Longmont, Colo., May 2, 2007 – DigitalGlobe®, the leading content provider of the world’s highest-resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products, today announced a partnership with the Indonesian Directorate of Property Tax (PBB) and Ministry of Finance. DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite imagery will facilitate visual identification of taxable land, to help the Indonesian government properly classify and categorize property. The partnership highlights DigitalGlobe’s role as a versatile business solution in both the public and private sector.
The Indonesian government will acquire imagery from DigitalGlobe that will serve as a base map for the PBB’s property tax surveys. "DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird imagery provides a practical solution for the challenges we face in our property tax appraisals,” said Agung Budibowo, head of subdirectorate of the Indonesian Tax Directorate General. "Access to the imagery will vastly improve tax collection by allowing us to correctly assess the appropriate tax rate on properties that are difficult to survey using traditional land-based methods.”
In addition to its work in Indonesia, DigitalGlobe assists governments and businesses around the world in leveraging the benefits of satellite and aerial imagery in their projects and decision-making process.
"The Indonesian government has a responsibility to fairly evaluate land value, something that can be tremendously difficult to accomplish in isolated, rural areas using traditional surveying methods,” said Marc Tremblay, vice president and general manager of DigitalGlobe’s commercial business unit. "By using remote sensing data from DigitalGlobe’s satellite, the Indonesian government is able to get an accurate measurement of property boundaries and land characteristics, leading to a fair and equitable tax assessment.”
DigitalGlobe’s award-winning products help governments, business executives and mobile workers make better decisions by offering technologies that easily incorporate real life visual context into Web services, location-based services, hand-held devices and daily business workflow. DigitalGlobe provides a variety of best-in-class satellite, aerial and Web-based imagery products to power applications ranging from oil and gas exploration, asset management and civilian government projects, to free services such as Google Earth and Zillow.com that help consumers better navigate and interact with the Web. DigitalGlobe is the only imagery provider to offer an end-to-end system for accessing, understanding, integrating and leveraging all types of high-quality digital imagery to bring clarity to the decision-making process for individuals and some of the world’s leading organizations, including National Geographic, Ask.com, Marathon Oil and The US Environmental Protection Agency.
About DigitalGlobe
Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe (www.digitalglobe.com) is the clear leader in the global commercial Earth imagery and geospatial information market. The company’s technical superiority and innovation, unparalleled commitment to customer service, extensive business partner network and open systems philosophy make DigitalGlobe the preferred supplier of imagery products to government and commercial markets. DigitalGlobe is the only geospatial content provider to take an end-to-end approach to geospatial imagery, from acquiring proprietary high-resolution images through a leading- edge satellite and aerial network, to integrating and distributing that data through GlobeXplorer, a proprietary Web-based search and retrieval system that makes it easy to find, purchase and download global imagery. DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite is the world’s highest resolution commercial imaging system. The company’s next-generation WorldView 1 satellite is scheduled to launch in mid-2007, and its WorldView 2 satellite is anticipated to launch in late 2008. The company’s updated and growing ImageLibrary contains over three hundred million square kilometers of satellite and aerial imagery suited to countless applications for people who map, view, navigate and study the earth.