HULBallarat & VisualisingBallarat win Victorian Spatial Excellence Award

The City of Ballarat and Federation University Australia’s Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) have won a prestigious Victorian Spatial Excellence Award 2015.

The City of Ballarat and CeRDI won the People and Community category for the development of the Historic Urban Landscape Ballarat (HULBallarat) website and Visualising Ballarat mapping portal.

The winners were announced at the Victoria Spatial Excellence awards presentation ceremony on the 11 September in Melbourne.

City of Ballarat Mayor Cr John Philips said he was delighted to see the City of Ballarat recognised for these innovative community engagement, knowledge and planning tools.

“The award is due recognition of the City of Ballarat and CeRDI’s collaborative efforts in the development of these new online tools which implement our Ballarat Imagine community engagement program and UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape approach – both are key to the successful delivery of the Ballarat Strategy.”

“Full credit goes to the commitment and dedication of the wide range of stakeholders who have been central to the development and implementation of these websites.”

Helen Thompson, Director of CeRDI said “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”

“These new online tools have been designed to help stakeholders, community members, practitioners and researchers come together in a collaborative way to provide insight into Ballarat’s past, present and sustainable futures.”

The Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards celebrate the achievements of top spatial information enterprises and showcase the finest projects that the Victorian Spatial Industry has to offer.

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.

The awards were judged by a panel of industry peers.

The City of Ballarat and CeRDI will now go on to compete at the Australia-wide National Awards for Spatial Excellence in 2016.

More details for the project are available at www.hulballarat.org.au