Geospatial Systems Inc technology in Haiti relief

02 March 2010, 9:47pm

MARCH 2, 2010 - Rochester, NY – Geospatial Systems Inc. (GSI) is pleased to announce that it has received formal recognition from the New York State Governor’s Office related to the use of its TerraPix imaging technology in support of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) recent Haiti earthquake relief effort.

Funded by the World Bank, RIT's Wildfire Airborne Sensing Program (WASP) camera system was tasked by multiagency government and NGO organizations to fly the most devastated areas of Haiti. For seven straight days, RIT and Kucera International flew the WASP system in combination with LIDAR over Port au Prince and surrounding areas collecting tens of thousands of high resolution images of over 250 square miles.

“The imagery captured by the GSI sensor is one of the highest quality datasets according to the users, and the sensor performed flawlessly, enabling the collection of over 1 TB of imagery data co-registered with LIDAR data in a very short period of time. This enabled the rapid production of accurate 3D maps to help first responders, rescue teams and military and civilian aid groups. Our imagery is now being shared across the disaster response community”, said Donald M. McKeown, RIT’s Project Manager.

Max Elbaz, CEO of GSI said "We are very pleased to be associated with the RIT relief effort, and that our metric camera system enabled the RIT team to accomplish its mission with such excellent results. There is no better testament to the capabilities of GSI’s TerraPix products than to be deployed successfully on such a rigorous Emergency Response operation. This is a great example of government, education and industry collaboration, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with RIT, CEIS and NYSTAR.”

In 2009, working with the Center for Emerging & Innovative Sciences (CEIS), RIT received funding from the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), to integrate GSI’s KCM-11 Metric Camera with the existing WASP camera system for a program called Airborne Sensing System for Near Real-time Emergency Response to support emergency response demonstration flights for Monroe County. The expectations for "demonstration" emergency response flights turned into an actual operational emergency scenario when called upon by the World Bank to support response efforts in Haiti.

Detailed information regarding the emergency response effort can be accessed at the Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response (IPLER) site at http://ipler.cis.rit.edu/projects/haiti. IPLER is an NSF Partnership for Innovation between the RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science (CIS) and the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) at the University of Buffalo.


About Geospatial Systems, Inc.

Geospatial Systems, Inc., a Rochester NY based company, designs and produces Electro-Optical, Infrared and Radar Sensor products and solutions for the commercial, security and defense markets. TerraPix, which includes a range of metric sensors including full-frame, interline, multi-spectral and thermal IR sensors, is a common platform for custom solutions tailored to the Airborne Survey & Mapping, Asset Management, and Tactical Intelligence Reconnaissance and Surveillance (ISR) markets. For more information about Geospatial Systems, Inc. please visit the link below or call 585-427-8310 x213.

Geospatial Systems Inc

Geo: International