Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards winners

By Spatial Source on 4 September, 2012

A program that helps Aboriginal Australians to map and share their cultural heritage and a pilot system that is aiding China to adopt the Torrens land titling system were amongst the winners recognised at the Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards last week.

Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips, who spoke at the awards, congratulated the winners for the quality and innovation obvious in their work.

"Victoria's spatial technology sector is at the forefront of new digital developments,"

"Whether it's an individual using the GPS function on a mobile phone, a mining company deciding where to drill, a government undertaking social planning or a hospital managing its bed system, spatial technology is playing an increasingly important role," Mr Rich-Phillips said.

Victoria is home to an estimated 345 spatial information entities generating an annual turnover of around $513 million and a total spend of $559 million.

"Victoria leads the nation in the area of spatial information technologies," Mr Rich-Phillips said.

"These awards provide an outstanding opportunity to reflect upon and celebrate the sector's many successes."

Winners at the awards include:

Iconyx's Cultural Mapping for Traditional Land Holders, which won the Community Contribution award;

GHD's Alternative Water Atlas, which won the Innovation category;

Spatial Vision's Checksite and SKM's National Atlas for Ground Water Dependent Ecosystems which jointly won the Spatial Enablement award; and

Cohga which won the Export award for their China Digital City Project.

For the second year the Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards included the Victorian Government Award for Spatial Excellence which was awarded to company Spatial Vision for their Checksite project.

CheckSite is a new service that provides authoritative, property-specific information about environmental risks.

"Services like CheckSite are clear examples of the important role that spatial technologies can have in many areas of our lives," Mr Rich-Phillips said.

"I congratulate Spatial Vision on their awards and commend them as a fantastic example of Victorian ingenuity."

Mr Rich-Phillips also offered his congratulations to the Spatial Industries Business Association for their successful co-ordination and presentation of the awards.

A full list of winners is below:

Community Contribution Award: Iconyx

Innovation Award: GHD

Spatial Enablement Award: Spatial Vision & SKM (Joint category winners)

Export Award: Cohga

Victorian Government Award for Spatial Excellence: Spatial Vision

Professional of the Year Award: Neil Smith

Service to the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Community Award: Robyn McCutcheon

Young Spatial Professional of the Year Award: Joanne Poon

Education Professional Development Award: Cliff Ogleby

Education Professional Development Award: Dr David Silcock

SSSI Undergraduate Student Award: Matthew Louden