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Intelligence Integrator Robert Cardillo Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration
Commercial Remote Sensing O Border Surveillance Satellite Imagery O Military GIS
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July/August 2012 Volume 10, Issue 5
ANALYSIS CENTER A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in the hands of an expert analyst who can provide context and insight, it can be worth infinitely more. Using direct access to DigitalGlobe’s satellite constellation, combined with the ability to exploit a vast and ever growing archive of global on-demand data, DigitalGlobe’s Analysis Center experts help you see the full picture. Visit us in booth #1901 at Esri to learn more about our Analysis Center.
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Geospatial Intelligence Forum
July/August 2012 Volume 10 • Issue 5
Features
Cover / Q&A Satellite Imagery Reaches Further for the Future Commercial remote sensing providers are developing new products and alliances to expand their security-related offerings in defense, intelligence gathering and homeland security. By Karen E. Thuermer
6
From Imagery to Information The U.S.-based commercial remote sensing industry must widen its focus from supplying satellite imagery to providing GEOINT information as a service, according to participants in a recent industry panel. By Harrison Donnelly
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17 Robert Cardillo Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration
Above the Border Line In the ongoing struggle to secure the U.S. border, homeland security officials are exploring ways to use wide area aerial surveillance, but face a number of significant technological challenges. By Peter Buxbaum
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Departments 2 Editor’s Perspective 4 Program Notes/People
Framework for Synergy New software enhancements enable military users to build integrated geospatial enterprises that are geared to the needs of distinct operations. By Cheryl Gerber
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12 Intel Update 14 Industry Raster 26 Homeland Vector 27 Calendar, Directory
Industry Interview
28 Richard M. Cobb President and Chief Executive Officer TerraGo Technologies
Geospatial Intelligence Forum Volume 10, Issue 5 • July/August 2012
The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community Editorial Managing Editor Harrison Donnelly harrisond@kmimediagroup.com Online Editorial Manager Laura Davis laurad@kmimediagroup.com Copy Editor Laural Hobbes lauralh@kmimediagroup.com Correspondents Peter A. Buxbaum • Cheryl Gerber Karen E. Thuermer • William Murray
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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE Some journalists may disagree, but it seems clear that official concern over leaks to the news media of sensitive intelligence information has reached a tipping point. The recent release of several stories about intelligence operations has spurred widespread calls for a tougher approach to protecting secrets. A significant step in that direction was taken recently by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who issued a policy aimed at better guarding sensitive information and deterring potential leakers within the intelligence community. Harrison Donnelly The new standard directs the seven intelligence agencies that use Editor counterintelligence (CI) polygraphs to include a question about unauthorized disclosures. In addition, Clapper directed that the intelligence community inspector general take over certain leak investigations when the Department of Justice has declined prosecution, thus ensuring that inquiries into the case are not closed prematurely. That’s fair enough. But Clapper’s most important action to safeguard secrets may have come a few weeks earlier with the signing of a directive, subsequently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, that lays out the framework for the protection of national intelligence, including CI. Clapper has made CI an important priority as DNI, including the topic as one of the 17 national intelligence manager offices created to focus on specific areas. The recent directive had reportedly been under development since well before the latest round of leaks. The focus of the directive is to achieve better coordination between counterintelligence, defined as activities against foreign or terrorist espionage, and security, which encompasses a wide range of operational, personnel, IT and other rules for protecting information. “Together, CI and security provide greater protection for national intelligence than either function operating alone,” the directive states. The policy also directs that all personnel with access to national intelligence “be continually evaluated and monitored”—a formidable challenge, observers noted, given the more than 1 million government employees and contractors who have security clearance.
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Put GEOINT in the hands of those who rely on it most
Today’s warfighter is the most sophisticated sensor in the world. But he can’t be expected to be a GIS expert. TerraGo® Technologies geospatial collaboration software and GeoPDF® maps and imagery are among the most widely adopted COTS solutions to produce, access, update and share geospatial information with anyone, anywhere. From virtually any mobile device, warfighters can access interactive, compact, portable and secure GeoPDF maps and imagery and easily make georeferenced updates using notes, audio, video, Web services or other information in connected or offline environments. When armed with the most up-to-date GEOINT, warfighters can collaborate peer-to-peer in the field or with Command to produce more relevant, current products that enable better decision making.
