Release. Repurpose. Recycle.
We are very pleased to announce that the 2012 CAA Recycle Award has been won by Andrew Lowerre (the recycler), and Brian Roberts and Stuart Wrathmell (the originators) for “Recycling Roberts and Wrathmell: Building and Analysing the Atlas of Rural Settlement in England GIS”.
The judges were impressed by the way in which Lowerre’s reworking of the original digital data made it of much greater utility, and how it had been repurposed to allow the original hypotheses to be properly tested using new GIS tools, as well as enabling a whole new range of research questions to be posed. Roberts and Wrathmell, originators of the primary data set, had actively encouraged re-use of the data, and by making it freely available for download in multiple formats and with full documentation the author had facilitated further re-use of the new dataset. We think that this is an excellent example of a national heritage institution (English Heritage) understanding the value of opening up its data for public reuse. The judges were pleased that a large number of downloads had been logged, as well as re-use of the data by a new major funded landscape project.
The judges also decided to commend “Modelling Stonehenge: visualisation, auralisation, apps and films” by Rupert Till, for its imaginative and effective repurposing of photogrammetric data in a study of the acoustic properties of Stonehenge.
This year’s submissions were strong but the jury felt that both these projects not only recycled data in an innovative fashion, but also offered it back to the community, thus perpetuating the research cycle.
2012 Jury Panel
Nicole Beale
Stefano Costa
Leif Isaksen
Julian Richards