Winners
Geoscape Australia
Award for Technical Excellence
Geoscape Buildings 3.0 Accurate digital models of Australia's urban environments provide the foundational data for Digital Twin applications better reflecting the real world. The team at Geoscape undertook the massive initiative to re-map more than 10million urban buildings in Australia and added enhancements to its foundational buildings data product. Geoscape Buildings 3.0 uses machine vision and deep learning technology and focuses on providing enhanced 3D digital maps of Australia. It offers a higher definition of complex building outlines, better spatial alignment of the urban environment, improved positional accuracy, greater building completeness and representation, more complete solar panel data, swimming pool data and more.
WildBear Entertainment & Esri Australia
Spatial Enablement
Mastering the art of storytelling with maps For visual storytellers, establishing the ‘where’ provides essential context for the who, what, and when. Typically, documentary and news media groups communicate place with overly-stylised maps – often prioritising production time over visual accuracy – along the way cleansing images of important detail. Since 2014, the producers behind documentary filmmaking company WildBear Entertainment have set the standard for delivering factually accurate programs on history, culture, science, geography, and engineering. More recently, WildBear have been exploring new ways to develop optically stimulating, highly accurate maps for broadcast, by combining leading-edge GIS technology and Adobe Creative Suite.
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Innovation Award - Medium to Large Business
Putting Census on the Map Every five years, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) counts every person and household in Australia through the Census of Population and Housing. This comprehensive snapshot of the country tells us about our economic, social and cultural makeup. The Locations Insights Branch and partner technology area at the Australian Bureau of Statistics were key contributors to the 2021 Census and developed a wide range of new and innovative geospatial capabilities and applications that enabled and supported critical, time sensitive activities. These tools showcased the power of geospatially enabling data to enhance the Census, and increased geospatial literacy within the ABS.
Geoscience Australia
Award for Community Impact
Digital Earth Africa Establishment Team From 2019 to 2022, the Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) Establishment team led the establishment of an unprecedented Earth observation (EO) capability to benefit 54 countries, and over 1.4 billion people across Africa. DE Africa leveraged Australian innovations in the Open Data Cube and experience from Digital Earth Australia, and accelerated the international development of analysis ready data and cloud-optimised EO data formats. DE Africa, just 3 years on, is an internationally recognised capability synonymous with Australia's international leadership in EO, which is improving lives in communities across Africa by translating EO data into insights that support sustainable development.
Kathryn Hooton
Future Leader of the Year
Kathryn is a demonstrated high achiever with exceptional commitment to delivering benefits across the geospatial and statistical sectors through her work at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on geospatial projects. She brings together a comprehensive knowledge of the use of geospatial capabilities in statistics, with an understanding of Australia’s complex geography to address new challenges and deliver efficiencies in the production of statistical data that will ultimately improve the lives of all Australians.
Veris
Workforce Development and Inclusion
The Veris Young Professionals Program bridges the gap between study and work by providing a structured, 12-month development program for early career professionals. Designed to future-proof participants’ careers, it provides graduates with exposure to all areas of the surveying and spatial industry and expert mentors to offer guidance along the way
Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), DSM Soft, Spatial Vision and Jacobs
Technical Excellence
Project: Victoria’s Digital Cadastre Modernisation Project. The Digital Cadastre Modernisation Project aims to transform Victoria’s cadastral parcel and property boundaries into a data-driven, spatially accurate, 2D digital representation. The project will deliver cost and time savings for property development and real estate, and help utilities to improve the maintenance of assets and reduce incidents as a result of excavation. It will also enable enhanced property boundary information to be more easily used generally. These benefits will be realised through a visionary and world-leading transformation of the processes by which survey plans are lodged via a process that continually enhances the spatial representation of the state’s cadastre.
FrontierSI, Ericsson, Optus, GMV, Platfarm, Position Partners, Kondinin, Acil Allen
Award for International Partnership
Project: 5G Precise Positioning Testbed - Demonstrating economic benefits of 5G. Precise positioning of consumer devices to within 10cm is now possible through 5G, however users are unable to access this capability due to infrastructure and device interoperability barriers. The 5G Precise Positioning Testbed demonstrated and measured economic benefits of four business applications using 5G precise positioning in the agriculture and consumer sectors, with the help of industry demonstrator partners, Platfarm, Kondinin Group, and Position Partners. These demonstrations were enabled by a unique global aprtnership, leveraging the Optus 5G network, and supported by global telecommunications and positioning leaders Ericsson and GMV, with economic analysis provided by ACIL Allen.
Spatial Vision and E2Designlab
Innovation Award - Medium to Large Business
Project: Surface Permeability Analysis of Elster Creek Catchment. Spatial Vision, supporting E2Designlab, investigated a new approach to spatially map surface permeability of the flood prone Elster Creek catchment on behalf of Elster Creek Catchment Flood Management Plan Working Group, incorporating Melbourne Water and several inner southeast local councils. The project established a suitable approach for the protection and enhancement of permeability in the Elster Creek catchment by undertaking GIS analysis to create a fine-grained, parcel scale map of permeability across the catchment. This new approach developed a suitable land cover and surface type layer along with a uniform vegetation cover across the catchment.
South East Water
Award for Community Impact
Project: Delivering water quality through spatial enablement. Through spatial enablement South East Water are delivering improved health outcomes throughout the potable / drinking water supply network in Melbourne’s south east region.
Two initiatives delivering this benefit include;
- The ability to quickly respond to a positive E. coli result in the water supply network meeting community heath and Department of Health requirements.
- The ability to easily identify and analyse low chlorine residuals within the water supply network. This initiative supports the advice from Department of Health (DH) to improve chlorine residuals within the supply network, providing a level of protection to the water supply and assisting with incident management.
Matthew Killick
Undergraduate Student Award
Matthew Killick's capstone research project was : “Multilayer Spatial Networks: Simulation, Detection, and Visualisation of Disturbances in Urban Road and Sensor Networks”. The research is linked to the spatial industry through the domain of Digital Twins. The project explored how urban systems can be modelled as ‘multilayer spatial networks’ to simulate urban activity and observe how a disturbance on the ground manifests in sensor signals. Matthew has been involved in various mentoring programs through the University of Melbourne and SSSI and is a crucial member of first the 3D modelling and GIS teams at Veris,
Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse
Professional of the Year
Dr Zaffar is one of the global leaders in the geospatial industry. His voluntary role is highly acknowledged from his service to SSSI for over 12 years in various leadership capacities. He is a board member of locate conferences since 2015 & steering committee member of the Australian Spatial and Space 2030 Roadmap. He actively mentors geospatial professionals and immigrants. He is frequently invited to advise governments on space and spatial agenda. He volunteers for United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management, serves on world geospatial industry council and OGC boards. He represents Australia on the ISO TC 211(Geomatics) and FIG.