Former ISRO Chairman AS Kiran Kumar Wins 'Special Achievement Award' at Geospatial World Forum 2018

Geospatial Media and Communications has announced the winners of this year’s Geospatial World Leadership Awards. The ceremony which took place on January 17, at Geospatial World Forum 2018, in Hyderabad, India, saw more than ten awards being distributed amongst the veterans in the geospatial technology industry.

AS Kiran Kumar, former Chief, ISRO, was awarded a Special Achievement Award for being the backbone of ISRO’s path-breaking innovations and outreach in the recent times. Kumar has been instrumental in the commercialization of the Indian space industry by opening up ISRO to private players.

Steve Berglund, CEO, Trimble, was felicitated with Lifetime Achievement Award for transforming Trimble from a GNSS, surveying hardware company, to a leading geospatial solutions company and expanding into new verticals, all the while keeping the bottom line profitable. Sanjay Kumar, CEO, Geospatial Media and Communications presented the awards to the winners.

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Other winners include:

• Geospatial Ambassador of the Year- Dorine Burmanje, Chair of The Executive Board, Dutch Kadaster, The Netherlands

• Making A Difference- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• Geospatial Business Leader of the Year- Howard Lance, CEO, Maxar Corporation

• Geospatial Solutions Company of the Year- AECOM

• Geospatial Technology Company of the Year- HERE

• Enabling Public Policy & Infrastructure- Natural Resources Canada

• National Geospatial Agency of the Year- United States Geological Survey (USGS)

• Geospatial Hub Of The Year- Geovation, UK

• Geospatial Woman Champion of the Year- Anne Hale Miglarese, CEO, Radiant.Earth, USA

Geospatial Media and Communications established the Geospatial World Leadership Awards to recognize and acknowledge geospatial leaders who have gone an extra mile and paved the way for our industry to follow.

In addition, the winners for The TechRuptors were also announced the three-day event. The awards recognize young entrepreneurs, who have built new businesses or are making a difference in the success of their companies and, in many cases, are making positive and lasting contributions to the community.

The Technology Disruptors are:

• Will Marshall, Co-Founder and CEO, Planet - Technology Disruptor: Will Marshall revolutionized the entire earth observation industry with satellites as small as a loaf of bread. Launched in 2010 from a garage, the company, earlier known as Planet Labs, today has the largest number of satellites in orbit.

• Mark Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO, Descartes Labs - Disruptor in the Making: Mark is known as a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence in geospatial space. Under his leadership, Descartes Labs is teaching computers to see the world with deep learning and artificial intelligence. Its machine learning has created the first living atlas of the planet with the use of satellite imagery.

• Steve Coast, Founder, OpenStreetMap - Social Disruptor: Inspired by the success of Wikipedia, Steve Coast founded OpenStreetMap in 2004 when he was still a student. Although it took a few years for the idea of an open map to catch on, today, OpenStreetMap is considered a prominent example of volunteered geographic information. It is among the most heavily used sources for mapping data for about 2 million registered users and is the de-facto map for large chunks of the world. The project is still going strong, with new and improved data added to it every day by anybody who sees the value in an open map project.

• Javier de la Torre, Co-Founder and CEO, CARTO - Technology Disruptor: As a student of Agriculture Engineering and Environmental Science, Javier de la Torre is passionate about data and its potential to improve the way decisions are made. By 2012, Javier discovered the magic of location intelligence, when he moved ahead and founded CARTO with a vision to democratize data analysis and visualization.

The TechRuptors Award is a natural extension of Geospatial Hall of Fame Awards, which were presented at Geospatial World Forum 2017.

Geospatial World Forum covers the entire spectrum of geospatial technologies, workflows, policies and practices in one global platform. Founded in Hyderabad in 2007, the conference has travelled to Amsterdam, Geneva, Lisbon and Rotterdam.

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