In January we launched the first GSE Geography in Government awards with support from the Royal Geographical Society. There are five categories celebrating the breadth and depth of work done by our members across the public sector:
- Advancing geospatial data science – Recognising excellence by a team or individual in advancing geographic data structures, geographic science concepts and computational techniques to capture, represent, process, and analyse geographic information.
- Contribution to the profession – Recognising an individual or team that has displayed excellence in championing, promoting and growing the geography profession within GSE.
- Operational delivery – Celebrating outstanding contributions to the successful delivery of public sector projects. This award recognises projects, teams or individuals whose efforts shape lasting and valuable outcomes for society.
- Impact on policy – Recognising applying geographic knowledge and skills to develop excellent domestic or international policy-making in action.
- Excellence in geo-visualisation & cartography – Recognising excellence in geo-visualisation, mapping and charting, in either the printed form or any mapping available in electronic format.
Our deputy heads of profession have been spending the last couple of weeks judging the individual categories. The judging was carried out against the criteria set out in the nomination pack to ensure consistency across the categories. The judging panels have been very impressed with both the number and quality of nominations we’ve received!
The nominations really showcase the different ways geographers are having impact across the public sector supporting policy design and delivery from developing tools to estimate travel times to public services to new evidence-based approaches to conservation and developing Ordnance Survey’s Open Zoomstack.
The nominations
I’m very pleased to be able to announce the shortlisted nominations below and look forward to joining colleagues across the profession at our awards ceremony in April where we will be presenting the awards to the winners of each category.
Advancing geospatial data science
- Michael Hodge at the ONS Data Science Campus
- Mobileye Project Team at the Ordnance Survey
- Geography Spatial Analysts Team at the Office for National Statistics
Operational Delivery
- The Boundary Review Team at Reigate & Banstead Borough Council
- Sarah Taylor and Michael Knight at Natural England
- Ben Payne at Natural England
Excellence in geo-visualisation & cartography
- Charley Glynn, Tim Martin, Oliver Snowden & Andrew Radburn at the Ordnance Survey
- The DGC Task Team 8 at the Ministry of Defence
- The DGC & No 1 AIDU Air Teams at the Ministry of Defence
Impact on Policy
- Nick O’Rourke and ONS Geography Leadership team at the Office for National Statistics
- Jamie O’Donnell at the Department for Transport
- Mick Wyman at the Ministry of Defence
Contribution to the profession
- The DGC Learning & Development Team at the Ministry of Defence
- Jack Whelan Darren Scarlett at the Ministry of Defence
- Neil Peters at the Ministry of Defence
The overall GSE Geography in Government award will be presented at the prestigious annual Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Awards and I’m looking forward to judging this with Dr Vanessa Lawrence and Dr Catherine Souch from the RGS.
Look out for further blogs where I will be announcing the winners and providing more details about the individual nominations.
Further information about the nominees is available on the RGS website.
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