SpatialNews Press Release

DIGITALGLOBE, PCI GEOMATICS AND CCRS ANNOUNCE FIRST SUPPORT OF QUICKBIRD RIGOROUS SENSOR MODEL

www.pcigeomatics.com

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LONGMONT, Colo. and RICHMOND HILL, Ontario, October 1, 2002 - After several months of cooperative development and testing, DigitalGlobe(tm), PCI Geomatics(tm) and the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS, Natural Resources Canada), are pleased to announce support of the QuickBird(tm) Rigorous Sensor Model within PCI Geomatics software. This is the first commercial software support of the QuickBird Rigorous Model, developed by Dr. Thierry Toutin at CCRS, which allows the orthorectification of QuickBird Basic Imagery Products with the highest degree of accuracy.

PCI Geomatics announced its support of the QuickBird Rational Polynomial Coefficient (RPC) model earlier this year. The introduction of the QuickBird Rigorous Sensor Model offers PCI Geomatics users a more robust and consistently accurate solution.

"The development that PCI Geomatics has invested in our high-resolution solutions places us far ahead of industry standards," notes Ian Suttie, COO for PCI Geomatics. "We are clearly surpassing user expectations with products such as Geomatica and our customization services. Teaming up with the dedicated people of CCRS and DigitalGlobe helps keep the high productivity geomatics solutions we create within customer budgets."

"PCI's implementation of the QuickBird Rigorous Sensor Model offers customers the flexibility of orthorectifying QuickBird Basic Imagery to a much higher accuracy than currently available through the standard RPC solution," said Matt Wood, product manager for the QuickBird Imagery Products. "This is the first time the high-resolution satellite imaging industry has provided true orthorectification capabilities to customers through a third-party software product."

"CCRS and PCI set out to simply produce a better, more accurate and less restrictive model for DigitalGlobe's QuickBird Satellite, with fewer limitations to criteria such as terrain and slope, among others." observes Dr. Thierry Toutin, principal research scientist at CCRS and designer of the QuickBird model. "As the QuickBird satellite becomes more popular and users begin to fully appreciate its strengths, they will also become more aware of the limitations of the RPC model, and will immediately recognize the value of the QuickBird Rigorous Sensor Model." Dr. Toutin is well known within the geomatics industry for his algorithm model accomplishments and has cooperated with PCI Geomatics on several occasions.

"DigitalGlobe's open systems approach allows our customers to have complete control over their imagery project, while still providing off-the-shelf solutions for those customers who want DigitalGlobe to do the work for them," added Henry Dubois, COO and CFO of DigitalGlobe. "Many of our customers have been anxiously awaiting the first implementation of the QuickBird Rigorous Sensor Model. Our partnership with PCI ensures that our imagery is truly compatible with their software."

DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite offers the highest resolution satellite imagery commercially available. Lifted into orbit on Oct. 18, 2001, QuickBird has 61-72cm (2-2.4 ft) panchromatic and 2.44-2.88 (8-9.4 ft) multispectral resolution sensors, depending upon the off-nadir viewing angle (0 to 25 degrees). In addition, QuickBird provides a high revisit frequency of roughly one to three days, depending on the latitude. The sensor has coverage of 16.5 km to 19km in the across-track direction, which is 60 to 90 percent larger than any other commercial, high-resolution sensors.

About Digital Globe

DigitalGlobe (www.digitalglobe.com) is an imagery and information company located in Longmont, Colorado. DigitalGlobe is establishing a market leadership position by providing the highest resolution satellite imagery product offering, the greatest collection capacity, and the largest image size commercially available. Currently, there are no plans to launch a comparable commercial satellite until at least 2004. The company offers geographic information products through its digitalglobe.com on-line imagery store, an Internet-based global archive of geographic information available to commercial businesses.

About PCI Geomatics

PCI Geomatics (www.pcigeomatics.com) is a world leading developer of geomatics software solutions. PCI Geomatics' flagship solution, Geomatica, meets the growing demands of the Remote Sensing, GIS, Cartographic and Photogrammetry worlds. PCI Geomatics is celebrating the beginning of its third decade as a industry-leading geomatics solution provider and has long been recognized for its premium, yet affordable, geomatics software solutions, advanced algorithms, excellent customer assistance and product support of the widest range of spatial data formats in the industry.

About The Canada Centre for Remote Sensing

Established in 1971, the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS) (www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca) is responsible for the acquisition of Earth observation data, and for the development of remote sensing applications and related methodologies and systems. A division of Natural Resources Canada, CCRS plays an important and unique role in the international realms of remote sensing. In conjunction with the private sector, CCRS promotes the development of remote sensing technology and applications. The CCRS ensures that remote sensing is strategically applied, to better understand the Earth, the environment and the human impact upon them over time.

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