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Press Release For Immediate Publication July 31, 1998  GIS is Airborne in the Law Enforcement Industry Lexington, Kentucky - MetaMAP Inc.'s MetaVUE product was featured at the Airborne Law Enforcement Association's (ALEA) annual convention which was held in Ontario, California on July 20-25, 1998. Schwiezer Aircraft featured their fully equipped model 330CP helicopter in their booth. The helicopter is ownedby the San Antonio Police Department. MetaVUE was chosen to be featured in the helicopter, along with the other latestairborne hi-tech crime fighting tools. The San Antonio Police is currently evaluating MetaVUE for their helicopter section. MetaVUE was running on Litton's Glove Box mobile pentium computer, which shared Litton\'92s MobileVU monitor with the helicopter's infrared and video camera. MetaVUE was also featured at the Litton Industries booth, where crowds gathered to see the latest in rugged daylight visible hardware coupled with the ability for airborne law enforcement personnel to have complete access to their community's entire Geographic Information System's data. With MetaVUE, officers can enter the address to which they are being dispatched. In a matter of seconds, MetaVUE uses Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology to map out the fastest way to reach their destination. The system can also alert the pilot if the route will take them through controlled airspace, which surrounds the airports located in most communities. Before their destination is reached, MetaVUE displays a detailed map of their target area. Features displayed can include street edges, driveways, building footprints, addresses, swimming pools, rivers, lakes, etc. Any map feature or database item the community has in their Geographic Information System (GIS) database can be accessed in seconds. Even the aerial photograph of the area can be overlaid with the vector mapping data to further assist law enforcement officials accomplish their missions. MetaVUE can also be placed in a "moving map" mode which is useful in chase and surveillance situations. Using GPS, MetaVUE automatically tracks the aircraft and displays the appropriate maps along the way. The operator can view the computer generated maps and report the exact location of the suspect to ground units using the street names being displayed on the map. MetaVUE was the only vector based airborne mapping system at the convention with all of the abovementioned features and, as a result, attracted a lot of attention at the Schwiezer and Litton booths. MetaVUE is currently being used by the City of Columbus, Ohio Police Helicopter Division. The running demonstrations were constructed from GPS data collected from actual Columbus Police helicopter missions. The data used in the demonstration came from the Franklin County, Ohio Auditor's Office GIS. The only difference in the demonstrations and the actual police missions was that the GPS data was read from a file, rather than an actual GPS unit. MetaMAP, Inc. was formed in 1992 to develop, distribute, and support geographic information system (GIS) software. MetaMAP, Inc. is an industry leader in the efficient distribution of GIS data. They are based in Lexington, KY. MetaMAP, MetaVUE, and MapVUE are trademarks of MetaMAP, Inc. Other brands and product names mentioned are trademarks of their respective owners. |
