EOM Profile: Marketing Technology that is Changing at the Speed of Light
One company's experience with the success and pitfalls of marketing the GeoTechnologies
By Bob Schweitzer and Bridget McLeod

Being involved with geographic information seems at times to be like standing at the center of a tornado as technology roars and whirls around us. The rate of change is unbelievable, yet it continues to accelerate. That change is not limited to technology, or the data we work with. It also includes the way we all use it and market our services.

Place Your Bets!
For years our company, AeroMap U.S., has gathered aerial photography on speculation which we made available to clients over the counter. As our photo library grew, our clients came to rely upon us and the geographic resources we provide. Often, our spec library made the difference between moving ahead with planning and engineering for an important project, or waiting in hibernation until spring's warmth began to melt away the snow and ice of winter.
     Three years ago our company took a giant step forward from that modest speculation film library. We made the decision to not only acquire photography for the core area of the city of Anchorage, but to complete a digital elevation model and digital orthophotography for the city on our own nickel. This was a bold approach to overcome shrinking municipal budgets and still provide the city with badly needed current map information.
     The strategy to marketing this data was to gamble on multiple sales to cover our costs and make the project profitable. For us, the project has proven successful and we have updated the original files with 1996 color photography which allows us to provide a selection of monochromatic or color data sets in various resolutions. We license the data to our customers with care to protect our copyright, but also to allow each client to meet their planning objectives.
     When we jumped into this program, digital orthophotography was largely untried by most of our Alaskan clients. It is now evolving as an indispensable aid for the latest applied technologies including GIS, emergency response, utility planning, land use planning, and engineering design among a growing list of others.

Using Orthophotos with GIS & Land Use Planning
With the capabilities of computers increasing every day, a major trend in GIS is the integration of digital imagery, like satellite images and orthophotography. All serious GIS programs now support some level of integration of raster and vector data within the GIS environment.
     Mike Kiker, management information systems coordinator for the municipality of Anchorage, has coordinated the use of AeroMap's Anchorage orthophoto set with several of the municipality's departments. The Planning Department, managed by Fred Carpenter, has used the orthophotos to determine shoreline and stream coverages, to delineate wetlands, and for planning new subdivisions.
     They are pleased with the cost to benefit ratio realized by the municipality. They have asked us to expand the area of coverage to include outlying areas of the municipality.

Utility Planning
Mike Bagenski is a geographic planner for Anchorage Telephone Utility's Network Planning Division. Using ArcView and AutoCAD to overlay municipal land information on the orthophotos, he creates and reconciles base maps, telephone distribution area plan maps, and "campus" buildings, and road maps. The benefit he likes most about using orthophotos is the resolution and the positioning accuracy.

Emergency Response
Keith White, data systems supervisor for the Anchorage Police Department, envisions using his orthophoto set to help manage emergency situations out of the department's mobile "Command Van," which also functions as a real-time communications center. Ability to visualize the action as response units take positions is an enormous benefit to crisis management.
     The Anchorage Fire Department is currently planning the many ways they will use the Anchorage orthophotos. Battalion Chief Dan Tucker tells us the imagery will be used to aid contingency planning in determining fire risk across the city. Using the orthophotos with the municipal GIS, the Fire Department will be able to determine population density, business types, topography, type of ground cover, sewer location, and locations of fault lines that run through the area - all important issues for a department charged with public safety.
     As we can see, digital orthophotos' real power is not the technology that created them, but rather the way they are implemented into various applications. From helping a police officer make an on-the-spot tactical decision to aiding a telephone utility in planning for expanding fiber optic networks, orthophotos have proven their value.

Lean on Me
The marketing concept behind this approach is also proving itself. The private sector can and will find a way to respond to the needs of government agencies with quality geographic information products. Municipal agencies in Anchorage now have high quality mapping information at their command at less cost than contracting for these services.
     As we wedge our "marketer's foot" in the door however, it appears that digital orthophotos are not the only need for these agencies.
     Fire Battalion Chief Dan Tucker said it best. "When a tanker turns over on a street in Anchorage, I want to know where that stuff is going!" In other words, there is a need for more. And so it seems the more we provide, the greater the need. As with the expanded digital orthophoto set, it is a need that we are moving to fill.
     Just last May we again acquired new color photography for the entire city of Anchorage, this time at much lower altitude. What is more, we incorporated our airborne GPS capability so that we now have a new, higher resolution controlled photography set that will allow us to capture and deliver much higher resolution orthophotos in color or monochrome. We can also provide detailed digital elevation data, contour information, and of course, traditional photographic prints or scanned images anywhere in the municipality.

Feeding the Urban Appetite
Where only a few years ago we were a street corner grocery store in the geographic information business, we are now a supermarket. It is a role we must fill to prosper because our client base is changing as rapidly as the technology we use. Some clients are quite sophisticated. They can do their own image processing, provided they have the components they need. Others are still working with line maps on mylar. We must serve them all. Consequently we offer a much larger array of products than we used to, and we package these products differently to suit the needs of this diverse customer base. We must offer every conceivable subset of geographic information from traditional aerial photography to satellite imagery.

Forming the Partnerships
One of the biggest and best reasons for our existence is the ability to help our clients find the "right solution" to their specific technical requirements. Sometimes that solution comes off the shelf, other times we must develop a customized project, albeit with a much larger box of tools than we used to carry.
     Of course our marketing philosophy is changing too. Where we used to concentrate on single client professional contracts for our bread and butter, we are now paying more attention to multiple customer sales with the wider range of off-the-shelf products. Accordingly, this year we have also acquired airborne GPS controlled photography to cover Fairbanks and Juneau. More Alaska cities are in planning and will be acquired as "targets of opportunity."
     Alaska's urban communities will certainly benefit from this market approach because it will permit them to purchase a license to the entire data set at a discounted price, or they can take the project cost approach with one file at a time. They can also help hold down the cost of these products by organizing product users because the law of economics certainly applies to this program. "The more widgets that will be sold, the lower the cost per widget."

About the Authors:
Bob Schweitzer is the business development manager at Aeromap; Bridget McLeod is marketing coordinator.

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