Blue Marble Welcomes First Australian BeyondGeo Customer

Gardiner, Maine � October 25, 2004 - Blue Marble Geographics announced today that their Internet Mapping Solution, BeyondGeo, welcomes it�s first Australian customer: Risk Frontiers - Natural Hazards Research Centre at Macquarie University in Sydney.


Risk Frontiers provides research and data for various insurance industry interests. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) is one particular client of theirs that has a large number of overseas members. They needed a way to view up-to-date data on risk zones in an interactive map. Risk Frontiers turned to Blue Marble�s www.BeyondGeo.com as a low cost tool for providing this service.

The maps produced by Risk Frontiers are part of an upgrade of the Insurance Council of Australia�s (ICA) web site. The aim of this part of the project is to relate CRESTA Zones (Catastrophe Risk Evaluating and Standardizing Target Accumulation Zones), a worldwide zone classification used within the Insurance Industry, to spatial units used in client databases, such as address postcode (zip code). CRESTA Zones are the basis of reinsurance negotiation and portfolio analysis.

Currently the link between risk location and CRESTA Zone is made from tables with a 1 to 1 relationship, but changes to postcode boundaries over time means that this relationship no longer holds. As some of their users may be overseas members, with limited local knowledge, major town locations were added as a layer, to allow spatial orientation, along with the ability to search for all suburbs/towns in a postcode. If required, there is the capacity to include additional layers as necessary.

�We chose web map hosting, (and in particular Blue Marble), to take advantage of the extensive development encapsulated in their product, allowing us to concentrate on the content of the maps,� stated Laraine Hunter.

About Blue Marble Geographics: 

Blue Marble has been writing GIS software tools and solutions for over 10 years. Their technology is embedded in hundreds of GIS applications currently used by military, oil exploration, civil engineering, surveying, technology and corporate GIS systems. BeyondGeo.com is a simple and complete Internet map service that enables businesses and organizations to easily and cost-effectively publish interactive, database-driven maps on their web site. BeyondGeo is powered by Blue Marble�s GOIMS mapserver. Blue Marble currently serves over 130,000 customers in over 120 countries. 

www.bluemarblegeo.com 

About Risk Frontiers: 

Risk Frontiers is a research center focused on creating strategic risk management and training solutions for insurance companies and their clients. Their research is world leading on natural perils and their consequences such as floods, volcanoes, wild fires, and much more.

www.es.mq.edu.au/NHRC/web/front/homepagetables.htm