Seeing snow leopards wander around the National Arboretum and having your ACT government rates discounted in exchange for uploading a photo of Canberra could become a reality thanks to two digital innovations.
Using geolocation technology the ARboretum app brings the Himalayan cedar and cork oak forests to life with soundscapes and 3D animals from the trees' native countries.
The augmented reality app and a digital image and video library were joint winners of an ACT government competition to find solutions to improve service delivery.
Amber Standley, the founder and owner of APostive the digital design studio behind the app, said users were able to hear the sounds of Portuguese workers harvesting cork oak and Tibetan monks chanting among the Himalayan cedars as well as read more information about the trees.
"The idea is to feel totally immersed in the forest," she said.
"You can see a beautiful forest, you can smell, you can touch but you're getting residual sound from the traffic, from the other visitors."
The 3D animal function was added for younger visitors to the arboretum, but Ms Standley said it has also proven a hit with adults.
"It's about getting kids away from the playground and actually in the trees… it's learning but fun," she said.
"I call it gamification of data."
The executive director of Link Digital Steven De Costa, the agency behind the image library, said his firm's project provided a "frictionless interface" for the public, government and community organisations to access and use images and videos with correct attribution and licensing.
In the future, users may be able to upload their own images into the library and have their government fees reimbursed for each image accepted into the collection if it fits the Brand Canberra brief.
"The emergence of digital photography… means there is fantastic imagery out there from all sorts of people," he said.
Previously the ACT government stored its collections of photographs on hard drives making access from other directorates difficult.
"It has long-term benefit in that it accumulates more value over time," he said.
"In 1000 years from now we'll have these image assets with their attribution as they were captured."
So far the library has 120,000 assets; the majority are taken from four terabytes worth of centenary year images.
It also automatically adds images from the Twitter hashtag #CBR and assets accessed infrequently are directed into "cold storage" at the Sydney site to reduce costs.
Ms Standley set up her design studio with partner and programmer Rhys Martindale and sister and 3D animator Elizabeth Standley two years ago after taking a redundancy from the University of Canberra.
While the $10,000 prize money won't cover the trio's time spent on the project, she hopes the win will help the small start-up reach new clients.
Round four of the Digital Canberra Challenge calls on innovators to create an augmented reality project to bring Canberra's buildings to life or a new communications platform for ACT government staff.
The free ARboretum app is available for free download on the iTunes app store.
