MATERIAL: news

Business Geographics wins contract for pilot Internet/intranet system in Scottish Enterprise (24/11/1998)

Business Geographics has won the competition to develop parallel Internet and intranet systems for location marketing in Scottish Enterprise.

Working initially with Dunbartonshire Enterprise on pilot systems, Business Geographics will build:

a fast hierarchical image-based site for Internet use
a fully functional high availability site for intranet use

Dunbartonshire Enterprise is responsible for encouraging business expansion in its local area. The Internet and intranet sites will be aimed primarily at an overseas audience seeking to make inward investments to the region.

Adrian Tear, commenting on the win, noted "These sites will be an interesting test of web-based data dissemination techniques using both flat images (generated from MapInfo)and vector maps served by MapGuide. Both systems will use the same database - holding a range of location-specific demographic, transport and quality of life data - but the delivery mechanism will vary for Internet and intranet sites."

Robin McLaren, Scottish Enterprise's consultant on the project, stated that "The Internet is an ideal vehicle for introducing outsiders to an area using maps, airphotos and images. Dunbartonshire has to compete with other inward investment locations elsewhere in Scotland, Great Britain, Europe and world-wide. We hope that these web-based pilots will show the potential for widely distributed information systems and lead to a roll-out giving a unified location marketing system for the whole of Scottish Enterprise."

Contact: Adrian Tear (Business Geographics Limited)

Contact: Robin McLaren (Know Edge Limited)