This educational program partners technology, education and industry to promote Australia's Spatial Information Action Agenda.

Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions announced its Mobile Resource Management (MRM) solutions were used to streamline the collection and storage of accurate, up-to-date natural resource information by Tasmania, Australia's, Latrobe High School students in Transend Networks Pty. Ltd's summer work program, Power Walk. Power Walk is an educational partnership between the Tasmanian Department of Education, Intergraph and Transend Networks, which puts into practice recommended actions of the Australian government's Spatial Information Action Agenda to enhance spatial education and skills development. The program allows high school students to gain practical spatial skills while assisting Transend in better managing land easements in Northwest Tasmania.

Transend owns and operates the electricity transmission system in Tasmania with 3,500 kilometers of transmission lines, 45 substations and approximately 8,000 towers and also maintains the easements directly under and up to 30 meters on each the side of the transmission lines. Intergraph GeoMedia-based solutions are the basis of Transend's Land Information Management (LIM) system that provides enterprisewide access to easement data via a corporate intranet.

To begin the project, students extracted base location data for points, such as parcels, roads, rivers and tower and power lines, from the corporate LIM and then downloaded this data along with a landowner's database and project data to personal digital assistants (PDAs). Using Intergraph's IntelliWhere OnDemand software and integrated GPS on PDAs, students viewed, queried and edited natural resource data, including vegetation, structures, sinkholes and springs on land easements as they walked across Northwest Tasmania. Upon completion, the data was uploaded and integrated with Transend's corporate geospatial warehouse.

Source: Intergraph, Feb. 24, 2005