April 27th 2006: eSpatial booth, Oracle Spatial Users Conference, GITA, Tampa Convention Center, Florida. 

Laser-Scan and eSpatial are pleased to announce an extension to their existing collaboration to jointly develop and promote SpatialTrust - to address the demand for the controlled delivery and management of quality assured spatial data.

This combined product and services solution delivers on the need for discovery, aggregation, quality assurance and controlled dissemination of spatial data assets. Built on the combined components of iSMART5 and Radius Studio, the offering provides for an Enterprise Class architecture underpinned by Oracle Spatial and Oracle Application Server 10g.

Spatial data is a key asset to be viewed as a corporate resource. However, the quality of data often undermines its value for two reasons. Firstly, there is no rigorous, measurable control over the quality of the data. This means that errors can recur even once they have been fixed, leading to time-consuming, ongoing and expensive clean up. Secondly, simply sharing the data does not necessarily mean sharing the knowledge or how to use the data.

Through iSMART’s data management, dissemination and maintenance capability, married with Radius Studio’s rules-based conformance and fixing capabilities, it is possible to deliver trusted spatial data across the enterprise. The flexibility of both platforms enables the solution to be shaped to any domain specific, data cleaning workflow and manage historical data quality issues in a centrally controlled environment. Once certified for quality the data can support enterprise decision making for spatial technologies.

The SpatialTrust solution enables the following key activities:

·         Discovery of available data across an enterprise

·         Access to data from source and transformation as required

·         Aggregation of a data sources into a usable format

·         Quality certification of the data including the process of rule generation, automated & manual fixing and on going conformance checks delivering data quality certification.

·         Controlled dissemination of the data to users and applications

Laser-Scan coined the term ‘spatial data quality certification’ to describe the quantitative measurement of data quality. By checking the conformance of data against business rules that are integral to internal operations, such as map production and publishing, organisations can now set measurable data quality standards and avoid arbitrary standards setting. eSpatial has been delivering solutions to implement organization-wide systems for the controlled publication, maintenance and analysis of spatial and business data. Together the offering has data quality and control at its core ensuring trust is provided to all data consumers.

Chris Tagg, Radius Studio Product Manager at Laser-Scan, states:

“The first phase of spatial data collection was driven by the need for automated map production. The current phase of spatial data usage needs to support the process of making critical business decisions electronically, with all the relevant and correct information at our fingertips. We need to be sure that it is fit for our particular purpose: because it is tested and certified to be so.”

David Miller, COO at eSpatial, added:

“The ability to benchmark your spatial data quality and then confidently disseminate information for analysis and decision-making is at the heart of SpatialTrust. Both organisations have been involved in providing large-scale enterprise solutions where a data-centric view has been essential since many different applications are sharing this data.”

 The solution will be of interest to all organisations that want to conduct large-scale spatial data capture, editing and dissemination activities. The solution is ready for enterprise deployment across the web, delivers a high reuse of current assets and is easier to maintain, thus delivering a measurable return on investment and low cost of ongoing ownership.

To learn more about SpatialTrust and to view the demo visit:

http://www.espatial.com/solutions_spatialtrust.html

The Demonstration provides an introduction to SpatialTrust and a detailed view of the Data Cleaning component of the solution which is designed to support the reuse of trusted data.

About Laser-Scan (www.laserscan.com)

Laser-Scan is the world leader in the certification of spatial data quality. We have been providing operational solutions to organisations with large spatial databases for more than 20 years. Laser-Scan's technologies are designed to integrate with Oracle's database and application server. Our solutions and services validate, clean and merge geospatial datasets, specialising in automated data correction. We ensure that your business critical spatial data is fit for purpose.

 About eSpatial (www.espatial.com)

eSpatial, founded in Dublin, Ireland and with offices in the USA, is a world leader in enterprise strength spatial information management technology. Its advanced spatial environment, iSMART, in conjunction with Oracle Spatial, provides a platform for highly scalable and secure spatially enabled applications in a standard enterprise IT environment with unprecedented ease of use, manageability and support for OGC Web Services. Its standards based Rapid Application Development environment and GeoPortal allows organizations to quickly and easily build new applications (or extend existing ones) to include spatial functionality. These applications provide spatial intelligence to anyone, anywhere, on any device, connected or disconnected. eSpatial's technology is used in every area of IT including Public Sector, Defense, Telecommunications and Utility organizations.