The winners of the ITS Australia Awards have been announced, recognising the outstanding projects and people that have significantly advanced Australian transport technology throughout the year.
Recognising professional ITS expertise and excellence, the awards raise awareness across all levels of government and community about the benefits of ITS technology to Australian people, cities and communities, the economy, environment, and transportation.
The 2019 awards winners were:
- The Max Lay Lifetime Achievement Award – Brian Smith.
- Brian is a leader in the advancement of Australian navigation technology. In 1995 he played a major role in developing the first digital navigation map available in Australia. Then in 2000, Brian played another key role in the transition of the White and Yellow Pages to online electronic directories, which changed the way we access location-based content today.
- The Young Professional Award – Yale Zhuxiao Wong, Doctoral Candidate and Research Analyst at the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney Business School.
- As part of the Award, ITS Australia will sponsor Yale to attend the 17th ITS Asia Pacific Forum, which will be held in Brisbane next May.
- The Automated Vehicle Award – Busways for BusBot, and the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads for the Cooperative and Highly Automated Driving (CHAD) Pilot’s Connected and Automated Vehicle (ZOE2).
- BusBot is an On-Demand, Shared Automated Vehicle Pilot for Regional Public Transport, the first Australian study of driverless buses in regional communities. The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads for the Cooperative and Highly Automated Driving (CHAD) Pilot’s Connected and Automated Vehicle (ZOE2) delivered a prototype Level 4 Cooperative and Automated Vehicle (CAV) known as ZOE2 and was undertaken to overcome barriers to the safe and successful introduction of driverless vehicles to Australia.
- The Government Award – Department of Transport Victoria for Cross Boundary Incident Management through Multi-Party Managed Motorway Control System Centre-to-Centre (C2C) Interface.
- An integrated network management approach which allows the State and Private Road Operator to implement or further enhance the interface between control systems to include or expand device type control and automation of system responses.
- The Industry Award – Uber Australia for their Mobility as a Service (MaaS) Innovation in Partnership with Transport for NSW.
- This year Uber launched two products in Sydney that will significantly impact public transport networks: FerryConnect provides an affordable, flat-fare Uber Pool between the Manly ferry wharf and surrounding suburbs; and Journey Planning integrates Sydney’s public transport into the Uber app, allowing Uber users to plan and map their trip, as well as compare the cost and duration of public transport with Uber product in real-time. Sydney is the fourth city in the world to gain access to this technology.
- The Research Award – Monash University for VRAV: Augmented On-Road Driving Simulator for Autonomous Vehicles Using Virtual Reality.
- The winning team at Monash University has developed a Virtual Reality Autonomous Vehicle (VRAV) that enables on-road testing of autonomous vehicles, offering a potential means to test drivers’ responses to unsafe driving conditions.
ITS Australia President, Dean Zabrieszach, said, “Once again, our awards nominees and winners demonstrate the excellence and innovation that makes our industry a world leader.
“ITS Australia is making progress that is equal to, if not surpassing, that of our overseas counterparts. We are internationally recognised as world-leading, and bring together industry, government, multinational corporations, start-ups, and research organisations to help shape future transport.”
“The ITS Australia National Awards are a great opportunity to reflect on the innovative nature of Australian technology development and we congratulate the winners, and all the nominees, in 2019.”
ITS Australia also recognised the ITS Young Professional runners up:
- Anthony Leducq, Senior Solutions Architect, Cubic Transportation Systems
- Daniel Gunek, Network Intelligence and Asset Reliability Engineer, DM Roads
- Mitchell Price, Regional Director of Government Strategy & Policy – Asia Pacific, Lime
- Patrick Busby, ITS Engineer, Transurban
- Sepehr Ghasemi Dehkordi, Research Associate – Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology
- Tegan Ross, Undergraduate Engineer, Aurecon
ITS Australia commends all of the nominees for their demonstrated dedication to the industry and their passion for their chosen fields.
