On November 14 in Sofia hotel Balkan were officially announced the winners of the national map contest “Rediscover Bulgaria with GIS”.The contest is organized by ESRI Bulgaria in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science of Bulgaria, the Ministry of Tourism of Bulgaria, the Ministry of Culture and National of Bulgaria and National Geographic Bulgaria on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the GIS Day in Bulgaria.
Within a month, dozens of organizations and individual participants prepared printed and interactive maps with the specially developed applications and telling their unique story with GIS technology. All maps were displayed at the conference “20 Years We Design the World Together” in front of nearly 700 representatives from more than 150 organizations that took part in the forum.
At an official ceremony, Colonel Ivan Inkovski, President of the Military Geographic Service in Bulgaria, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Stelian Dimitrov, Department of Cartography and GIS at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski “and Evgenia Karadjova, General Manager of ESRI Bulgaria – the official organizer of the World GIS Day in Bulgaria, announced the winners and gave the awards in each of the categories of the competition.
Printed map category
The first prize was awarded to Cartgeo Troyan and GEOPAN Burgas for the first certified Large-scale tourist map of Sozopol.
The second prize went to SAINED for a printed off-road map of Bulgaria.
The interactive maps (storymaps) awards went to:
“Travel and Tourism” сategory
Bulgarian Ports Infrastructure Company (BPI Co.) for their storymap „Navigation in Bulgarian ports”
„Sustainable Development“ сategory
Vanya Stoycheva, student at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski with the storymap „Recovering wetlands along the Bulgarian Danube coast“
„History and culture“ сategory
Bulgarian Red Cross with the storymap „140 years helping together“
„Education“ сategory
Educational Initiative “Space School” of the Space Research and Technology Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Society for Conservation GIS – Chapter Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Astronautics Association with their storymap „Space School“.
Map of the Audience
The audience of the “20 Years of Designing the World Together” conference also took part in the vote to choose their favorite map. The Special Prize “Audience` choice” was awarded to the Chief Directorate “Border Police” – the Ministry of Interior for the storymap “Border Police – MoI“.
All interactive maps can be viewed here.
The winners in each category received a license for the world’s leading GIS software Esri ArcGIS Desktop; a travel voucher for 250 lv.; ESRI Bulgaria certificate for “Esri Map Expert” and a specialized atlas with contemporary GIS maps “Esri Map Book”.
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