NEWS RELEASE July 21, 2001 TerraFly Project High-Performance Database Research Center School of Computer Science Florida International University

Contact: Martha Gutierrez Phone: (305) 348-6262 or (305) 348-1706 | Fax: (305) 348-1705 | E-mail: Address: 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL 33199

The High-Performance Database Research Center of Florida International University and its constituent FIU-NASA Regional Applications Center have entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

This five-year agreement will allow the Center's TerraFly project to provide the general public with online access to USGS data. Though the public presently has limited online access to the vast amount of data collected over the years by the USGS, the TerraFly project will implement new technologies in order to simplify and expand the delivery of this data via the Internet.

Among the planned CRADA activities, FIU plans to add to the TerraFly database aerial photography data for the continental United States, Landsat 7 images covering much of the populated world, and other types of USGS data. These additions could make TerraFly one of the largest collections of publicly available data on the Web.

TerraFly is a new Internet-based technology that makes it possible for users to "fly over" vast land areas using only an ordinary Web browser. By using high-resolution imagery collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other sources, users can experience an overhead view of almost any location in the United States at a one-meter resolution-without the expense of standard GIS application software. The project, which is funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and IBM, can be accessed on the Web at http://www.terrafly.com.

TerraFly is a project of the High-Performance Database Research Center (HPDRC) at Florida International University (FIU). The HPDRC and its constituent FIU-NASA Regional Applications Center (RAC) comprise 100 researchers working under the direction of Dr. Naphtali Rishe, Professor of Computer Science and the first-ever recipient of FIU's Outstanding Faculty Award. The U.S. government has funded the Center's work on database technology, the Internet, and data visualization at $17 million.