Google taps Adelaide's Aerometrex to create high-res 3D model of San Francisco

Google taps Adelaide's Aerometrex to create high-res 3D model of San Francisco

Aerometrex 3D model: San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts

Shares in aerial imagery and 3D modelling company Aerometrex (ASX: AMX) spiked more than 14 per cent this morning on the news that Google has entered into a purchase agreement for its 3D model of downtown San Francisco.

The Adelaide-based company will capture 3D model data of San Francisco at a very high resolution of 2cm pixels to add to its US 3D data archive, which it will then sell to the digital giant.

According to Aerometrex managing director Mark Deuter (pictured below), the order from Google is a major endorsement of the company's talents.

"I am very encouraged by our developments in the US market and believe that the purchase order with Google endorses our strategy and our 3D data capture capabilities," says Deuter.

"We are gaining greater attention from large organisations whose operations cover multiple US cities and municipalities and we see significant potential to contract with these types of organisations moving forward."

Aerometrex managing director Mark DeuterFor Aerometrex, the deal with Google is the latest in a long-term partnership between the two companies.

Since 2013 Aerometrex has been creating 3D models for regions of Australia and New Zealand for Google, but the recent deal cements the company's presence in the US.

Since establishing a US office in Denver, Colorado, Aerometrex has focused its efforts on capturing key US cities using very high-resolution oblique aerial imagery.

3D models have recently been constructed by Aerometrex for the cities of Denver and Miami. With growing sales efforts in the US, the company is working to monetise these data sets to a varied customer base.

"The recent uptake of the 3D model of San Francisco is very important to us though because we've established our 3D service over there in the United States," says Deuter.

"During the COVID period it was pretty tough going, but it's nice to see now that we're getting some mileage with some of the large corporations in the States."

The data and models are currently being used widely in a diverse array of industries, including urban planning, civil engineering, computer gaming, asset management, mining and coastal erosion.

The models made by Aerometrex can be consumed and displayed in web browser applications, geospatial software, virtual reality systems and gaming engines.

In the long term AMX believes its 3D data models will become the dominant data type in mapping and planning activities, and will play an increasing role in communication, visualisation and measurement.

"We've gone for the very high resolution, very high accuracy of the of the 3D model, and you can see that in the sort of graphics that we're dealing with the level of detail is phenomenal," says Deuter.

"We're talking about two centimetre pixels, even incorporating street-level imagery of a few millimetre pixels on the ground. So we're creating 3D models to recreate the experience of actually walking or flying through some of these cities."

In terms of ongoing business, Deuter says the company's capabilities here in Australia continue to witness growth.

"Our 2D aerial imagery and mapping subscriber levels are going up very nicely," he says.

"We have our laser mapping service LiDAR, and we're applying that to a whole range of innovative things like bushfire fuel load modelling for example where we can get down to measuring the amount of biomass in a given area and its connection to a vegetation canopy so that people can draw very thorough conclusions about where the high risk areas are for bushfire situations.

"But there's so many applications for this sort of technology now that it's just coming out of the woodwork. We deal with about 18 different industries and we get significant use cases and revenues from each one of them."

Shares in AMZ are up 12.82 per cent to $0.89 per share at 11.45am AEST.

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