See TerraGo at Esri International User Conference booth 617 and at its Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting at 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, July 25 in room 16A. Download the new v.6 Publisher for ArcGIS trial software and the no-cost TerraGo Toolbar today at www.terragotech.com/products/terrago-publisher-arcgis.
PROGRAM NOTES
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NGA Sets Its Course for the Years Ahead The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has released a strategy document laying out the path over the next few years for achieving Director Letitia A. Long’s vision of providing on-demand access to GEOINT knowledge and broadening and deepening the agency’s analytic expertise. The recently released report, covering 2013-2017, lays out seven strategic objectives embodying the agency’s promise to users to “put the power of GEOINT in your hands.” The report also charts the overall landscape in which NGA will be operating in the future, in particular an austere fiscal environment in which the agency will have “to make difficult choices about current and proposed GEOINT capabilities across the National System for Geospatial Intelligence.” “We will transition from a product producer to a content and services provider,” the report adds. The report identifies the following strategic objectives, along with ways to achieve them: • Content: The agency should work to make GEOINT data accessible to the whole range of customers, including
making information usable in multiple security domains, while also developing and implementing community standards for content creation, sharing and storage. • Open IT Environment: To foster information sharing, NGA will create a resilient data framework and efficient and effective enterprise network. In addition, the agency will leverage and deploy collection and processing capabilities promoting the use of both traditional and non-traditional sources of information, such as human geography and social media. • Analytic Capabilities: Seeking to ensure that the value of GEOINT is increased to better address key intelligence issues, NGA plans to provide a range of new anticipatory analytic products, improve analyst training and develop new sources of geospatial data, including evolving “analytical tradecrafts that promote the use of non-literal data.” • Customer Service: Among the goals in this area are developing new capabilities based on user needs,
offering different levels of service that include customer self-service, and improving online GEOINT production. • Workforce: To ensure that it continues to have an agile, expert and diverse workforce, NGA will establish responsive teams that collectively respond to emerging mission demands, while rewarding “those who take balanced risks in furtherance of NGA’s mission.” • Workplace: Building on the success of its recently opened headquarters facility in Northern Virginia, the agency is committed to creating a secure workplace that uses innovative methods to promote collaboration and productivity. Another goal is to strengthen counterintelligence programs and information assurance policies. • Corporate and Functional Management: Key steps in this area will include instituting streamlined business practices, supporting research and development, improving performance metrics and advancing functional management efforts to unify the GEOINT community.
PEOPLE CACI International has announced that Daniel D. Allen, who currently serves as the company’s president of U.S. operations, has been appointed president and chief executive officer, replacing Paul M. Cofoni, who is retiring. John S. Mengucci will be named chief operating officer and president of U.S. operations.
4 | GIF 10.5
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
MotionDSP, which develops advanced real-time image processing software for video enhancement and analytics, has hired Brian Crowley as director, federal solutions. Prior to joining MotionDSP, Crowley led hardware, software, and services sales efforts throughout the Air Force and intelligence community for EMC and NetApp.
ManTech International has named H. Christopher Goodrich as senior vice president of its SIGINT Solutions & Cyber Operations Business Unit, where he will be responsible for growing cyber, intelligence and information technology areas for all Maryland operations. Overwatch, a strategic business of Textron
Skip (Arthur) Maselli
Systems Advanced Systems, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. company, has named Skip (Arthur) Maselli as
vice president of geospatial solutions, where he will be responsible for the overall management and growth of Overwatch’s geospatial products, services and solutions. Prior to joining Overwatch, Maselli was director, GEOINT strategy and mission architecture at Northrop Grumman Information Systems, Intelligence Systems Division.
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ENVI | E3De | IAS | Professional Services All rights reserved. E3De, ENVI and IDL are trademarks of Exelis, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Š2012, Exelis Visual Information Solutions, Inc.
Commercial remote sensing providers are developing
new products and alliances to expand their offerings.
