The recipients of this year’s Geospatial Council of Australia (GCA) Geospatial Excellence Awards were announced at the Locate24 conference in Sydney last week.
Presentations were made at the gala dinner on the evening of the second day of the conference, which itself had attracted more than 1,000 participants — the largest-ever number of registrants in the event’s decade-long history.
The recipients in each of the award categories are as follows:
AWARDS FOR INDIVIDUALS
- Professional of the Year Award: Neil Hewitt, founder of Precision Hydrographic Services.
- Future Leader of the Year Award — joint winners: Ben Dawes, a surveyor and digital practitioner with Bennett + Bennett, and Lavender Liu, an Earth Observation Data Scientist who is using EO to solve real-world problems.
- Diversity and Inclusion Award: Georgie Cassar, for her contributions to the Women in Geospatial Science network.
- Educational Development Award: Davood Shojaei, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, for his pioneering work in 3D land and property information within the field of spatial science.
- Postgraduate Student Award: Mai Nguyen, whose work at Monash University contributed to the field of geospatial technology.
- Undergraduate Student Award: Kyran Cook, currently completing a Bachelor of Spatial Science at UniSQ, where he is researching the innovative use of InSAR and Coherent Change Detection to map erosion.
- Bruce Thompson Innovation Award: Nathan Eaton, a geospatial enabler who has made many positive impacts at a global scale, such as the ongoing body of work on coastal risk in Vanuatu.
- Peter Woodgate Award: Glenn Cockerton, the founder and outgoing CEO of Spatial Vision.
- Hydrographic Excellence Award: Jasbir Randhawa, a 50-year veteran of the surveying sector and the outgoing Assistant Director External Relations with the Australian Hydrographic Office.
- J.K. Barrie Award for Highest Achievement: Winyama, for its commitment to progressing indigenous achievement in the geospatial sector.
AWARDS FOR INDUSTRY
- Community Impact: Transport for NSW and FloodMapp for their Transport Emergency and Crisis Co-ordination Hub (TECCH) project.
- Environment and Sustainability: Spatial Vision, ThinkPlace and Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water for their Environmental-Economic Accounts Dashboard project.
- Innovation — Small Business: Revelare Systems for its Spatial Enterprise Cloud Architecture project.
- Innovation — Medium to Large Business: Victoria’s Department of Transport and Planning, and Archistar for their eComply: Digital Twin for Building Compliance project.
- International Partnership: CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, Frontier SI and Symbios Communications for their Earth Observation for Climate Smart Innovation project.
- Geospatial Enablement: Geoscience Australia for its National Positioning Infrastructure Capability project.
- Technical Excellence: Victoria’s Department of Transport and Planning for its Pioneering operational Geo-machine learning at scale: Automated waste tyre detection across Victorian Agricultural Land project.
- Workforce Development and Inclusion: Winyama for its Indigenous Mapping Workshop Narrm project.
Also announced during the award proceedings was the conferral of GCA Fellowship upon Paul Digney, Technical Director Data Capture for ANZ with Jacobs, former President of the SSSI and former interim Chair of the GCA.
Spatial Source adds its congratulations to all the recipients and finalists. Stay tuned for an announcement of the opening of nominations for next year’s awards, which is expected very soon.
