Winners of 2003 Competition in Victoria Was Scotch College, Hawthorn

AURISA GIS in Schools Competition 2003

AURISA is proud to be working with the Schools, Teachers and professional groups to promote a competition amongst senior school students who will work on a topic that demonstrates the use of GIS software and the use of GIS analysis techniques.
Some of AURISA's Corporate Members, including government agencies have also been very involved in offering sponsorship and/or software or datasets. Local authorities and even individual members have offered their time and expertise to introduce GIS to their local schools.

The project topic is decided by the project team and should be challenging and informative and provide a useable outcome.
The competition is judged using the following criteria - Use of GIS, Complexity of problem, Useable outcomes, Quality of arguments and project outcomes, Presentation, Originality, Creation of new data, Logic of process and Structure of project.

AURISA is proud to announce that the Victorian 2003 AURISA GIS in Schools winner is Martin Rowe of Scotch College, Hawthorn. Martin's project analysed the effect of location of street based orienteering events throughout the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and attendance.

AURISA is providing Scotch College a copy of Census for Schools pack, a MapInfo and ABS package designed specifically for schools. This is being provided through the generous sponsorship of MapInfo Australia. Additionally, AURISA is presenting Martin with a personal GPS unit, something that should be helpful in assisting his passion for orienteering.

Martin's project was entered as the Victorian entrant into the Australia/NZ based competition but unfortunately was unsuccessful. The winner of the Australia/NZ competition was Coffs Harbour High School with a project that developed an Environmental Management Plan to assist sand dune revegetation. The plan identified the tasks required to revegetate the dunes with indigenous plants, the necessary resources to undertake the task together with suggestions on where to obtain the resources. This plan has been presented to Coffs Harbour Council and is likely to be implemented.

AURISA will be running the competition again in 2004, albeit under the banner of 'SSI in School Competition'. AURISA is amalgamating with other spatial information based organisations to form the Spatial Science Institute (SSI).
For more information relating to the competition or SSI, visit www.aurisa.asn.au or www.spatialsciences.org.au