REDLANDS, Calif., Jan. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Esri and PCI Geomatics have selected 24 organizations to develop and apply innovative methods for using GIS to analyze imagery for land-use management. Through the Esri Natural Resources Imagery Grant Program, Esri, the world leader in GIS, and PCI Geomatics, the world leader in geoimaging, provide each grant recipient with software and data valued at $100,000.

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"Esri is committed to the development of tools and processes that advance the use of imagery for geospatial analysis," said Lawrie Jordan, Esri's imagery solutions director. "The applications that participants design will offer proof-of-concept models useful to imagery analysts worldwide."

Participants are required to improve efficiency, productivity, or accuracy for detecting and analyzing land-cover change using MDA synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from RADARSAT-2 and 5 m multispectral imagery from RapidEye. They will use Esri and PCI software to process and analyze imagery. Grant participants, project titles, and organizations are listed on the Esri Natural Resources Imagery Grant Program web page.

"Imagery provides a cost-efficient means to monitor and measure what is happening on the ground and can be integrated with GIS to make better decisions," said Terry Moloney, president and CEO ofPCI Geomatics. "Our partnership with Esri on this program will significantly change the GIS approach participants will apply to land-use management, planning, and policy making."

Once completed, Esri will showcase Esri Natural Resources Imagery Grant Program projects on its GIS services platform ArcGIS Online.

About PCI Geomatics
PCI Geomatics is a world-leading developer of software and systems to process aerial and satellite imagery. The company provides integrated Esri imagery workflows, stand-alone image processing capability, and large volume processing throughput, giving customers the ability to produce high-quality image products and derived information for any project.

About Esri
Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

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SOURCE Esri