Visitors to the recent Geoevenement 2004 show in Paris were queuing in the isles to access 8 terabytes (8000 GB) colour orthophoto data in the ECW compressed image format, covering the whole of France. In addition to the numerous interactive Web browsers permitting multiple views of this massive dataset, was a new kiosk style concept in on-line digital access, by Digiborne. Using a touchscreen facility, visitors could roam and zoom to any area of France and then frame and print their image all in realtime.

Serge Dedeystere, CEO of Digitech International said, "we were selected by IGN of France to mosaic, colour balance and compress over 8 Terabytes worth of orthophoto data into the ECW image format. Covering the whole of France, the final compressed mosaics reduced to less than 750 GB in size. This was by far the most gruelling part of the exercise. However, with a peak compression rate of around 25 GB per hour the task was made relatively easy. No other image compression technique can come close to this level of performance and quality. The next step in the process - serving with Image Web Server - was comparatively simple to achieve yet so incredibly effective for the users. How else are you going to serve over 8 terabytes worth of data using only a handful of hard drives and a modest server?"

The results spoke for themselves with many hundreds of visitors all leaving with quality images of their favourite places.

Mick Armstrong, EAME regional manager of Earth Resource Mapping commented, "Digitech have done a fantastic job in creating a true enterprise solution for the management and serving of a national data asset. This is another example of how large corporations are benefiting from the power of Image Web Server based solutions."

Visit ER Mapper at www.ermapper.com or the Image Web Server website at www.EarthEtc.com