Astron Environmental Services has been awarded a $20,000 grant through the Department of Commerce, Innovation Vouchers Program (IVP) to assist with the innovation of emapper™, a webmapping application for biological and environmental data.
Through the Innovation Vouchers Program, the Department of Commerce provide financial assistance to small-to-medium enterprises looking to advance their innovations or commercialisation activity.
Astron received notification of its successful application on the 22nd April, 2015.
Astron's emapper™ innovation will allow users to identify changes in biological features within defined management areas, link changes in these biological features with management activities, and optimise plans for future field operations.
Project lead and Astron’s Technical Director, Julian Kruger explains that the innovation will address a gap in the market by focusing on the accessibility and utility of biological data captured by field personnel and will benefit all organisations involved in biological, environmental and natural resource management.
"In our experience, one of the biggest issues environmental managers face is the inability to determine whether well intended management activities are actually having a long term positive impact on our environment. We often find that the right type of data is not available, or if it is available it’s full of errors or too time consuming to interpret,” explains Mr Kruger.
"By using emapper™, environmental managers and the community will be far better informed with regards to environmental issues and management activities, particularly their progress, success and return on investment.”
The funding received through IVP will be used to develop emapper’s™ user interface and user experience, with Perth’s award winning digital agency Humaan providing the design and development.
Astron aims to have a demonstration version of emapper™ available for showcase by early Quarter 4 2015.