Merrick & Company Wins Engineering Excellence Award

Thursday November 29th 2007
Filed Under Merrick & Company 



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2007

Press Contact:
Gary Outlaw, GISP, Vice President - Business Development,
GeoSpatial Solutions
Tel.:  (Cell) 303-520-4719; (Office) 800-544-1714, ext. 3901
E-mail:  gary.outlaw@merrick.com
Web:  www.merrick.com/gis

Merrick & Company Wins Engineering Excellence Award
Bald Eagle Habitat Hyperspectral and LiDAR Project

Aurora, CO USA – Merrick & Company, a world leader in
LiDAR, digital ortho imaging, photogrammetry, and geospatial
solutions received the Engineering Excellence Award from the
American Council of Engineering Companies of Colorado for a
prototype project delivered to the Kansas City and Omaha
districts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  The project’s
purpose was to determine if a combination of simultaneously
collected spatial data, including LiDAR (light detection and
ranging), digital color aerial photography, and hyperspectral
imagery via remote sensing technologies is a feasible technical
solution to inventory and quantify existing and future eagle
habitat along the Missouri River.

“This was a great project to demonstrate how the fusion
of three disparate remotely sensed data sources can solve real
world problems such as assessing the location and condition of
bald eagle habitat,” says Brian Raber, head of the GeoSpatial

Solutions Business Unit at Merrick.  “We’re all proud of the
success of the project and have concluded with our client that
the approach is technically feasible for the remaining 735
miles of the river.”

According to ACEC, “Projects from all over the world are rated
on the basis of:  uniqueness and originality; future value to
the engineering profession and perception by the public; social,
economic, and sustainable development considerations; complexity;
and successful fulfillment of client/owner’s needs, including
schedule and budget.”

The remotely sensed data provided by Merrick was used to generate
digital elevation models (DEM) of bald earth and the canopy for
the basis of this study. Color digital aerial photography and
hyperspectral imagery were overlaid onto the LiDAR DEMs to model
three-dimensional land cover and vegetation species delineation
for conservation planning and environmental impact assessments.
The final results of this 22 square mile prototype project
indicated that this new method of fusing remote sensing technologies
is technically feasible.  Merrick demonstrated that this
integration methodology of remote sensing technologies will
increase the accuracy and reduce the schedule of the congressionally
mandated Missouri Mitigation project.

The 1986 U.S. Congress created the Water Resources Development Act
to authorize construction of the Missouri River Mitigation Project
to mitigate fish and wildlife habitat losses resulting from past
channelization and flood control. Presently, the area to be mitigated
is about 261 square miles, which extends approximately 735 linear
miles from Sioux City, Iowa, to the mouth of the Missouri River near
St. Louis, Missouri.

Learn more about ACEC of Colorado at www.acec-co.org.

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About Merrick & Company
Founded in Denver in 1955, Merrick & Company is a world-leading
geospatial solutions, surveying, multidisciplinary engineering,
architectural, and construction management firm. The employee-owned
company provides these services to municipal, state, federal, and
private-sector clients. With approximately 400 employees, Merrick
has offices in Aurora and Colorado Springs, CO; Los Alamos and
Albuquerque, NM; Atlanta, GA; Ottawa, Canada; Mexico City and
Guadalajara, Mexico; and Bogota, Colombia.