smeSpire co-sponsor of the CEN/TC 287 AWARD for Excellence and Innovation in INSPIRE 2013

Since 2011, the Technical Committee “Geographic information” of the European Committee for Standardization, CEN/TC 287, organises the AWARD for Academic Excellence and Innovation in INSPIRE. This year, the AWARD will follow two tracks. It welcomes applications from students attending academic institutions within Europe, and for the first time also from Small & Medium Enterprises (SME’s) who perform innovative activities in the field of INSPIRE and SDI development.

This award, now in its third year, aims

  1. To promote academic excellence within the European geospatial community, specifically in development of interoperability standards and the application or improvement of such standards.
  2. To promote the application of innovative solutions by SME’s to facilitate the development of INSPIRE and the creation of value added applications and services on top of it.

CEN/TC 287 seeks to acknowledge the outstanding efforts of students and private industry, especially SME’s, in the area of geospatial interoperability and data sharing. The AWARD is open to all students and SME’s undertaking a research or development project in geospatial information. Students must submit the work in the form of a research paper, a position paper or similar. SME’s must submit the work in the form of a paper, report, … and provide access to their application or service.

The Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) will run the evaluation process. There will be two awards: one (1) for the best academic work and one (1) for the most innovative SME. The two successful candidates with the winning submission will each receive €2500. The AWARD is sponsored and supported by SPARX SYSTEMS Pty Ltd (see 1) , the developers and distributors of the Enterprise Architect software, by smeSpire (see 2) , an EU FP7 Support Action, and by GiStandards Ltd (see 3), a SME active in the geospatial standardisation sector. The winner will receive the prize at the INSPIRE conference which will take place between 23 and 27 June 2013, in Florence.

Administrative process and timeline

  1. Submit by 15 April 2013 your work (paper/report) electronically including an abstract of maximum 500 words to award@gistandards.eu. You will be contacted within 15 days and advised whether you have been accepted to proceed to the next stage.
  2. AGILE will set-up a small selection committee to review the submissions. The work that is considered of highest quality, and that is most innovative will be selected.

Criteria

The received proposals will be reviewed and ranked based on the following criteria:

  • originality (i.e. novelty, degree of innovation);
  • technical quality (i.e. thoroughness, completeness, identification of issues and recommended solutions);
  • relevance to the scope of INSPIRE;
  • relevance to standardization in the field of geospatial information;
  • use of UML ;
  • presentation (i.e. clarity, readability).