Left to right: Dr. Mohamed Abousalem (CEO), Nan Xu, Andrew Ma, Candice Fulgencio, Gordon Banting (CFO), Donna Richardson, Richard Gorecki, Jonathan Neufeld and Andrew House Photo by Jonard Tan Photography
TECTERRA Invests in
Diversif ication and Growth By Rennay Craats
I
n the past year, the Alberta economy has experienced a steady downturn due to plummeting oil and gas prices. Now more than ever, the province needs to diversify its economic portfolio in order to not only recover from this slump, but to prevent it from happening again. TECTERRA is doing its part by offering support and funding to a variety of companies across industries, stimulating much needed growth and diversity. TECTERRA is a not-for-profit organization funded by the Alberta government that has injected tens of millions of dollars into the economy through investment in small and medium-sized geomatics technology companies for the past six years. This, in turn, has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact. “We don’t discriminate against any industry or application as long as the content is innovative technology that is based in or uses geospatial platforms,” says Dr. Mohamed Abousalem, CEO of TECTERRA. In fact, geomatics applications are everywhere and used every day. Alberta is a major player in the area, representing 40 per cent of the geospatial market across Canada. Geomatics (also referred to as geospatial) technologies involve the collection, management, analysis, representation and display of geographically-referenced information. This can relate to anything from positioning and navigation to surveying
and mapping, remote sensing and photogrammetry to spatial data management. Application is vast and geomatics technologies are used in such areas as oil and gas, agriculture, environmental protection and management, forestry, land use planning, wildlife management, location-based services, utilities, and recreation. The Alberta government identified geomatics as a great area of opportunity to bring technology and innovation to the resource sectors in 2009. Alongside the University of Calgary, the government built on the idea of investment in innovation and put forth $21.6 million to get TECTERRA off the ground. As the centre gained momentum, it attracted the attention of the federal government, which contributed another $11.685 million to support the initiative for five years and broaden its scope across Canada. “It moved forward to the concept of TECTERRA being a stand-alone, independent entity catering to the industry at large,” says Abousalem. TECTERRA set out to invest in the development of innovative geomatics technologies through company-led product development projects, and applied research projects at post-secondary institutions. It was created with Abousalem at the helm to ensure it maintained an industry focus and pace, as well as a motivation to listen and cater to the needs of the industry. Since its inception,
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