AGI Annual Awards Dinner

Awards were presented in ten categories:
    Innovation & Best Practice (Central Government), sponsored by IGGI
    Innovation & Best Practice (Local Government), sponsored by Pitney Bowes MapInfo
    Innovation & Best Practice (Private Sector), sponsored by Oracle
    AGI Student of the Year, sponsored by Ordnance Survey
    Best Paper from the AGI Conference
    Past Chair's Award
    Director's Award
    AGI Volunteer of the Year
    Best Young Researchers Paper, Sponsored by Cadcorp
    Best of GISRUK Paper

The winner of the Innovation & Best Practice (Central Government) was the Highways Agency for their work on developing GIS methods for public consultation on road planning (specifically junctions 21 to 30 of the M1). The highly commended entries were the Scottish Environment Protection Agency; Nexia Solutions; Health and Safety Laboratory and British Geological Survey.

Bristol City Council submitted The GIS Fair Project under the Innovation & Best Practice (Local Government) Award. South Yorkshire Police; Surrey Heath Borough Council and River Nene Regional Park on behalf of the Northamptonshire Landscape Character Partnership all received highly commended status for their submissions.

Both the Experian and Scottish Power entries stood out from the others in the Innovation & Best Practice (Private Sector) Award for their relevance.  Experian was judged the winning entry. Scottish Power was highly commended.

The AGI Student of the Year judges felt that the entries were of a high standard this year.  The submitted projects covered a vast range of subjects and all were completely different highlighting the various and interesting uses of GI.  The winner of this years Student of the Year award is Elizabeth Richardson with her project, Investigating the mechanism behind environmental injustice around municipal landfill sites in Scotland. Phillip Taylor, University of Edinburgh; Noor Saeed, University of Leicester were both Highly Commended.

Best Paper from the AGI Conference: Delivering the ROI message for GI and GIS can be both difficult and often seen as not happening enough. With the paper 'Show me the Money: Making the CEO listen' the authors - Andy Coote, Director of Consultancy and Keith Wishart, Business Consulting Manager, ESRI (UK) presented a broad, positive and challenging topic that is central to the future success of the GI business. Papers authored by James Proctor of the Environment Agency, Andy Elliot of East Riding of Yorkshire Council and Craig Moulding of Calderdale District Council were awarded Highly Commended by the panel of judges.

The Past Chair's award is given, as the name implies, entirely at the discretion of the Past Chair for services to GI. It is often used as an opportunity to reflect the contribution of an individual, over an extended period, to furthering the key aims of the AGI.  Simon Doyle presented the award to Rob Walker, Senior Vice Chair of the AGI.

The Director's Award is a new award and Steven Feldman's outstanding contribution as Chair of the newly formatted AGI2007 Conference made him the ideal first recipient.

When you think of AGI Northern Ireland you automatically think of Conor Smyth and his perennial enthusiasm, diligence and professionalism both as Chairman of the AGINI Executive and as an AGI Councillor.  He well deserved the AGI Teams 'Volunteer of the Year' Award.

Every year, the AGI sponsors an award for the best paper presented at the annual GISRUK Conference.  The GISRUK series builds on an interdisciplinary foundation, and regularly draws participants from most of the disciplines which contribute to GIS, including Geomatics, Computer Science, Geography, Archaeology, Environmental Science, Engineering and Mathematics. The conference programme reflects this diversity. The winners of this award were Chris Brunsdon, University of Leicester & Jason Dykes, City University.

Nick Bearman, University of East Anglia won the Best Young Researchers Paper with the paper Representing Spatial Geographical Data via variations of Volume and Tempo in Sound.