By the Numbers: Perth's Duplicate Image Problem Is Costing Agencies More Than They Think

Perth's digital content problem has a very specific shape: thousands of near-identical photographs sitting across dozens of servers, each one costing storage, licensing fees, and staff time to maintain. For the organisations driving WA's resources and property boom — from Brookfield Place towers in the CBD to the sprawling Woodside Energy campus in Scarborough — the scale of duplicated image data has become a line item that finance directors can no longer ignore.

The timing matters. WA is mid-way through a capital investment surge tied to AUKUS submarine contracts at HMAS Stirling in Rockingham, accelerated Metronet rail construction from Morley to Ellenbrook, and a housing development pipeline trying to keep pace with one of the fastest population growth rates in the country. Every major project generates thousands of site photographs, progress images, and marketing assets. Without systematic deduplication, organisations are routinely paying to store — and sometimes license — the same image multiple times.

What the Data Actually Shows

Industry analysis from digital asset management consultancies operating in the Australian market suggests that enterprise image libraries typically contain between 30 and 60 per cent duplicate or near-duplicate files. For a mid-sized WA construction or resources firm running a library of 500,000 images, that translates to somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 redundant files. Cloud storage costs in Australia averaged around $0.023 per gigabyte per month on standard commercial tiers as of mid-2026, and a single uncompressed RAW photograph from a modern site camera can exceed 40 megabytes. Run those numbers across a year and a library bloated with duplicates can add tens of thousands of dollars annually to an infrastructure bill — before accounting for the labour cost of staff manually searching through redundant assets.

The State Government's own digital transformation agenda, outlined under the WA Digital Strategy framework administered through the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, specifically flags data quality and asset rationalisation as priority areas for agencies managing large media repositories. The Department of Communities, which oversees social housing programs from its offices on Havelock Street in West Perth, and Main Roads WA, which has been photographically documenting Metronet corridor works along the Morley-Ellenbrook Line since ground broke in 2022, are both among the agencies sitting on image libraries that have grown rapidly over the past four years.

Deduplication software approaches the problem two ways. Exact-match algorithms identify byte-for-byte identical files — the easiest case, typically representing around 15 to 20 per cent of duplicates. The harder problem is perceptual hashing, where software compares images that are visually identical but differ in file size, compression level, or metadata. Perceptual hashing tools, several of which are now integrated into platforms like Adobe Experience Manager and Bynder, can lift overall deduplication rates to above 50 per cent of a bloated library. For a WA government agency or a major resources company, that can mean recovering terabytes of storage within weeks of a single audit pass.

Perth Organisations Starting to Act

The Landgate mapping and land information agency in Midland — which maintains one of the largest geospatial image repositories in the southern hemisphere — has been among the more advanced WA public bodies in running structured deduplication audits, though the process remains ongoing. The property sector is moving faster still, driven partly by Consumer Protection WA enforcement of advertising image standards that penalise reuse of outdated listing photographs. The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, based on Hay Street in the CBD, has been advising members since early 2025 that image library hygiene is as much a compliance issue as a cost issue.

For organisations yet to audit their image libraries, the practical first step is straightforward: run an exact-match deduplication pass using free or low-cost tools before committing to enterprise software. Organisations with libraries older than three years should budget for a full perceptual-hash audit, typically priced by consultancies at between $8,000 and $25,000 depending on library size. Given WA's current budget surplus environment, agencies with capital works documentation running into the hundreds of thousands of files have little reason to keep deferring a process that pays for itself within a single financial year.