2023 Geospatial Excellence Award winners announced for NSW

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September 6, 2023

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The Geospatial Excellence Award winners announced at the 2023 NSW Geospatial Conference and Awards are now eligible for the Oceanic competition in May 2024.

The 2023 NSW Geospatial Conference and Awards Dinner is an opportunity for professionals from all corners of the geospatial world to combine and hear the recent innovative projects, latest research, and current activities across the NSW geospatial community. The best of the ACT and NSW geospatial industry was celebrated together.

Congratulations to the following State award winners who are now eligible for the prestigious Oceanic competition, to be announced as part of the Locate Conference in May 2024.

Community impact award

Woolpert, CSIRO and the National Emergency Management Agency for their Northern Rivers Resilience Initiative

The 2022 East Coast floods was Australia’s most expensive natural disaster recorded in history. Costing more than $5.65billion and leaving numerous communities displaced, the impact is still felt today. A $11.4million flood mitigation survey, headed by CSIRO, is an integral part of a bigger program funded by the Australian Government – The Northern Rivers Resilience Initiative.

As part of this initiative, Woolpert conducted bathymetric survey of the Richmond and Tweed catchments, a nominal 800 linear km of riverways in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, to enable development of a hydrodynamic model to mitigate future disasters and rebuild broken communities.

Innovation award for medium to large business

NSW Department of Planning and Environment, WSP and Giraffe for Land iQ

The NSW Government, working with their Partners WSP and Giraffe has developed a whole of government spatial tool to transform planning and pre-development processes. The tool modernises the traditional approach to strategic planning, site assessment and land use evaluation and provides user friendly access to GIS and scenario building capabilities where multiple agencies can work together on a project in NSW public sector. Through this, government agencies are empowered to make faster, better informed, more transparent, and consistent decisions on NSW land. 

Geospatial enablement award

Bennett and Bennett for their Tweed Shire Flood Recovery project

The Tweed Shire was devastated by floods in February 2022. Bennett + Bennett surveyed over 50 landslide sites to aid the remediation works. A custom helicopter LiDAR solution was developed which enabled over a dozen sites to be captured in a day to accelerate the program. The aerial data was underpinned by ground survey control throughout the region and conventional survey infill and validation for each site.

The reliable geospatial information enabled the engineers to understand the true extent of the damage so they could design and plan the remediation works with confidence to get the community back online.

Technical excellence award

Veris and CPB Contractors for M6 Stage 1: Scanning for conformance

Veris has played a crucial role in the M6 Stage 1 project, delivering tunnel excavation services using innovative technical methodologies. By employing 3D laser scanning and automated point cloud processing, they have reduced rework, improved shotcrete quality, and accelerated reporting time. Their contributions have had a significant and ongoing impact on Transport for NSW, enhancing transportation infrastructure, reducing congestion, and improving operational efficiency.

International partnership award

WaterNSW & Niricson for their UAV Centered Dam Surveillance Assessment Mapping Pilot Project

The partnership between WaterNSW and Niricson exemplifies an innovative international collaboration, leveraging state-of-the-art geospatial technology for advanced dam safety surveillance. The fusion of optical, thermal, and acoustic data, analysed through machine learning, allows for unprecedented precision in defect detection and quantification.

This partnership has successfully brought an effective, data-rich, and highly adaptable solution to Australia, significantly enhancing the safety and sustainability of water resources.

Environment and sustainability award

Woolpert, CSIRO and the National Emergency Management Agency for their Northern Rivers Resilience Initiative

Judges said it was a technically impressive submission, and fascinating to see the challenges and solutions to river-based bathymetric capture. The impact of this data on flood modelling in the catchment will hopefully be significant, and the methodology looks to be repeatable across other river catchments.

Postgraduate student award

Atul Kumar Rai

Atul is a PhD student at the University of Wollongong. He is working on the research topic “Runoff estimation of the Lake Eyre Basin” and is currently focused on the Cooper, Diamantina and Georgina Rivers. He is using a remote sensing application to measure storage, bathymetry and runoff for the aforementioned rivers. Over the last three years, Atul has been a part of one lead, six co-author manuscripts and two international conferences.

Source: © Copyright GCA 2023

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