Who we are
Small but mighty.
We started as a family operation in 1993 and are now a mature and experienced company with more than 300 satisfied clients.
Incorporated in Kansas more than 30 years ago, Spatial Data Research has served local government and private sector clients by building detailed GIS databases for E911, public safety, and a variety of other needs including transportation planning and utility-asset management.
As an early innovator in using GPS technologies in GIS, SDR first incorporated GPS field verification in 1995 and has continued using and improving this technology in its many GIS projects.
Susan Cunningham
President
A founding member of the company, Susan participates in nearly every facet of operations including business development, software planning and in E911 consulting and technical production. Prior to leading SDR as president, Susan worked as project manager and 911 consultant on more than 100 municipal, county and state E911 projects and served as SDR’s E911/GIS consultant to the State of New Mexico.
Susan holds a BA, a BJ and an MA from the University of Missouri, Columbia. She is a member of NENA and APCO and is a frequent attendee and presenter at E911, Addressing and GIS seminars and trainings. Susan helps promote SDR’s philosophy of assuring our clients’ continued success by involving them in our projects and educating them on the tools and processes we use to build the data and implement solutions.
She has also designed many of SDR’s training tools and helped design and implement SDR’s web training program which offers on-demand and scheduled webinar trainings to clients and interested parties.
Penny Knight
Vice President
Penny leads SDR’s Sales and Marketing efforts nationally, with a focus on educating Public Safety agencies on how GIS solutions will improve their data for location and routing in a NG911 world.
Penny began her career with SDR in 2018 as HR Director and worked closely with our sales and marketing efforts, serving as co-Commercial Partner’s Representative for the Missouri MSPCC conference. Her efforts helped grow the conference, encourage both vendor and 911 community participation and establish a better working relationship between the 911 community and the commercial partners serving them. She became Director of Sales & Marketing in 2022.
In March of 2022, she was appointed Commercial Liaison on the MOAPCO Board and joined forces with DataMark to sponsor APCO’s Summer Summit in Sikeston Missouri. She also serves as Commercial Advisor on the MPSCC board.
We believe we are successful only when the clients we serve are successful.
Foremost, we strive to always make SDR and its resources accessible to our clients.