By Karen E. Thuermer GIF Correspondent
have yielded solid support in Congress and the national security Recognizing that the government market for commercial community, from the highest ranks to warfighters in the field. imagery may be dimming somewhat, commercial remote sensing providers are developing new products and alliances to expand their security-related offerings in defense, intelligence Decision Support gathering and homeland security. In recent months, commercial remote sensing industry leadThe demand for the information and decision support intelers GeoEye, Astrium Geo-Information Services, DigitalGlobe ligence, which is derived from geospatial imagery, is on the rise. and other companies have unveiled new offerings geared to As a result, companies within this industry will need to differspecific needs, such as disaster response and entiate themselves in the marketplace by offering embassy protection, as well as providing analynew products and forming alliances with other sis and other services that add value to their core companies to branch out beyond just imagery. imagery products. “This means moving towards what we call The changes come at a time of considerable ‘image plus,’” said Greg Buckman, chief executive turmoil for the remote sensing industry, amid officer and head of sales for the GEO-Information expectations of funding restrictions in key initiadivision of Astrium Services-North America, an tives such as the National Geospatial-Intelligence aerospace subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Agency’s EnhancedView program. The outlook Defence and Space Company. “This means that was discussed at a recent industry panel entitled, the market demand is not only for satellite imag“The Future of U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing” ery, but also for efficient delivery of the imag(See story, page 10). ery, and the information that is derived from that Greg Buckman In addition, the business competition between imagery, to the customer to solve real problems.” the two U.S.-based companies, GeoEye and In addition to GeoEye’s ongoing support of DigitalGlobe, flared into an open takeover battle this spring, U.S. national security and disaster response needs, the comwith each company seeking to acquire the other in a still-unrepany continues to explore ways to exploit commercial Earth solved faceoff. imagery to create value-added products, for example recently On the other hand, the long-term prospects for the indusannouncing a partnership with GE Aviation to provide 3-D airtry seem strong, as the dazzling imagery being produced and port maps and highly detailed terrain and obstacle data for the its manifest-proven value for military and intelligence needs world’s largest commercial airports. 6 | GIF 10.5
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“We are also partnering with Geostellar, an innovative startImagery for Insight up company, that is helping transform the solar industry by providing mapping data and surface models for their breakGeoEye is continually looking for ways to leverage its Earth through analytics platform that can automatically determine imagery and geospatial expertise to deliver clear and deep how quickly a given property owner can recoup an investment insight. in solar energy,” said Tony Frazier, GeoEye senior vice presi“We are working closely with several key technology partdent of marketing. “We continue to see the use and application ners to make these offerings easily available to a wide variety of of commercial imagery expanding and are excited users,” Frazier said. about the industry’s future growth.” Prime examples are GeoEye’s partnerships The real key is to be able to develop sustainwith Esri, TerraGo and Google. “These demonable products and services that create value for strate the ways we are developing new solutions the both the government and commercial sectors. to deliver timely insight,” he said. Astrium’s Buckman contends that much of the In February, GeoEye announced that the comdecision support derived from geospatial imagpany would be developing a new crisis response ery will require specific vertical market expertise. imagery service with Esri. This service, which “For instance, the information acquired from will be released soon, will augment Esri’s current an image for the energy market is markedly disaster response capability with GeoEye’s ability different than information collected from the to task its satellite to collect high-resolution satTony Frazier same image for certain agricultural and minellite imagery after a crisis. ing requirements,” he said. “Partnering with “This joint project will provide first responders industry experts will be pivotal in providing the solution with improved access and insight on an ongoing basis,” Frazier stream to the relevant decision-makers in the various industry reported. marketplaces.” GeoEye’s work with TerraGo has increased the access and In addition, imagery that is valuable to the government cusapplication of Earth imagery. tomer for certain applications has a natural fit for commercial “First responders and frontline soldiers both need the abilindustry counterparts such as insurance, risk management and ity to share interactive geo-referenced imagery products that agriculture. are compact, portable and secure,” Frazier stated. GeoEye has also leveraged TerraGo’s GeoPDF format to deliver our 3-D airports and advanced geospatial predictive anaBroad Constellation lytics products. The company’s partnership with Google, unveiled late last For Astrium Geo-Information Services, a key element of year, is another example, Frazier noted. In that case, GeoEye their business strategy is based on the fact that no one type of augmented the Earth imagery available in Google Earth sensor or technology will solve all of the problems customers builder, which provided a much broader group of end-users with face, Buckman explained. access to premium commercial imagery. As a result, Astrium has assembled the broadest constella“Both governmental and commercial customers have bention of Earth observation satellites in orbit today with two midefited from the partnership as they now can access the most resolution electro optical satellites (SPOT 4 and 5), one very recent imagery available,” Frazier continued. high-resolution