October 09, 2012 -- Aerial survey specialist Getmapping, in partnership with Survplans and Geomatica, has opened a new office in Nairobi, Kenya, to increase its presence in East Africa. The office will support the activities of GAP (Geospatial Aerial Partnership) - a joint venture between South African companies Geosense (part of the Getmapping Group) and Geomatica and will operate in partnership with Survplans, a leading provider of ground survey services across Kenya and East Africa.  

The Nairobi office will support a full range of data capture, processing and analytical services. As well as large scale LiDAR and aerial photography, the partnership specialises in corridor mapping for power and civil engineering projects, together with asset survey services for mining. It is planned to augment these survey and post processing activities with data hosting and web based GIS software soon.

GAP operates a number of large format survey cameras, including the A3 system from Visionmap which provides rapid capture and processing capabilities. The  A3 has already been used on a range of projects in Africa including a high resolution (6.25cm) survey of the entire City of Cape Town. GAP provides a wide range of aerial survey services across Southern Africa from its offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town. 

“By establishing an office in Nairobi, we are making a long term commitment to operate in the region rather than just undertaking occasional projects” said Matt Murphy, Managing Director of Geosense. “GAP has established a reputation for providing high quality survey services across Southern Africa over the last few years, and we now want to provide these services to the East African market as well.”

“This new partnership will provide clients in the region with a complete service for both ground and aerial surveys” said Ken Ndede, Managing Director of Survplans. “East Africa is growing rapidly and we aim to support this development by providing a strong, technically robust, local presence in the region.”