"The Award of Excellence is going to a very deserving organization that is dedicated to the advancement of GIS within the government through the development of petroleum based applications," said Mr. Miller.

The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) is an independent, quasi-judicial agency of the Government of Alberta. Their mission is to ensure that the discovery, development, and delivery of Alberta's energy resources and utilities services take place in a manner that is fair, responsible, and in the public interest. They regulate the safe, responsible, and efficient development of Alberta's energy resources: oil, natural gas, oil sands, coal, and electrical energy; and the pipelines and transmission lines to move the resources to market. Within utilities, they regulate rates and terms of service of investor-owned natural gas, electric, and water utility services, as well as the major intra-Alberta gas transmission system, to ensure that customers receive safe and reliable service at just and reasonable rates.

The EUB continues to expand its use of GIS across an ever increasing range of activities and business areas. One area in which GIS has become a key technology is in support of the geological evaluation process. GIS was initially used in the domain of resource mapping and resulted in significant improvements in process times, productivity, and data quality. Since then GIS has become the architectural backbone for software development within a geological context.

GIS is a natural fit at EUB in several areas including:

• The development of spatial query tools to assist geologists in the process of gathering the information that they need in order to perform an evaluation.
• Data quality tools to provide a "to do" list of infringements to geological business rules that are fully integrated with the work environment.
• Automated calculation of down-hole location information, both in 2D and 3D. Processes that would have once taken hours using paper/microfiche are now completed within only a few minutes.
• Integration with non-spatial information, such as well logs and core analysis, allows geologists to select wells using various spatial criteria and link directly to the well logs. From the logs they can capture information that is fed back to the GIS for subsequent mapping and modeling work.

Of particular value to the EUB is the establishment of an enterprise wide geodatabase. This has enabled the consolidation and integration of spatial information from diverse themes into a single source. There are great benefits in being able to visualize and correlate spatial information that has been contributed from various sources and branches within the EUB into one coherent picture, and to do it efficiently.

ESRI Canada presents Awards of Excellence annually to organizations and individuals across the country for their outstanding achievement in the application of GIS technology.

About ESRI Canada:
Established in 1984, ESRI Canada is a Canadian owned company specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) solutions. We distribute the world's leading GIS software solutions from ESRI Inc., Miner and Miner, and Azteca. In order to provide organizations with complete industry-specific solutions we have established an extensive business partner program that includes more than 125 Canadian organizations. ESRI Canada also provides professional services including consulting, training, technical support, and enterprise GIS implementation. We are leaders in providing world-class enterprise GIS solutions for many industries including local government, utilities, public safety and defence, business demographics, education, natural resources, and transportation. ESRI Canada has thirteen regional offices across the country, with headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. For more information, please visit http://www.esricanada.com/ or call 1-800-447-9778.

Media Contacts:
Heather Adams
Communications Specialist
ESRI Canada
T: 416-386-6463
E: hadams@esricanada.com
W: http://www.esricanada.com/
 

Dianne Haley
GIS Program Coordinator
Alberta Energy and Utilities Board
T: 403-297-6861
E: dianne.haley@gov.ab.ca
W: http://www.eub.gov.ab.ca/