satellite (Pleiades 1A) and two synthetic aperture radar satellites (TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X). “For applications such as maritime domain awareness and Focus on Analysis others, it requires the precise programming and delivery of the imagery from all five satellites in order to drive true misA key element in GeoEye’s strategy has been the 2010 acquision support intelligence and decision support information. The sition of geospatial analysis specialist firm SPADAC, which has same is true for our Go Monitor program,” Buckman explained. led to the birth of GeoEye Analytics. “That’s the geospatial pre“With the full constellation of satellites, we are able to provide dictive analytics arm of our business that is rapidly growing,” near real-time information for on-the-ground operations, in he stated. any part of the world, every day of the year, regardless of cliGeoEye Analytics supports a broad range of national secumatic conditions.” rity, defense, homeland security, intelligence, law enforcement It is this information that is used to support customer and commercial customers, with over 90 percent of its analysts ground operations to their fullest extent, and would not be possupporting defense and intelligence missions for special operasible without the full satellite constellation. tions and the combatant commands. “We are also utilizing the unique capabilities of our radar “Analytics is another area where we are seeing increased satellites to collect ascending and descending stereo pairs that growth opportunities to provide critical insight,” Frazier added. will create the world’s first HRTI-3 global Digital Elevation In one recent mission, the GeoEye Analytics team provided Model (DEM),” Buckman continued. geospatial predictive analysis to better understand the patWorldDEM will provide a highly accurate, global DEM that tern of activity of internally displaced people in central Africa will be used for mission support, emergency response, tactical as a result of attacks by the terrorist group Lord’s Resistance planning, 3-D modeling, change detection and earth surface Army’s (LRA). The GeoEye Analytics team was able to create a movement among other things. statistical model or “signature” of LRA activity and identified www.GIF-kmi.com
GIF 10.5 | 7
the geospatial factors that contributed to most of the LRA’s movements. “These models help decision-makers to better understand and anticipate LRA attacks to support improved mission planning and resource allocation,” Frazier said. One powerful aspect of the work GeoEye has done in Central Africa analyzing the LRA’s movements, he emphasized, is that the analysis was all built on unclassified open source data. “This allows the data and analysis to be easily shared with coalition partners, which is increasingly important as the military works with partner nations and non-government organizations to address emerging threats around the globe,” he added. “We feel this is highly synergistic with our commercial imagery heritage and positions us to develop unique, valuable solutions for our government and commercial customers.” With the project launch of GeoEye-2 next year, GeoEye executives also expect that the company will be able to provide enhanced new capabilities and even faster delivery times. “Once launched, GeoEye-2 will be the world’s most advanced commercial imaging satellite in orbit, providing new image clarity at 0.34-cm resolution and greater maneuvering capability for quicker imagery collection,” Frazier said. GeoEye is also opening two new ground stations in Dongara, Australia and Mauritius, which are expected to be operational by this fall. The new ground stations will help shorten the delivery time for imagery collection over North and South America and meet the anticipated imagery volumes when GeoEye-2 goes operational, all of which will allow the company to provide crisis response imagery faster than ever.
3-D Reality DigitalGlobe, meanwhile, entered a cooperative agreement with German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the German company 3-D RealityMaps to provide a new range of high quality 3-D data products. 3-D RealityMaps will use data, captured on an ongoing basis by DigitalGlobe’s fleet of earth imaging satellites and processed into 3-D data by DLR, to create high-definition 3-D maps of large-scale natural landmarks and other major tourist destinations worldwide. “This is a perfect example of the new and innovative ways our customers are using DigitalGlobe imaging and insight to solve real-world challenges, deliver value to their customers, and fuel growth,” said John Oechsle, executive vice president of strategy and product at DigitalGlobe. To achieve an extreme level of detail accuracy, DLR experts used a new methodology for 3-D stereo (aerial) image processing, which was originally developed for international space program Mars Express. It was further refined at the DLR Center for Robotics and Mechatronics RMC in Oberpfaffenhofen and Berlin, and can now be applied to high resolution satellite images. Among the products and services offered by DigitalGlobe are accurate elevation models used for exploration, engineering, land management and simulation. Its new WorldView Elevation Suite provides a full perspective for a project area, bundling a highly accurate DEM derived from a WorldView-1 or WorldView-2 stereo pair with ortho-imagery and contours. 8 | GIF 10.5
In its work in this area, DigitalGlobe has partnered with PhotoSat Information Ltd. to produce elevation datasets over rural areas of low vegetation using an innovative geophysical technology similar to 3-D seismic processing that provides unprecedented accuracy from a satellite-based DEM. Another relatively new product is the Diplomatic Facility Support Package, developed by CACI and DigitalGlobe. This package assists the evacuation of citizens and others by providing web-based access to consistently refreshed imagery and feature information of diplomatic facilities and important local infrastructure, with the goal of identifying intermediate staging bases and other areas for subsequent safe haven operations. The view of current data layers enables collaboration via virtual whiteboards and incorporates annotation tools for multiple users to view, edit and share critical information.
