MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. ("MDA" or the "Company") (TSX: MDA) has been awarded a follow-on contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to continue providing MDA’s patented Persistent Change Monitoring (PCM™) solution that supports NGA’s Foundation GEOINT.
The information provided by PCM™ allows for monitoring the effects of climate change, detecting urban sprawl, deforestation, wetlands loss, monitoring coastal expansion, identifying new facilities and construction, and prioritizing GEOINT content maintenance by allowing for more efficient and effective targeted inventory management and planning. The contract includes an option that, if exercised, has a potential over two years of $11.6 million.
Overlaying satellite images from multiple dates, MDA’s sophisticated software identifies changes in land-cover that persist regardless of seasonal changes or weather effects. Changes identified are typically caused by human activities. Knowing where these changes occur allows the analyst to focus only on the areas of change when updating global map databases. This allows map updating to be done more frequently in rapidly changing areas and less frequently elsewhere, significantly improving the customer’s efficiency.