Reston, VA, July 30, 2008 -- Fugro EarthData, Inc. (Frederick, MD) was presented the Grand Award for its project, "Mapping a vital marine resource in Texas," at the 2008 MAPPS Summer Conference July 22 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Furgo EarthData's work earned 'Project of the Year' honors in the MAPPS 2008 Geospatial Products and Services Excellence Awards competition.

The top project was one of four category winners in the MAPPS competition.  MAPPS presented awards to Intermap Technologies for "Ultra Long Lines: Increasing Airborne Data Acquisition Rates" in the category of Airborne and Satellite Data Acquisition; Aero-Metric, Inc. for "Interstate 35W Bridge Collapse" in Photogrammetry/Elevation Data Generation; and Photo Science for "Legislative Atlas" in the GIS/IT category. The Fugro EarthData project was the category winner among Remote Sensing project entries.

Twelve projects were judged in four categories by a distinguished panel of judges chaired by Robert Burtch, professor of Surveying and Engineering at Ferris State University. The judges panel also included Dr. Pamela Lawhead, University of Mississippi; Dr. Tom Lillesand, retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dennis Morgan, retired from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Dr. Adrian Moore of the Reason Foundation.

"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 Burtch regarding the complexity of the various submissions.

Contracted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coastal Services Center (CSC) in Charlston, SC, Fugro EarthData was given the challenge of creating benthic habitat maps to support the Texas Seagrass Monitoring Program. The goal of the project was to protect the shallow marine environment in the estuaries along the Texas Gulf Coast. The project covered 1,400 square miles of Texas coastal estuaries and involved three elements: high-resolution aerial mapping, object-oriented classification, and quantitative accuracy assessment.  

The 2009 Geospatial Products and Services Excellence Awards will be announced during the joint MAPPS-ASPRS conference to be held November 12-14, 2009 in San Antonio, Texas.

Formed in 1982, MAPPS is the only national association exclusively comprised of private firms in the remote sensing, spatial data and geographic information systems field in the United States. Current MAPPS memberships span the entire spectrum of the geospatial community, including Member Firms engaged in satellite and airborne remote sensing, surveying, photogrammetry, aerial photography, hydrography, bathymetry, charting, aerial and satellite image processing, GPS, and GIS data collection and conversion services. MAPPS also includes Associate Member Firms, which are companies that provide hardware, software, products and services to the geospatial profession in the United States and other firms from around the world. MAPPS provides its members opportunities for networking and developing business-to-business relationships, information sharing, education, public policy advocacy, market growth, and professional development and image enhancement. For more information on MAPPS, please visit www.MAPPS.org.