MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. was awarded a contract by the government of Ontario to provide an information solution covering large portions of Canada, the company announced April 13.

Under the deal, awarded through a broad public sector partnership coordinated by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources — Land Information Ontario project, MacDonald Dettwiler will delivery data that includes high-resolution satellite imagery captured by Digitalglobe‘s Quickbird satellite covering of Eastern, Central and selected areas of Northern Canada.

The information extracted from the images will be used for applications such as source-water protection, conservation, land cover classification and detection of changes in the environment. The solution will also support emergency planning.

The initial work is valued at over Canadian $1.9 million ($1.7 million).