Eva Rodriguez Rodriguez accepting the Peter Woodgate Award
The finalists and winners of the 2022 Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards (APSEA) were announced at a gala dinner event on Thursday, 12 May 2023, following the first day of the Locate23 conference.
The awards ceremony was held at the Adelaide Convention Centre, and it was a glamorous and festive occasion indeed. There was a palpable buzz in the air, and a lot of friendly interaction amongst the hundreds of guests. There was also quite a deal of emotion from the presenters, award recipients and audience as the winners were presented.
It is clear that the Australian geospatial sector really is a community of friends and collaborators (and even friendly rivals), and this was made evident not only through the awards — some of which comprised large collaborative teams — but also in the praise and acknowledgement given by all awardees for the support they had received from their colleagues.
And the winners are:
INDUSTRY AWARDS
Community Impact Award — Beca Limited, Waipa District Council, InPlace Limited, Maximize Limited, Interactionz (winner); Geoscience Australia, Digital Earth Africa Establishment Team (highly commended)
Environment and Sustainability Award — FrontierSI, SmartSatCRC, Myriota, UniSA, NGIS, SA Department for Environment and Water
Award for Innovation, Medium to Large Business — FrontierSI, University of NSW, Omnilink, Commonwealth Bank, NSW Government, Liverpool Council, Slate Analytics
Award for Innovation, Small Business — Kurloo Technology
Award for International Partnership — FrontierSI, Ericsson, Optus, GMV, Platfarm, Position Partners, Kondinin, Acil Allen
Spatial Enablement Award — WildBear Entertainment, Esri Australia
Award for Technical Excellence — Department of Transport and Planning, DSM Soft, Spatial Vision, Jacobs
Award for Workforce Development and Inclusion — Veris and Wumara Group Alliance
INDIVIDUAL AWARDS
Diversity and Inclusion Award — Yvonne Fong
Educational Development Award — Jagannath Aryal
Undergraduate Student of the Year Award — Tong Ding (winner); Matthew Killick (highly commended)
Postgraduate Student of the Year Award — Kexiang (Frank) Hu
Future Leader of the Year Award — Andrew Bembrick and Jun Yang (joint winners)
Professional of the Year Award — Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse
SPECIAL AWARDS
Bruce Thompson Innovation Award — Nathan Quadros
Peter Woodgate Award — Eva Rodriguez Rodriguez
J.K. Barrie Award — FrontierSI, Ericsson, Optus, GMV, Platfarm, Position Partners, Kondinin, Acil Allen
President’s Award — Danika Bakalich
In addition, two worthy recipients were announced as being conferred the status of Geospatial Council of Australia Fellows — Petra Helmholz and Warwick Hehir.
Finally, Paul Mead from She Maps announced that next year there will be a new awards category, the Geospatial in Schools Award, sponsored by She Maps and the Geospatial Council of Australia, with support from The Surveyors Trust. There will be two awards for teachers — an Emerging Teacher Award and an Innovative Teacher Award — as well as an Outstanding Student Award. The inaugural winners will be announced towards the end of 2023 and will be supported to attend Locate24.
You can read the full 2022 APSEA winner citations and learn more about their projects and achievements, on the APSEA website.
