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U.S. Geological Survey Deputy
Director Katherine Clements, FIU President Modesto A. Maidique,
IBM Storage General Manager Adalio Sanchez (an FIU alumnus)
and Naphtali Rishe, director of the FIU High-Performance Database
Research Center, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony recognizing
the $6.7 million grant received from IBM for the purchase
of computer hardware.
TerraFly, a new Internet-based software
that makes it possible for users to “fly over” vast
land areas using only an ordinary web browser, was unveiled
last fall by University researchers.
With potential markets ranging from the travel and real estate
industries to state and local governments, TerraFly has a
potential annual market of $1 billion, financial analysts
working with the project say. IBM and the U.S. Geological
Survey recently contributed nearly $10 million worth of computer
hardware and data in the development of TerraFly, raising
total support for the groundbreaking project to nearly $30
million.
“With the generous support of our industry partners,
TerraFly is now one of the largest, if not the largest, publicly
accessible databases on the web,” said Naphtali Rishe,
principal investigator on TerraFly and the director of FIU’s
High-Performance Database Research Center. “TerraFly
now includes imagery for the entire United States, and we’re
excited about incorporating additional areas around the world.
The possible uses for this technology are endless.”
TerraFly uses high-resolution imagery collected by the U.S.
Geological Survey. Unlike other computer systems over which
such imagery may be viewed, however, TerraFly interfaces with
such ubiquitous web browsers as Internet Explorer and Netscape,
allowing virtually any user to “fly” over imagery
in whatever direction and at whatever speed the user chooses.
What may be TerraFly’s most attractive feature for commercial
use, however, is that it allows for graphic overlays, making
it customizable for individual markets. Real estate firms,
for instance, might develop overlays that show potential customers
listed homes; the overlays could be further customized to
include asking price, tax information, interior photographs
of the home and other key details. Customers could have a
much stronger idea of what properties interest them before
driving to visit them, cutting down shopping time.
Those customizable elements make TerraFly an attractive technology
to license for market development, say financial experts working
with TerraFly, who have estimated its annual worth to be as
much as $1 billion.
In addition to the $6.7 million in computer hardware and more
than $3 million in data recently donated by IBM and the USGS,
respectively, TerraFly has generated major support from both
NASA and the National Science Foundation.
“TerraFly is a wonderful example of the possibilities
inherent in our High Performance Database Research Center
and of the cutting-edge research being done at our University,”
said FIU President Modesto A. Maidique.
In April, Rishe won The Miami Herald business Plan Challenge
for developing TerraFly.
www.terrafly.com
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