Monday, 20 February 2012

DMTI Spatial Celebrates Ten Years of Support to Canadian Academia with SMART Program

DMTI Spatial Inc. (DMTI), Canada's leading provider of Location Intelligence solutions, is thrilled to celebrate ten years of its SMART (Spatial Mapping Academic Research Tools) program. The program assists a consortium of libraries at over forty Canadian universities and colleges, including the University of Toronto, York University and the University of British Columbia, reaching over 9000 students and faculty members annually. The aim of the SMART program is to provide affordable access to data in support of social science, engineering, research, business and environmental geographic educational programs. This data has helped individuals at member institutions with such impactful projects as determining emergency routes and plotting the best locations for hospitals and new energy sources. DMTI has lent continued support by providing licenses for its data products, including CanMap® and Platinum Postal CodeOM Suite, to these institutions to use for teaching and research purposes. Over the past decade, DMTI contributions have equated to over $70 million worth of software and data.
"The SMART program really opened the door for academics wishing to use Canadian spatial data," said Marcel A.J. Fortin, GIS and Map Librarian, Map and Data Library, University of Toronto. Mr. Fortin manages the relationship with DMTI on behalf of the consortium and plays an instrumental role in supporting the program and the participating institutions. "Prior to the SMART program, there were few opportunities for university students and faculty to use quality Canadian mapping data for research and teaching. DMTI's data is now very prevalent at SMART program institutions, being utilized in everything from first year lectures to more complex projects like advanced geocoding and the creation of 3D elevation models."
"It was very generous of DMTI Spatial Inc. to provide Canadian academic institutions a suite of vector data, DEM, imagery and geocoding software through the SMART Program, especially at a time when geospatial data was not readily available or affordable," said Trudy Bodak, Librarian Emeritus, York University. "At York University, the data was heavily used by graduate and undergraduate students for a variety of projects including plotting emergency routes, travel times and bicycle routes, and determining the best locations for new golf courses, hospitals and wind turbines. I always used DMTI data as an example in my GIS Library instruction classes, because there is so much value and flexibility in using it for research analysis."
"DMTI is extremely proud of our involvement over the past decade with the SMART program, with our data being a part of everything from introductory GIS classes to helping plot new hospital locations," said John Fisher, CEO, DMTI. "It is important for us to support Canada's universities and colleges, helping these current and future leaders in the community by providing the world-class data they need to stay at the top of their field."
For more information regarding DMTI Location Intelligence solutions please visit www.dmtispatial.com

About DMTI Spatial Inc.

DMTI has been providing industry leading enterprise Location Intelligence solutions for more than a decade to Global 2000 companies and government agencies. DMTI's world-class Location Hub platform uniquely identifies, validates and maintains a universe of location-based data. DMTI is the creator of market leading Mapping Solutions and maintains the gold standard for GIS location-based data in Canada.

No comments:

Post a Comment