52°North is pleased to announce the winners <http://52north.org/52north/news/winners-of-the-student-innovation-prize-ann ounced> of the 52°North Student Innovation Prize for Geoinformatics 2011! This years jury awarded the following prizes.
1. First Prize: Tobias Kohr of the University of Technology Dresden for his paper Development of a service-based Geoportal enabling the Mapping of Whale Watching 2. Second Prize: Marcell Roth from the Insitute for Geoinformatics at the University of Muenster for his paper Geographic Feature Pipes. Tobias Kohrs submission Development of a service-based Geoportal enabling the Mapping of Whale Watching proposes the implementation of a system for entering and retrieving whale observations by animal-rights activists or volunteers having a general interested in nature. The concept supports multilingualism while implementing well established open technological standards to address the particular requirements and interests of these user groups. The innovative aspect of this system is not so much the development of new technologies, but rather the use of existing technologies to solve a socially relevant problem. Various technological building blocks and open source software components come together to an overall system which enables the collection, organization, retrieval and dissemination of volunteered geographic information. In this case, the focus of the information is the observations of whales, which - like no other animal species stand for an endangered species fight for survival. Not only can this system provide valuable data to whale watchers, researchers and animal activists, but it can also help to broaden public awareness and discussion of endangered species protection. By awarding first prize to this concept, 52°North acknowledges that technological innovation, in the end, is needed to support society to manage the earths resources in a more sustainable way. In his paper Geographic Feature Pipes, Marcell Roth proposes Linked Data as a trendsetting way to solve the problem of linking and aggregating data coming from different web services. OGC standards are combined with subject-specific ontologies to analyze complex spatial or spatio-temporal questions. The Geographic Feature Pipes portray a process for translating data from OGC Web Services in to the Linked Data Model. This process can also be used to continually update spatially dynamic Linked Data data sets. Thus, Geographic Feature Pipes help to build up the Geospatial Semantic Web. 52°North considers this technologically oriented proposal important for future development of spatial data infrastructures. This innovation prize was designed to encourage students to contribute to innovation in the field of geoinformatics. It acknowledges and financially rewards outstanding innovative and trendsetting concepts and announces them to a greater audience. First Prize is endowed with 1.500 EUR, plus reimbursement of expenses for presenting a paper at a Geoinformatics conference in 2011/2012 (travel, accommodation, fees) up to 1.000 EUR. Second Prize reimburses expenses for presenting a paper at a Geoinformatics conference in 2011/2012 (travel, accommodation, fees) up to 500 EUR. The innovation prize is sponsored by 52°North GmbH, con terra GmbH, ESRI Deutschland GmbH, the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente and the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Muenster. These institutions work together under the banner of the 52°North Open Source Initiative to promote research and education in the field of Geoinformatics. A central part of 52°Norths activities is the constant exchange of research ideas and innovative developments between academia and business. Based in Muenster, the 52°North Initiative possesses a level of potential which is unique throughout Europe when it comes to the development of innovative solutions in the field of geoinformation as a whole, as well as in its constituent applications. We congratulate the winners! -- Ann Hitchcock 52°North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH Martin-Luther-King-Weg 24 48155 Muenster, Germany tel. +49 (0)251 396371 -21 fax: +49 (0)251 396371 -11 [email protected] http://52north.org General Managers: Dr. Albert Remke, Dr. Andreas Wytzisk Local Court Muenster HRB 10849
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