Bowling Green, Ohio, June 10, 2002 -- Senecio Software, Inc. announced today the receipt of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Small Business Innovation Research award to extend its research into the use of satellite remote sensing for purposes of automating the estimation of housing and population counts. The Phase I award for $100,000 was made to the project entitled, Enhancing Digital Elevation Models for Population Research.

"We are extremely pleased to receive a second award for this research," said Dr. Jerry Wicks, President of Senecio Software and the project's principal investigator. "The possibility that population and housing estimations could be derived from satellite imagery makes for fascinating research. Many of my colleagues in the Population Association of America, for example, are interested in this work since the results would, for the first time, provide demographers, city planners, governmental agencies, and marketers with nearly up-to-the-minute, empirically-based population estimates."

Dr. Robert Vincent, whose remote sensing software, ATOM®, is being modified for inclusion into the project's Remote Estimates™ system, said, "We face considerable technical hurdles in the processing of satellite imagery at this resolution. Automating the detection and classification of objects in the urban landscape is challenging on several levels. We have a lot of work to do before we even begin to incorporate the demographic estimation techniques. If we can enhance ATOM® and develop the routines to classify the observed objects then we will be well on our way. Fortunately, the current award provides us with the resources to concentrate on exactly these challenges."

As currently planned, the final housing and population estimation system, called Remote Estimates™, will combine high-resolution satellite imagery, multi-spectral analysis, advanced pattern recognition routines, and demographic estimation techniques into an automated system initially covering most of North America. If the proposed system is successful, updated estimates for any user-defined area in the United States or Canada could be provided every 36 to 120 hours.

About Senecio Software

Founded in 1992, Senecio Software, Inc. is an Ohio-based corporation specializing in the design and production of advanced multi-tier, web-based systems used in the collection and analysis of social, health, market and demographic research information. Given the continuing growth in Internet-based commerce and online information processing, Senecio's corporate strategy has increasingly focused on providing customized systems to firms seeking integrated, global information gathering solutions. Senecio Software, Inc. can be reached by telephone (419-352-4371), fax (419-354-7512), e-mail (info@senecio.com) or the world wide web (www.senecio.com).