2015 Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards winners
11 September 2015
The outstanding achievements and leadership of Federation University's Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) have been recognised at the Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards 2015 gala dinner at the Regent Theatre, Melbourne.
CeRDI has been honoured receiving both the Award for People and Community and the Award for Environment and Sustainability.
Award for Environment and Sustainability
The Corangamite Soil Health Knowledge Base has received the Victorian Spatial Excellence Award for Environment and Sustainability.
The Corangamite Soil Health Knowledge Base is a repository of soil health knowledge that is readily available to the community and presented in a way that makes it informative, relevant and useful to the needs of land managers.
The goal of the Corangamite Soil Health Knowledge Base project is to provide the essential background knowledge required to implement the South West Agricultural Soils Plan across each of the 15 Landscape Zones in the Corangamite region.
The Corangamite Soil Health Knowledge Base includes: reports, research papers, maps, soil profile descriptions, soil test data, digital soil maps, land capability maps, geohazard maps, hazard susceptibility maps, images and much more.
Project partners are the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority and Corangamite CMA Land Health Program Steering Committee.
The Award for Sustainability and Environment recognises initiatives that help to resolve scarce water resources, water property rights, biota rights, salinity management or any issue in an environmental context.
Award for People and Community
The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) and Visualising Ballarat project has received the Victorian Spatial Excellence Award for People and Community.
Ballarat is growing and change is inevitable. The challenge is how to protect Ballarat's valued historic, cultural and natural living landscape from inappropriate change as population increases from around 100,000 to more than 145,000 by 2036.
The participatory UNESCO supported HUL and Visualising Ballarat portals have been established to provide insight into Ballarat's past, present and sustainable futures. HUL and Visualising Ballarat have been designed to help stakeholders, community members, practitioners and researchers come together in a collaborative way to identify community values, landscape values, acceptable levels of change and to provide certainty to residents and developers as to priority development to attract and support.
Innovative spatial mapping and knowledge sharing tools are being combined to empower community members and help local organisations contribute to the management of Ballarat as a unique historic urban landscape.
Project partners are the City or Ballarat and Federation University.
The Award for People and Community recognises initiatives that make a difference to national, regional, or local issues and affect communities via 'grass roots' initiatives, and/or educational programs, services or tools that permit the widespread adoption, use, understanding and access to spatially enabled products or services.
Further information:
- Corangamite Soil Health Knowledge Base
- Historic Urban Landscape Ballarat
- An article about the awards was featured in the Ballarat Courier