Wollongong's Duplicate Image Problem: How the Illawarra Stacks Up Against Cities Worldwide

Wollongong City Council is quietly working through a backlog of duplicate and misrepresenting images across its digital property and planning portals — a problem that has quietly become a headache for local government IT teams from Hamilton, Ontario to Malmö, Sweden. The issue, which sounds mundane, has real consequences: incorrect or repeated photographs attached to development applications and rates notices have delayed approvals and, in some cases, led residents to lodge objections against the wrong properties.

The timing matters. With Port Kembla undergoing one of the largest industrial transitions in the region's history — BlueScope Steel's green steel conversion, the renewable energy supply chain zone, and a raft of new warehousing and logistics proposals along the Princess Highway corridor — the accuracy of planning records has never been more consequential. A misidentified site photograph on a DA portal is not merely an administrative nuisance when the site in question sits next to a residential street in Cringila or a community facility in Port Kembla itself.

The Local Picture

Wollongong City Council's geographic information services team, which manages the region's mapping and property data systems, has been working since at least early 2026 to audit image records across the council's digital planning platform. The University of Wollongong's SMART Infrastructure Facility, based on Northfields Avenue, has previously collaborated with the council on data integrity projects, and staff there are familiar with the broader challenge of keeping geospatial datasets clean as new development activity multiplies the volume of uploaded media.

The suburbs most affected by image duplication problems tend to be those where subdivision activity has been highest in recent years. In Wollongong's case, that means pockets of Shellharbour Road, the Figtree and Unanderra corridors, and parts of Dapto, where greenfield and infill development has generated overlapping street addresses and near-identical street frontages that automated image-matching software frequently confuses. A home at the northern end of Crown Street can share a visual signature with three or four similar federation-era terraces within 200 metres, making manual verification essential.

The council has not publicly released a figure for the number of affected records, and a spokesperson did not respond to questions from The Daily Wollongong by deadline. But the problem is well-documented globally. A 2024 review by the Urban Data Institute, a London-based research body, found that mid-sized cities with populations between 200,000 and 400,000 — Wollongong sits at roughly 220,000 — were disproportionately affected by duplicate asset imagery, partly because they lack the dedicated data teams of capital cities and partly because their planning systems were often built on legacy software not designed for high-volume image management.

What Other Cities Are Doing

Hamilton, Ontario — population around 580,000 — invested CAD $2.3 million in an automated image deduplication system integrated with its planning portal in 2023, according to a report published by Hamilton City Council. Malmö's stadsbyggnadskontoret, the city's urban planning office, took a different approach, contracting a third-party GIS firm to conduct annual image audits at a cost of roughly SEK 1.4 million per cycle. Both cities have seen measurable reductions in planning objection processing times as a result.

Wollongong's position is closer to that of Newcastle, New South Wales, which in 2025 began integrating duplicate-detection algorithms into its ePlanning system following a 14-month pilot. Newcastle's approach used open-source image hashing tools, keeping costs low but requiring significant staff training. The Illawarra council has not confirmed whether it is following a similar model.

For residents lodging or tracking development applications — particularly around the Keira Street CBD precinct or the Warrawong Town Centre, both of which have active DA pipelines — the practical advice is straightforward: cross-check any photographic evidence attached to a public DA notification against the NSW Planning Portal's lot and deposited plan numbers before lodging a submission. Do not rely solely on the thumbnail image displayed in the portal. If the photograph looks wrong for the address listed, contact the council's development services team directly before the public exhibition period closes. Errors can and do get corrected, but only if someone flags them.