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LEXINGTON, KY - August 7, 2008 – Photo Science, Inc. was presented with the prestigious MAPPS Geospatial Products and Services Excellence Award in the GIS/IT category for their “Legislative Atlas” project completed for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“The project is a first of its kind bringing both lawmakers and GIS specialists together to help coastal zone managers understand the relationship between existing marine boundaries and the bio-diversity hot spots which specific policy is tasked to protect,” said Kurt Allen, Vice President, Photo Science.
Contracted by NOAA’s Coastal Services Center (CSC), Photo Science was tasked to create a Web-based system that delivers coastal geospatial data and services to stakeholders across the Nation. Specifically, Legislative Atlas will support U.S. coastal and ocean management efforts by mapping key state and federal water jurisdictions. By visualizing where our national coastal and ocean laws apply, the application will assist local, state and federal lawmakers restructure and organize the overlapping legislation.
Photo Science recognized that a considerable amount of domain expertise would be required to map the geo-regulations, a key part of Legislative Atlas. Therefore, Photo Science created an integrated team of experts in the fields of marine resource management, policy and law, and geospatial data and technologies. The interdisciplinary nature of those development teams enabled Photo Science to properly inventory, characterize, and map nearly 250 data layers in 15 states.
“Policy intentions and the boundaries that eventually get established don’t always match up,” said Mr. Allen, “which is why this project is so important to our marine life and why we [Photo Science] chose this project for the MAPPS Award.”
According to MAPPS, a total of twelve projects were submitted to the organization for the Awards. Robert Burtch, professor of Surveying and Engineering at Ferris State University, chaired the judging panel.
"Private geospatial firms are collecting more data from many different types of sensors and these projects illustrated how these companies have crafted processes and procedures to efficiently collect that data, manage the large volume of data through the production process and fuse it into a final deliverable for the client," said Mr. Burtch regarding the complexity of the various submissions.
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