GSI Awarded Homeland Security Grant

Friday, August 18th, 2006

Rochester, NY - Geospatial Systems, Inc. (GSI) was awarded a $100,000 Phase I STTR Grant from Homeland Security, Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA). If it progresses to Phase II, the total award will be nearly $1,000,000. An STTR is for small businesses to partner with universities to develop new technology. An STTR – similar to an SBIR - is for small businesses to partner with universities to develop new technology.

The award is for an Incident Surveillance Management System (ISMS). The development program addresses “emerging needs for rapid data-and imagery-ingest, advanced geo-processing, image analysis, large database applications, and data sharing. The solution will provide geo-spatially relevant data in real time – by way of the mobile ground station – to responding FEMA staff, and to local first responders, and will simultaneously deliver that same real time geo-spatially relevant imagery to FEMA staff in conference rooms from Washington, DC to Washington State and beyond.

Kevin Kearney, GSI’s CTO said: “This award extends our penetration into the Geospatial value chain by integrating our sensor suite into a ground ingestion and dissemination system. Successful execution on this will give us a lot of visibility, as well as many other applications.”

Mr. Kearney further explained that GSI’s university partner in this program is Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) Center for Imaging Science. ““Geospatial Systems will co-develop and transfer technology from RIT’s research program, and will team with Leica Geosystems & Geospatial Imaging as a commercialization partner.”

“In a related project, GSI is partnering with Dr. William Kiser at Pennsylvania State University’s Electro-Optics Center in the development of a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) sensor system for pervasive persistent surveillance. This sensor system will be designed for compatibility with the ISMS.”