During the UNIGIS annual network meeting at USFQ in Quito, Ecuador, the 2011 winners of the UNIGIS Academic Excellence price recognizing top Master’s Theses were announced:
- Hugo MARTINS (UNIGIS Lisbon) SIGLA WEBGIS PORTAL: An Open Source Web-based GIS application for the Portuguese Bluetongue Entomological Surveillance Program.
- Stephanie BRAND (UNIGIS Salzburg) Roof surface classification with hyperspectral and laser scanning data – an assessment of Spectral Angle Mapper and Support Vector Machines.
- Peter WITT (UNIGIS UK) The development of a predictive hiking travel time model accounting for terrain variations.
The jury with members from UNIGIS Krakow and Lisbon was chaired by Richard Armitage from UNIGIS Manchester, and acknowledged the high quality of this year’s submissions of Master’s Theses from across the worldwide UNIGIS network. Their judgement was based on the combined criteria of literature review, technical and methodological quality, relevance, presentation and originality – leading to a tight race for the top spot. Congratulations to winners!!