Visual Learning Systems and American Forests Form Strategic Partnership

MISSOULA, Montana – Visual Learning Systems, Inc. (VLS) is pleased to
announce its partnership with American Forests. American Forests will
promote VLS’s revolutionary feature-extraction and image classification
product, Feature Analyst, and in turn VLS will promote American Forests’
complimentary product, CITYgreen. The two organizations finalized a
business partner relationship through 2003.

VLS provides innovative machine learning solutions to the GIS market space,
the most recent of which is Feature Analystä. Named Most Innovative
Solution by ESRI, Feature Analyst extracts user specified features from
satellite and aerial imagery, converting these features into a format
suitable for GIS applications such as mapping and planning.

American Forests is a world leader in planting trees for environmental
restoration, a pioneer in the science and practice of urban forestry, and a
primary communicator of the benefits of trees and forests. Founded in 1875,
it is the nation’s oldest nonprofit citizens’ conservation organization.
American Forests’ CITYgreen software provides individuals, local
organizations, and agencies with a powerful but affordable and user-friendly
way to evaluate growth, development and land-use strategies. “Up to now,
the bottleneck in using CITYgreen effectively was obtaining the “green
layer” data for a city. With the advent of Feature Analyst, obtaining this
layer is now trivial,” states Mike Lehman of American Forests.

Feature Analyst is able to extract trees, grass, shrubs, and any other
vegetation quickly and accurately from satellite and aerial imagery, thus
allowing analysts the ability to inventory the green layer in their
municipalities. Projects such as extracting pervious (water permeable
surfaces such as dirt and vegetation) and impervious (non-water-permeable
surfaces such as streets and buildings) were once painstaking and
time-consuming processes. Feature Analyst can now perform these types of
extractions in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.

“This partnership is a great example of a win-win situation,” states VLS COO
Stuart Blundell. “The combination of Feature Analyst and CITYgreen software
provides a complete solution for mapping, managing, and studying the green
layer in America’s cities. The real benefactors of this business
partnership are the city, state and local governments who finally have a
viable solution for urban planning.”

Evaluation copies of Feature Analyst are available @ http://www.featureanalyst.com
<http://www.featureanalyst.com>
Evaluation copies of CITYgreen software can be downloaded @
http://www.americanforests.org <http://www.americanforests.org>

Visual Learning Systems Inc
Box 8226
Missoula MT 59807
406.829.1384
http://www.featureanalyst.com
[email protected]