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Homeland security task force contracts with Positive Systems of Whitefish for aerial pictures

A Whitefish company is putting an eye in the sky this month, snapping aerial portraits of Montana cities as part of a Homeland Security project.

"We’ll work with 13 individual cities, and what we’re specifically looking for is a variety of infrastructure, critical facilities, places that I think you can safely assume are associated with security," said Todd Twete, marketing director at Positive Systems Inc.

By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/articles/2004/04/13/news/mtregional/news06.txt

That means dams, electricity substations, police stations, water supplies, hospitals, "you name it. It’s really up to the cities and the state."

The state is calling the shots, Twete said, because the state is footing the bill. In late February, Positive Systems received a $180,000 contract through Montana’s Department of Administration, Information Technology Services Division. The money came on behalf of the Montana Homeland Security Task Force.

"It’s definitely a security-driven program," Twete said, "but I expect there will be a lot of interest outside the security community."

Positive Systems, he said, has contracted with other Montana companies to fly over the cities, snapping away with specialized digital cameras. Later, the images will be collected at the company’s Whitefish offices, where Positive Systems technicians will crunch the pictures through the company’s DIME software.

Short for Digital Images Made Easy, DIME is a software package that pieces together individual aerial pictures into one large image.

It also recognizes any individual pixel in an image, and can attach that pixel to a specific geographic point on the ground, providing its precise latitude and longitude. That "geo-referencing" allows users to layer the aerial montage directly atop existing maps, or onto other aerial pictures of the same area.

In the past, state agencies have used the software to layer a chronology of aerial images from the upper Yellowstone River area, beginning with photos from 1948 and working up through time to the present. The resulting layered map allowed an unprecedented look at habitat changes, stream-bank erosion, land-use changes and the impacts of Interstate 90 on the landscape.

Other agencies have used the software to plot wildfires, aid in urban planning, recognize environmental change, evaluate productivity of timberland and guide developments.

Which is exactly why Twete thinks people who work well beyond the reach of policing concerns will want to tap into the maps produced for Homeland Security. The same images that can be used to digitally highlight areas of security concern can be used to highlight areas of interest to city planners and highway engineers. Power companies might want to use the maps, as might the folks at the local public works department.

"People in economic development tend to be really interested," he said, because retailers like to know where the traffic flow is, where the power and Internet lines run, where their competitors are located, where employees live.

Using the same DIME software, Twete said, his company can answer those questions.

But first and foremost, he said, is the job of locating Montana’s critical infrastructure.

Cities currently involved in the project include Kalispell, Missoula, Hamilton, Billings, Bozeman, Cut Bank, Glendive, Great Falls, Havre, Lewistown, Livingston, Miles City and Sidney.

"The ball is already rolling on this," Twete said. "We should start flying next week."

Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at [email protected]

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