Toronto, ON - The Regional Municipality of York was recently presented with an Award of Excellence at ESRI Canada's Regional User Conference in Toronto. John Houweling, Ontario Regional Manager, ESRI Canada , presented the Award in recognition of the Region's "Advancing YorkExplorer" project.

"YorkExplorer delivers the high standards for customer service that our residents demand," said Bill Fisch, Regional Chair and CEO. "Everyone benefits from ready access to York Region geospatial information: our local municipal partners, the public and private sectors, students and teachers . We are pleased to be recognized with this award from ESRI Canada."

The Advancing YorkExplorer project improves the access and utility of geographic information by citizens, government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and York Region staff. The project was completed in March 2005. This project funded by York Region and GeoConnections, had three major objectives:

To publish web services of geographic information using ArcIMS that are compliant with Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) web map services (WMS).

  1. To provide metadata search services through YorkCatalogue for public discovery of available geographic information in York Region and other portal websites, such as the GeoConnections Discovery Portal.
  2. To enhance YorkAtlas, an interactive ArcIMS-based Internet mapping application, with powerful functionality, flexibility, and enriched geographic information.

"This award is in recognition of the leadership and integration demonstrated by the Region's geomatics team to fully exploit the power of ArcIMS, including the ArcIMS metadata explorer and OGC interoperability extensions," said Mr. Houweling. "We are very pleased to be recognizing York Region for their efforts."

York Region has published metadata for the majority of its geographic datasets, for all of its current external web services, and will soon be publishing metadata of its publicly-available map products. Key geographic datasets of the Town of Richmond Hill, a project partner, are also online. The Region has published four OGC web map services for anyone to use at no charge. Nine interactive map views are publicly available through YorkAtlas, and six other views for collaborative programs require account-based access.

The Region has benefited from the "Advancing YorkExplorer" project with the new ability to rapidly deploy interactive mapping functionality to environmental assessment project websites such as the 19th Avenue (YDSS Interceptor) project. Residents are able to map their address in relation to the project study area and are invited to join the notification list.

YorkExplorer continues to be enhanced to create efficiencies and improve customer service while taking advantage of technological advances. York Region looks forward to a leading role in future projects with provincial and federal governments in the use of web technology and geographic information.

YorkExplorer was also recognized in the August 2005 issue of the international industry magazine, GeoWorld, as the Resource of the Month.

About the Regional Municipality of York:
The Regional Municipality of York is confederation of nine municipalities and provides services to 910,000 residents and 27,000 businesses that employ more than more than 440,000 employees. York Region has a two-tier government structure, with services provided by the Region and local area municipal governments. The Region provides services for its residents and businesses that include transportation services, transit, water, wastewater, emergency medical services, policing, human services and growth management.

With the strategic goal of access to managed geospatial information, York Region's Geomatics Branch develops business solutions and re-engineers business processes to incorporate geographic information, analysis, and map products.

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 Contact:
Heather Adams
Communications Specialist
ESRI Canada
T: 416-386-6463
E: hadams@esricanada.com  


Nancy Prout
Director of Geomatics
The Regional Municipality of York
T: 905-830-4444 Extension: 1529
E: nancy.prout@york.ca
W: http://www.york.ca/