Blom showcase Pictometry technology at DGI Europe

13 January 2010, 5:40pm

Cheddar, England, 13 January, 2010 – Blom, Europe’s leading provider of aerial photography and digital map solutions, will be demonstrating the latest uses of oblique imagery by crisis teams dealing with natural disasters and homeland security issues at the DGI Europe Conference 25-27 January at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London. DGI is Europe's largest annual conference dedicated to the high-level challenges of the defence and national security geospatial intelligence community. Bringing together over 800 Heads of Geospatial Intelligence, GIS, Remote Sensing, Operations, and Imagery and Analysis, the conference provides a unique forum to discuss and debate the development of GIS capabilities across the globe.

As a licensed provider of Pictometry® (the patented aerial oblique image capture system combined with measuring software), Blom will demonstrate how Pictometry Intelligent Images® are transforming disaster planning around the world. Major General Bruce Lawlor, former U.S. Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security and presenter at DGI, will join Blom on stand 27 during the conference to discuss his experiences with oblique aerial imagery and its integration into emergency response planning. Major General Lawlor is the former U.S. Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security whose responsibility for developing Government strategy and policy decision making included overseeing interagency co-ordination, is a strong advocate of integrating metric oblique imagery into emergency response plans. “Immediate, accurate and consistent community safety information has never been more important,” said Lawlor. “Using it to enhance planning and communication with response personnel can make the difference between a timely resolution and an expanding crisis.”

Pictometry® produces multiple, geo-referenced, 3-D like views of locations from five perspectives. The system captures imagery from an angle to reveal greater locational detail than traditional aerial orthogonal image captures and is widely used by emergency responders to see entrances or exit routes and potential obstacles during emergency response planning. Users can also annotate on imagery and make accurate metric measurements of distances, areas, bearings and elevations – directly on imagery. Pictometry users access imagery via image libraries which, to date, contain more than 130 million continually-updated high resolution digital images from locations around the world.

Emergency call takers in the U.S. use Pictometry imagery in numerous ways including street by street views designed to help 9-1-1 Call Centres pinpoint call locations using landmarks and visual references. This cuts crucial seconds off response time, giving responders a ‘know before you go’

advantage. For fire fighters, the Pictometry system is typically used en route to calculate the height of a window, identify utility lines or other obstacles and to provide vital intelligence about the detail of a building or structure that, at the time when decisions need to be taken, is obscured by smoke. Others use Pictometry for search and seizure initiatives, to position surveillance teams, to manage entrances and exits, for crowd control, evacuation efforts and more.

Pictometry-based visual information solutions are continually being developed. Currently, the development of a secure access site for Federal government users is underway which will give users secure access to Pictometry’s entire global image library. Also, a real-time image capture system is being developed which will enable emergency responders to capture and distribute 3-D visual information of events as they occur. The concept for this development was initially conceived as a result of managing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Blom

Geo: International