Congratulations 2023 Spatial Excellence Award Winners!

The winners of the 2023 Spatial Excellence Awards have carried on the tradition of producing innovative projects of an extremely high quality. The judges this year once again, had the difficult task of deciding which submissions should receive an award when all the entries are worthy of recognition!

The final winners were announced at a cocktail evening held at the Auckland Cordis Hotel on the 22 November. The awards are proudly brought to the sector by Survey and Spatial NZ to showcase and celebrate all things excellent in the spatial domain.

Award for Community Impact
The Award for Community Impact recognises unique contributions the spatial industry has had on people and communities.

Finalists:
This year the quality of entries was very high and, as a result, there were 2 finalists for the Award. These were NZDF Defence Estate & Infrastructure Alliance and a collaboration between Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa/NZ Geographic Board and Tātai Aho Rau/Core Education.

The Winner of the Community Impact Award:
Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa/NZ Geographic Board and Tātai Aho Rau/Core Education for their 2023 Geospatial Virtual Field Trip for schools – Ngāti Maniapoto stories.

The winner is a land development and geospatial consultancy with a desire to continually improve outcomes for its clients through technology use and innovation to improve efficiency, quality, and safety at scale. With this ethos, the Winner combined precise GNSS surveying with high-speed Mobile LiDAR and innovative workflows to achieve detailed settlement monitoring of road pavements. With an estimated 90% reduction of field survey time compared to conventional techniques and zero impact on traffic, this company delivered on safety as well as survey products.

Judges’ Comment:
The Judges felt this was a very successful program in the number of students involved and update across the student membership of the spatial program offerings. The project brings spatial into the lives of students, in a smart and engaging way, ensuring familiarity with the geo-professional landscape. The judges also commented that this was a great project that connects place to culture and communities in a way that children can learn with a great use of spatial technology.

Geoff O’Malley of Toitū Te Whenua Land Information accepted this award on the night.

Award for Innovation in Medium to Large Business
The Award for Innovation in Medium to Large Business recognises a unique delivery of a project, product or service based on a new idea, method, technology, process or application resulting in significant social, environmental and/or economic benefits. Now more than ever, we need better and more robust asset management processes that decision-makers understand and trust, to ensure funding goes to the right projects at the right time.

Finalists:
The were two finalists for this Award - Wood and Partners Consultants Limited for Innovative technique for Pavement Settlement Monitoring of the CNC Roading Project, and NZ Police for GeoSpatial Intelligence Support to Major events.

Winner of the Award for Innovation in Medium to Large Business:
Wood and Partners Consultants Limited for Innovative technique for Pavement Settlement Monitoring of the CNC Roading Project:

The company who submitted this project is a land development and geospatial consultancy with a desire to continually improve outcomes for its clients through the use of technology and innovation to improve efficiency, quality, and safety at scale. With this ethos, the company combined precise GNSS surveying with high-speed Mobile LiDAR and innovative workflows to achieve detailed settlement monitoring of road pavements. With an estimated 90% reduction of field survey time compared to conventional techniques and zero impact on traffic, this company’s innovative solution delivered on safety as well as survey products.

Judges Comments:
The winning project is a classic example of the application of rigorous surveying principles combined with innovative technology, in which accuracy standards were maintained and assessed whilst reducing costs. They also found the project particularly interesting because of the high speed at which the surveys were conducted, yet producing accurate results. It’s essential to also acknowledge that achieving the high levels of accuracy required thorough preparatory work and innovative thinking.”

Award for GeoSpatial Enablement

The Award for GeoSpatial Enablement recognises products or projects in which the application of spatial information, methodology and/or tools has greatly improved the outcomes of a non-spatial project, process or product.

Finalists:
We had 2 Finalists for the Award this year – Stats NZ for their Population Grids for New Zealand and New Zealand Police for Enabling Frontline Police Officers in Fleeing Driver Incidents.

Winner of the Award for GeoSpatial Enablement: Stats New Zealand
The winner’s first official population grids gives users the flexibility to analyse and visualise population data in new and innovative ways. The grids, first trialled this year, are a multi-resolution framework created using new data integration methods. The response to the trial was overwhelmingly positive and sets the platform for more gridded data products. We have already seen the benefit of the population grids being used during Cyclone Gabrielle as the basis for highlighting the populations of isolated communities and this is a prime example of how the company’s population grids can help put people back on the map.

Judges Comments:
The Judges agreed that this kind of data can be beneficial for multiple disciplines and have vast application. It is a great concept and extremely valuable.

Karl Majorhazi accepted this Award on behalf of Stats New Zealand.

Award for Technical Excellence

The Award for Technical Excellence recognises surveying and spatial projects that apply existing technology and methodologies to an exceptionally high technical standard, overcoming significant technical challenges, and delivering outstanding results for the client.

Winner of the Regional Award for Technical Excellence: Wood and Partners Consultants Ltd for Pavement Settlement Monitoring of the CNC Roading Project with high speed mobile LIDAR.

Judges Comments:
The judges commented that this project was an innovative alternative solution to traditional methodologies requiring engagement with all stakeholders to deliver the required outcome. Given the time frames involved to determine ‘change over time’ this project shows the value of traditional survey methodologies applied to new data acquisition systems and the need to visualise insights from the vast amounts of data created.

Sam Hackett of Wood and Partners accepted this Award on behalf of Wood and Partners.

Postgraduate Student Award

Winner of the Individual Award Postgraduate Student Award is Holly Still

Holly is finding new ways to answer age-old questions in glaciology by applying high-precision positioning techniques that are not yet in the glaciology toolkit. Their work has demonstrated, for the first time, the effectiveness of low-cost, low-power GNSS systems for detecting 10^-3 scale ice deformation patterns in challenging high-latitude sites. The work establishes low-cost solutions as comparable to traditional high-cost survey-grade GNSS systems. The high-precision observations are used to drive mathematical models that elucidate fundamental material properties of the ice, in real-world settings that laboratory experiments cannot replace.

Judges Comment:
The Judges commented that this candidate had submitted a high class project with great effort to improve the theory and application of GNSS field data collection.

Diversity and Inclusion Award

The Winner of Diversity and Inclusion Award: Shanon Henare Tait.

The Winner of this Award created a StoryMap for education purposes to teach College students how geospatial can be used to complement their own studies. It was designed to show the impacts of relative isolation when adverse weather events occur.

Judges Comment: The Judges agreed that the winner had passion, energy and initiative for engaging with students to get more people in the Surveying profession. This person uses their knowledge and geospatial skills to create storymap for education purposes and sets a good example of how geospatial impacts on the society with visible and simple method. This tool has been developed to breakdown digital barriers and encourage inclusion and it has been developed with a specific target audience in mind and will soon be tested on that audience.

Congratulations goes to all the entrants and winners and thank you for your continued support of these awards.