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20 January 2009

MetaCarta, Inc., the leading provider of geographic search and referencing solutions has partnered with the British Transport Police (BTP) to help provide situational awareness for the 2012 Olympics

British Transport Police (BTP) will use MetaCarta geographic search and referencing solutions to geo-enable and consolidate information from multiple data sources by geographic location and display it in MapView, BTP's intranet map-based visualization tool.

MetaCarta will be showcasing their solutions at the DGI 2009:  The 5th Annual European Geospatial Intelligence Conference, Stand #20 from January 19 -22 at the QEII Conference Centre, London. Richard Smith, Force Information Manager at BTP will be speaking about his efforts at DGI on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 14:15 at the session titled Using GIS to Prevent Organised & Opportunist Crime.

MetaCarta will geo-enable in excess of 1 million documents from British Transport Police, and documents from the BTP's Memex law enforcement solution so that the information can be searched and mapped by location. In addition, MetaCarta will supply breaking news from over 4,200 open news sources such as BBC, Reuters, and Associated Press as well as citizen blogs. All of this information is combined and visualized on a map to create a complete picture about the location so that analysts and watch standers can quickly visualize what is happening in a specific geographic area as real-time events occur.
  
 "We safeguard around six million people every day and are responsible for securing 10,000 miles of railway track. We believe travelling is about more than just getting there. It's about ensuring safety and security all the way," said Richard Smith, Force Information Manager at BTP.  "During the Olympics, the transportation needs will increase significantly together with the need for heightened security. To provide the security necessary for the Olympic and Paralympic Games we need to understand at-a-glance what is happening in every venue before, during and after the Games events."

MetaCarta Geographic Search and Referencing Platform (MetaCarta GSRP) stands alone in being able to provide BTP with the ability to identify places and points-of-interest in text documents, news feeds, email, reports, web pages and blogs, and assigns latitude and longitude coordinates so that the content can be searched, retrieved, and visually displayed on a map. Today, not all geographic references can be identified by traditional text search engines. Query results that take hours and days for analysts to comb through with these standard text search solutions will take seconds with GSRP.  New, more geographically relevant information will be discovered.

The MetaCarta GSRP can identify more than 190 million place names and organizations are now able to geo-enable all of their content in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, or mixed-language documents so it can be used in location-based applications to help visualize trends and enhance intelligence analysis of more relevant queries.

"We are excited about the opportunity to have a major role in giving the BTP analysts the ability to efficiently support the security of the London 2012 Olympics," said John Donnelly III, vice president worldwide sales and operations.  "We are pleased that BTP has gained immediate benefits during their initial deployment and we are looking forward to supporting Richard and his team in their continued preparation for the London Olympics."