Company recognized for completing its NEXTMap Europe digital map dataset of all of Western Europe |
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Monday, December 14, 2009
DENVER: Intermap Technologies — the foremost worldwide 3D digital mapping company, announced today that the Company had been named a recipient of a 2009 Geospatial Products and Services Excellence Award by MAPPS, (www.mapps.org), the national association of private geospatial firms. Intermap won the award in the category of Airborne and Satellite Data Acquisition for its submission "Intermap Technologies Completes Acquisition of NEXTMap Europe," which detailed how the Company collected digital elevation data for all of Western Europe. Totaling 2.4 million square kilometers in its border-to-border coverage for every country in Western Europe NEXTMap Europe is history's first regional digital elevation dataset accurate to 1 vertical meter. "Once again, MAPPS member firms have demonstrated the professionalism, innovation, and societal benefit that the private geospatial community provides to enhance our quality of life," said MAPPS Executive Director John Palatiello. "I am pleased to commend Intermap's achievement and all the firms who serve their clients every day." This is the third consecutive MAPPS Excellence Award for Intermap, which received the award in 2007 for a mapping project the company completed on behalf of the Italian mapping agency; in 2008, the company won for its development of a technology that significantly increased its data collection rate while maintaining strict accuracy standards. "Intermap undertook this massive project to create an alternative to the array of existing country and regional datasets that were of varying accuracy standards," said Garth Lawrence, Intermap senior vice president, Strategic Business. "Many of those datasets were also significantly out of date — the European geospatial community now has access to data that is current and uniformly accurate across the entire region. We're proud to have set a new industry standard for 3D digital mapping content for the geospatial industry." Intermap collects its elevation data with radar technology mounted to aircraft that fly precisely straight lines over wide areas of land. During NEXTMap Europe operations, Intermap's pilots were guided by GPS-referenced coordinates adhering to the pan-European spatial reference system. The first flight for NEXTMap Europe data collection took off from a German airport on June 25, 2006; the final flight took place over the Italian Alps on July 10, 2008. During the course of data collection, the aircraft flew a total of 484,430 kilometers of flight lines — the equivalent of 38 times around the world. In addition to linguistic, cultural, and weather challenges, each Western European country has its own civil aviation authority or military mapping agency that granted Intermap permission to make flights over their territories — in some cases, those permissions needed to be requested six months in advance. One mission, flying from Amsterdam to Rome, required coordination with seven different air traffic control centers. "Prior to NEXTMap Europe, no private company had ever attempted a mapping project of that scale," said Lawrence. "The success of the program is directly attributable to the dedication and hard work of Intermap employees around the world, including all those who planned the collection of the data, coordinated the availability of equipment and supplies, and processed and edited the data into its final form." Markets that can benefit from the NEXTMap Europe database include environmental management, carbon emission reduction, fuel efficiency improvements, transportation, engineering planning, risk management for flood and windstorm damage, water resource management, telecommunications network planning, and aviation safety. In addition to the Company's European mapping program, Intermap's NEXTMap® USA dataset, which provides coverage for all 8 million square kilometers of the contiguous United States and Hawaii, is more than 80 percent complete and will be fully available in the first half of 2010. About Intermap Technologies Intermap (TSX: IMP.TO) is a preeminent digital mapping company that has set the industry standard for uniform high-resolution 3D digital models of the earth's surface. The Company has proactively remapped entire countries and built uniform national databases, called NEXTMap®, consisting of affordably priced elevation data and geometric images of unprecedented accuracy. Demand for NEXTMap data is growing as new commercial applications emerge within the GIS, engineering, automotive, GPS maps, insurance risk assessment, oil and gas, hydrology, renewable energy, environmental planning, wireless communications, transportation, aviation, and 3D visualization markets. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Intermap has offices in Calgary, Detroit, Jakarta, London, Munich, Ottawa, Prague, and Washington D.C. For more information, visit www.Intermap.com,www.mobile.AccuTerra.com, or www.AccuTerra.com. NEXTMap® and AccuTerra® are registered trademarks of Intermap Technologies Corporation. About MAPPS Formed in 1982, MAPPS is the only national association exclusively comprised of private firms in the remote sensing, spatial data and geographic information systems field in the United States. Current MAPPS memberships span the entire spectrum of the geospatial community, including Member Firms engaged in satellite and airborne remote sensing, surveying, photogrammetry, aerial photography, LIDAR, hydrography, bathymetry, charting, aerial and satellite image processing, GPS, and GIS data collection and conversion services. MAPPS also includes Associate Member Firms, which are companies that provide hardware, software, products and services to the geospatial profession in the United States and other firms from around the world. MAPPS provides its 160+ member firms opportunities for networking and developing business-to-business relationships, information sharing, education, public policy advocacy, market growth, and professional development and image enhancement. For more information on MAPPS, visit www.MAPPS.org. Contact Intermap Technologies Kevin Thomas, Vice President Marketing +1 303-708-0955 |
