Belgium: Recognizing the world's most innovative geospatial technology, this year Luciad launched its Geospatial Excellence Awards. These prestigious plaudits both acknowledge and celebrate the most ground-breaking applications of geospatial technology.

Belgium, Leuven “ Over 300 geospatial professionals, developers and entrepreneurs from over 4 continents have gathered in Brussels for two days of geospatial collaboration, learning and networking at Luciad's 4th INTERACT User Conference, Europe's largest geospatial conference.

In recognition of the world's most innovative and state-of-the art geospatial technology, this year Luciad launched its Geospatial Excellence Awards. These prestigious accolades both acknowledge and celebrate the most ground-breaking applications of geospatial technology.

The Excellence Awards hosted at the Square Meeting Center had eight categories and Luciad is delighted to reveal the winners as follows:

   Best Defence Application Award : Delta Suite, developed by defence software solution provider Impact, for its future soldier application, proven and tested in operation and achieving a high user adoption rate. Mr. Stéphane Juigné, President of Impact and a French Special Forces veteran accepted the award.

   Best Maritime Application Award : European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and EDISOFT for their joint work building an Earth Observation system based on LuciadFusion. This application enables EMSA to seamlessly ingest all kinds of Earth Observation data products from a wide range of service providers and operators, and can feed these products into several applications through geospatial standard services.

  Most Visionary End User Award : Denmark's Defence Acquisition and Logistics Organisation (DALO) for its forward thinking approach to defence procurement.

Best Reseller was presented to Luciad Certified Partner DECSEF for their innovative work using Luciad in the Mexican defence market, including on projects for air defence and unmanned vehicles.

Most Innovative Application Award : French Business Intelligence experts Integrytis> for their work developing a Visual Analytics solution for public health. This solution utilises pollution data and medical data and is able to combine the two to reveal the social cost of pollution.

The Top Developer AwardLuciad Partner Special Operations Solutions (SOS) for their pioneering work on GeoFOCIS, which can accommodate the visualisation and draping of feeds from several Unmanned Aerial Vehicles over 3D landscapes without sacrificing performance.

Most Widely Used Application Award : Systematic for their SitaWare Frontline solution, a breakthrough in battle control software, designed for and by frontline commanders. The solution provides a clear operational view with rapid updates and in-theatre friendly force tracking.

Best Aviation Application Award : Unifly for their cloud-based Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) platform, which connects authorities with pilots to safely integrate drones into airspace. Using this platform, pilots can fly and manage flights and authorities can visualise, and approve, drone flight plans in line with international and local regulations.

Welcoming the awards, Lida Joly, Chief Marketing Officer at Luciad, said We launched the Luciad Geospatial Excellence Awards this year in order to showcase the innovative ways in which our technology is being used across industries, and truly moving the geospatial industry forward. We were incredibly impressed by the number and calibre of the entrant's propositions, and enormously proud of all our award winners.