and technological standards.
Operational Maturity and Long Term Government Partnership
Over twelve years of continuous operation supporting NSW Government’s public safety mission.
The SharkSmart platform represents a sustained government partnership spanning over twelve years of continuous development, operation, and enhancement. This long term engagement demonstrates several critical factors relevant to government procurement: proven operational reliability of mission critical infrastructure, ability to evolve platforms to meet changing requirements without system replacement, sustained vendor capability and organisational stability, and deep understanding of government operating environments and compliance obligations.
Throughout this engagement, Mobiddiction has delivered continuous platform operation without significant outages, regular feature enhancements responding to stakeholder feedback and operational learnings, integration of new detection technologies and data sources as they become available, adaptation to evolving NSW Government security and compliance standards, and proactive platform maintenance ensuring long term sustainability and supportability.
The platform has scaled to support growing user populations, expanded geographic coverage, and increasing operational complexity while maintaining performance and reliability. This operational track record provides evidence of our capability to deliver and support enterprise government platforms over extended timeframes, not merely deploy initial solutions.
Public Safety Outcomes
Supporting informed decision making and risk awareness for NSW waterway users.
SharkSmart serves as the authoritative source of shark related safety information for NSW, helping swimmers, surfers, and other water users make informed decisions about entering NSW waterways. The platform provides educational resources about shark species and behaviour, risk assessment tools enabling personal risk evaluation, spatial information including shark meshing programs and alternate swimming locations, and real time detection alerts for tagged sharks near popular beaches.
The platform’s purpose is not to deter people from enjoying NSW waterways but rather to act as a trusted adviser providing timely, accurate information supporting individual risk assessment and decision making. This approach aligns with the Shark Management Strategy’s objective of balancing public safety awareness with maintaining the cultural and economic importance of NSW beaches and waterways.
Try it for yourself!
The SharkSmart app provides key information and resources to users based on their location and favourite beaches they visit.
Continued Evolution and Enhancement
Ongoing strategic partnership delivering platform evolution aligned to NSW Government objectives.
The SharkSmart platform continues to evolve as an integral component of NSW Government’s Shark Management Strategy. Mobiddiction maintains an ongoing strategic partnership with DPIRD, providing continuous operational support, feature enhancement, and technology evolution. Recent platform enhancements include location based alerts providing automatic notifications when users are near beaches with recent detections, cellular smartwatch application enabling alerts directly to standalone smart watches without phone pairing, enhanced favourite beach management supporting personalised notification preferences, and expanded integration with additional detection and surveillance systems.
This continuous evolution model ensures the platform remains aligned with government objectives, incorporates emerging technologies, and responds to operational feedback from agencies and public users. Our sustained engagement demonstrates commitment to long term government partnerships rather than transactional project delivery.
Technology and Compliance Summary
- Platform Foundation: Mobiconnect enterprise application framework
- Security Certification: ISO 27001 certified Information Security Management System
- Data Sovereignty: AWS Cloud infrastructure hosted in Australian regions ensures all data is stored within Australia
- Access Control: Role based access control supporting multi agency coordination and alignment with organisational structures
- Availability: High availability architecture with redundancy and disaster recovery
- Compliance: NSW Government information security, privacy, and records management requirements
- Audit Capability: Comprehensive audit logging of user actions and system events
- Integration: Real time data ingestion from acoustic detection systems, aerial drone surveillance platforms, and incident reporting systems
- Delivery Channels: Mobile applications (iOS, Android, smartwatch), web platforms, mobile push notifications, public APIs
- Operational Duration: 12 plus years continuous operation as mission critical government infrastructure
- Governance: Enterprise Architecture Review Board signoff for major updates