Tackling the growing spatial information management market, earthmine will unveil its ground-breaking technology to collect, deliver and utilize accurate street-level three dimensional geospatial information for urban environments at the DEMOfall 07 Conference. earthmine co-founders, John Ristevski and Anthony Fassero, will lead the DEMO stage presentation on Tuesday, September 25, 2007.

The company, founded in 2006, is focused on creating pre-collected geospatial stores of public urban environments worldwide and the tools to utilize them. Complete municipalities will be collected through high quality, 3D panoramic images – including every road, alley and freeway – to create a complete, consistent and publicly accessible geospatial ‘inventory’ of cities available for both government and commercial use. Additionally, unique tools for viewing, creating and extracting spatial data in context will make this data broadly accessible.

"earthmine just might be the key to making the promise of the GeoWeb a reality," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMO. "With its unique ability to put complex geospatial data in a visual context that anyone can understand, earthmine is enabling a new generation of mapping applications."

For 17 years, DEMO has established a reputation for identifying and presenting to an elite audience the products most likely to have a significant impact on the marketplace and market trends in the coming year. Each product is carefully screened and selected by Shipley, one of the top trend spotters in the personal technology product industry. The conference will be held September 24- 26, 2007 in San Diego, California.

"If earthmine delivers even ten percent of what they are describing, it has tremendous commercial viability," said David Sonnen, IDC consultant for Spatial Information Management Research. "The promise of earthmine’s technology and its ability to tie web delivery with the enormous stores of existing geospatial data out there is really quite significant. The positional accuracy of earthmine’s technology coupled with its ability to automate the production environment workflow truly differentiates it. I haven’t seen anyone doing anything like this in a way that could be broadly scaled."

earthmine Technology
earthmine integrates hardware, software and workflow technologies to deliver accurate street-level geospatial data through a web-based interface. The core technology, coined reality indexing, manages the entire flow of information, from streamlined data collection and data processing, to web-based dissemination. The three dimensional, high resolution, panoramic images are collected through an automated vehicle-based camera array, with the ability to capture entire metropolitan areas in a few weeks.

Within the immersive high resolution images, each pixel contains real world latitude, longitude and elevation information. Because of the three dimensionality of the data set, everything within an image can be accurately located, measured or modeled using points, lines or polygons. This data mine can be accessed by users through a web-based interface where they can locate, view, and extract geo-spatial data and information from a human perspective. earthmine’s solution also gives users the ability to integrate this geo-spatial framework into any web application and allows them to visualize existing abstract spatial data in context. The comprehensive field of view of the imaging system leaves no detail undocumented, allowing visualization of everything from overhead power lines and multi-story buildings, to underlying road and curb features.

earthmine’s approach is to deliver comprehensive, standardized, accurate and intuitive data, allowing more informed and efficient decisions and faster implementation when planning, designing, managing and analyzing information related to urban environments. The company will focus on delivering solutions to cities and enterprises with strong GIS initiatives, the existing large and mature GIS System Integrator channel that supports them, and the emerging market for web-based mapping applications. For example, cities and major metropolitan areas will look to earthmine to provide accurate spatial information to support decision making while designing a new building, upgrading power lines, implementing a new public transportation system, or fixing a broken parking meter.

Availability
earthmine expects to deliver beta technology to customers near the end of 2007. The company is privately funded and will be seeking a round of venture funding toward the end of the year.

Source: earthmine