NCS students receive 1st Place in National Geospatial Competition

Last year Micah E and Lizzie P entered the national Geospatial Competition and I am proud to announce that they have been awarded 1st place!

Over 20 schools entered the competition. Our idea for the entry started with the nestboxes we had helped Landcare build earlier in the year. Durring Term 4 Micah and Lizzie worked with Shoalhaven Landcare to explore where these nest boxes should be placed. They used digital maps and ground-truthing of their research to prioritise potential sites in the Nowra region. To complete their entry they had to learn new skills of digital mapping, data manipulation and project planning. They also chose to challenge themselves to use a new digital platform to display their work. I might be a bit biased, but I think the end product was great, and the judges agreed with me, stating "The judging panel felt that the storymap used spatial information, in the form of primary and secondary data, really well to analyse the issue and to come to a final decision. The presentation as a storymap with some embedded maps and videos was really professional and helped tell the story in a consistent way." You can view their winning entry here: https://nowracs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=cefc3d5e56d8412e8e2129b5d24e37a1 As part of our prize, we are very much looking forward to flying to Melbourne for the APSEA (Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards) Gala Dinner. Here we will showcase their work to the industry and see how geospatial tools can be used in the real world.