A group of volunteer first-responders to the Sept. 11 disaster who created virtual models of the World Trade Center and the resulting debris pile have won a three-year, $2-million grant to enhance their techniques for large-scale facility modeling and emergency response.
Brainstorm Technology LLC, New York City, won the grant Oct. 1 from the National Institute of Standards and Technologys Advanced Technology Program. The purpose is to help the company develop software to vastly reduce the time it takes to refine accurate, three-dimensional models of buildings and large-scale environments from the blizzards of electronic data generated by laser scanners and other sources.