Washington, DC - September 6, 2006 - State and local government agencies have the opportunity to experience the power of fusing text search with geospatial information to support critical mission objectives through a grant program announced today by MetaCarta, Inc., a leading provider of geographic intelligence solutions. Part of a strategic focus on the state and local market, the program will offer use of GTS, MetaCarta’s leading geographic text search appliance to a limited number of state and local agencies free of charge for a pilot program. Potential pilot applications include homeland security, law enforcement, environmental protection, natural resources planning and land use, including zoning and permitting. MetaCarta technology is widely used in the intelligence community and by civilian federal government agencies.
GTS combines MetaCarta’s revolutionary geographic search with an enterprise-strength engine to enable instant notification to watch standers, investigators and analysts when critical events occur—even when they are away from their station. GTS uses patent-pending natural language processing (NLP) to automatically read and identify explicit and implied geographic references within structured and unstructured documents. By displaying the geographic location within documents in a traditional GIS environment, important relationships and patterns can be visualized.
“Since nearly 80 percent of all digital writing contains at least one or more geospatial references, MetaCarta’s technology is a powerful tool for state and local agencies,” said Randy Ridley, MetaCarta's Vice President and General Manager of Public Sector Systems. “We’re looking forward to helping these agencies better exploit their information to create actionable intelligence faster to support their missions and serve their constituents.” MetaCarta will award multiple pilot grants to serve the state and local market with enterprise-class geospatial search technology.
Agencies must act quickly; the grant application must be submitted to MetaCarta no later than October 31, 2006. Agencies can demo MetaCarta’s innovative technology, find further details on the program, or apply at www.metacarta.com/state_and_local.html.
About MetaCarta, Inc.
MetaCarta, Inc., a leading provider of geographic intelligence solutions, provides users with map-driven geographic search, geographic referencing, and data visualization capabilities. MetaCarta products make data and unstructured content “location-aware” making that information geographically relevant. These innovative solutions make it possible for customers to discover, visualize, and act on important location-based information. Founded by a team of MIT researchers in 2001, MetaCarta is privately held, with US headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts and offices in Vienna, Virginia and Houston, Texas. For more information, please visit www.metacarta.com.
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