The 9th annual Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards were held last Thursday, at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne.
The Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards (VSEA) celebrate the achievements of top spatial information enterprises and showcase the finest projects that the Victorian Spatial Industry has to offer. Projects and individuals attaining recognition at this event are deemed to be truly outstanding achievers and pre-eminent in their field.
Congratulations go out to the following winners:
- Export award: Taylors – Train-the-Trainer Course, Digital Cadastral Surveying, Bangladesh;
- Innovation and Commercialisation award: Taylors – NBN Surveying Services – Aerial Deployment;
- People and Community award: Department of Environment and Primary Industry/CFA – eMap;
- Spatial Enablement award: Alpine Shire Council for the BAL plan;
- Sustainability and Environment award: Spatial Vision – Savanna Burning Carbon Abatement Tool;
- Technical Excellence award: Bureau of Meteorology – The Next Generation Forecast & Warning System and the Geospatial weather viewer MetEyeTM; and
- Victorian Government Award for Spatial Excellence: Alpine Shire Council – BAL plan.
Congratulations also to the individual award winners:
- SSSI Professional of the Year – Malcolm McCoy
- SSSI Young Professional of the Year – Nathan Quadros
- SSSI Educational Development Award – Dr Allison Kealy
- Excellence in Cadastral Surveying Award – Stephen Oxley
- Service to the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Community Award – Colin Plumb
- University of Melbourne Thornton Smith Medal – Chris Lester
The Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards are presented annually by the Spatial Industries Business Association and the 2013 awards were supported by the Victorian Government.
Also at the award ceremony, Minister for Technology, Gordon Rich-Phillips said more than 1,000 datasets are now available to the public online at www.data.vic.gov.au, including around 550 spatial datasets.
Mr Rich-Phillips said government invests in and commissions significant spatial data that identifies flood plains, water catchment areas, local government areas, addresses, coastal areas, airports and state boundaries.
“This first stage of spatial data release includes local government, electoral, urban growth and planning scheme boundaries, rail network, relief contour data and parks and conservation areas,” Mr Rich-Phillips said.
“Providing more open access to government data will help drive innovation, create new business opportunities and also enable the development of new technologies, new products and new services,” Mr Rich-Phillips said.
“Releasing spatial data – alongside transport and traffic data – has proved highly popular in many jurisdictions around the world and I will continue to advocate strongly for the release of government data and the full implementation of the DataVic Access policy.”
Victorian Government data is available at www.data.vic.gov.au.
The Victorian Coalition Government ICT Strategy is available at www.digital.vic.gov.au.
