Aircraft surveillance started on 1 July 2024. You might see or hear aircraft in and around our surveillance area as we check for fire ants.
About surveillance
Checking for fire ant nests, also known as surveillance, is an important part of our eradication plan.
We do this:
- during cooler months when fire ant nests are more visible
- on targeted properties and in materials that may carry fire ants
- continuously for 5 years after eradication treatment
- for some time after treating an outlier detection.
We use various surveillance methods, including:
- aircraft equipped with specialist remote sensing surveillance (RSS) technology
- on-site monitoring by trained eradication officers
- odour detection (sniffer) dogs.
We may need access to your property to check for fire ants if you’re in our surveillance area.
See our planned activities to find out where surveillance is happening.
Aircraft surveillance
We use RSS technology on aircraft to find fire ant nests. This technology uses specialised cameras to scan the landscape for nests.
Our aircraft fly at 230 metres (750 feet) high, capturing various images from the electromagnetic spectrum and visual spectrum. These can show details that you can’t see with the naked eye, such as the heat signature from nests.
We use an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to identify possible nests in images, which our teams then validate. We remove any personal information.
Privacy
The National Fire Ant Eradication Program (through the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries) is collecting data as part of a biosecurity surveillance program to identify the location of fire ant nests as authorised under Section 294 of the Biosecurity Act 2014. The information is collected by Outline Global on behalf of the department and is used to direct and monitor fire ant management and eradication activities only.
It is not intended that any personal information will be collected from this surveillance however, any personal information inadvertently captured through surveillance will be redacted from any footage. All information will only be used or disclosed for the detection and management of the fire ant program unless otherwise authorised or required by law. Learn more about privacy.