Right here, right now - consortium wins DTI support for
research grant
A
consortium led by North East IT business solutions
provider Imass, has been awarded a substantial grant in
excess of £0.6m by the Department of Trade and Industry
under its Collaborative Research and Development
Technology Programme.
The
grant will help to fund the research and development of an
innovative software solution, which will enable
organisations to share an interactive, real-time digital
model of any geographic region, within a web-services
environment.
In
order to demonstrate the benefits of this approach the
team will build a detailed digital model of the North-East
of England, although the results of the project could be
applied nationally. The model will be based upon the
Digital National Framework that is championed by the
Ordnance Survey.
“The
project, named NERVE (North East Regional Visualisation
Environment) will help regional organisations share data
efficiently for both planning and operational purposes.”
stated Dave Curry, Imass Project Director. “In light of recent national legislation, such as the Civil
Contingency Bill and Traffic Management Act, the benefits
of this software will be substantial.”
This
real-time model will have many uses; for example, when
coordinating response to a major incident, emergency
response organisations including Fire, Police and
Ambulance services will be able to share information about
the incident as it progresses.
Additionally, Highways Authorities and Utility
Companies will be able to get a shared view of planned
street works to help reduce disruption to the road
network.
The
consortium partners are Imass, Laser-Scan, the University
of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Ordnance Survey.
The
project has the support of North Eastern Fire and Police
organisations, Northumbrian Water, NEXUS and Government
Office for the North East.
Bryan
Rees, Director for Regional Intelligence and Resilience at
Government Office for the North East said:
“There is an increasing need for agencies such as
Fire, Ambulance, Police, Local Authorities and Utilities
to be able to share and visualise geographic information
in real-time, and I believe this research could make a
meaningful contribution to the removal of technical
barriers that make this difficult to achieve at
present.”
The
project will last two years and is scheduled for
completion at the end of 2007.
Visit
our dedicated website at www.nerveproject.org.uk
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