Community Impact Award (joint winners):
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.
Transport for NSW & FloodMapp for the Transport Emergency and Crisis Co-ordination Hub.
The Transport for NSW (TfNSW) Security, Crisis and Emergency Management team has developed the Transport Emergency Crisis Coordination Hub (TECCH): a state-of-the-art capability to provide situational awareness and a common operating picture across the organisation and associated disaster management stakeholders. This is directly improving their emergency response and helping many communities across the state. Transport is at the centre of effective preparation, response and recovery during flood disasters, and up-to-date intelligence is critical to inform decision making.
TfNSW successfully operationalised this technology during the 2022 and 2023 flood events, including those in Sydney, southern and central west NSW, Bathurst and Dubbo. TfNSW’s partnership with FloodMapp has shown how real-time flood intelligence can directly improve an organisation’s planning and execution of capacity and capability during a flood.
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.
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