Going Forward Currently, the GEO-Information division of Astrium Services has a total of 35 discrete products and services that either are available or will be available in the near future to both its government and commercial customer base. “Where it makes sense, we partner with the appropriate system integrator or other industry partner to assure we are providing the highest value in terms of both imagery and geospatial information to assure customer satisfaction and success,” Buckman remarked. The company is prepared to launch an additional satellite in 2012—Spot 6, which has a 1.5 m resolution with a 60 km swath. Another satellite that will come on line is Pleiades 1B, which is scheduled to launch later this year and offers a 50 cm resolution with a 20 km swath. “Having these two new satellites available, along with the planned Spot 7 satellite set to launch in 2013, makes partnering with the proper integrators and industry experts a must on the supply side of the business,” Buckman said. “By listening to the customer and the industry, we will work together to develop the truly valuable services that create a unique competitive advantage for those whom we do partner.” At the end of the day, Buckman observed, a pixel is a pixel to the naked eye. “It’s the information derived from the variety of sources we have available in the Astrium GEO-Information Services’ platform that creates true value in the decision support stream and continues to grow our business,” he concluded. Meanwhile, with the needs of the U.S. government and commercial customers constantly evolving, satellite imagery companies need to be anticipating what their customers need before they do. “In some cases, that can mean educating them about where we’ve seen success, or sharing other ways in which high resolution commercial imagery can support their mission objectives,” Frazier remarked. “Our customers are looking to make faster and better decisions,” he said. “We want to help them get there.” O
For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
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From Imagery to
Information
Commercial remote sensing panelists see transformation ahead for U.S.-based industry. By Harrison Donnelly GIF Editor
As it looks ahead to a new world forged by technological changes and fiscal restraints, the U.S.based commercial remote sensing (CRS) industry must widen its focus from supplying satellite imagery to providing GEOINT information as a service, according to participants in a recent industry panel. The event was part of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s 2012 GEOINT Community Week held in Northern Virginia in early June. The day-long CRS event included a panel entitled “Shaping the Future,” which featured Walter Scott, chief technical officer and executive vice president, DigitalGlobe; Brian O’Toole, chief technology officer, GeoEye; and William T. “Buzz” Roberts, of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s InnoVision Directorate. For O’Toole, “GEOINT as a service means it’s going to be there when you need it. “It’s critical as we think about where the industry is going to be in the next three to five years,” he continued. There will be a lot of sensors, both in space and airborne, a lot of compute power in the cloud, and global networks. But the question is: How does the industry need to transform to capitalize on that into the next generation of services? 10 | GIF 10.5
Walter Scott
Brian O’Toole
“We’re moving from a mapping-focused industry to a mission-critical information service. It’s a challenge to both government and industry to think about the enabling elements that need to be put into place to transform the industry from what it is today to GEOINT as a service,” O’Toole said. To achieve that vision, standards such as those developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium are good enablers, O’Toole went on, but they aren’t enough. Security architectures and other interoperability elements also are required to take all of this to the next level, he said. “It’s a shared responsibility for industry and government to look at what infrastructures need to be put in place to move the industry from a productbased mindset to GEOINT as a service that’s trusted and scalable on demand, and creates an ecosystem where there are a lot of providers who can contribute, and consumers who aren’t there today,” he said. But potential innovation in the industry is being limited by the current infrastructure, O’Toole argued. “The infrastructures aren’t focused on what we enjoy coming to work to do every day, which is working on geospatial problems, not cloud computing or network performance problems. There’s a lot that government www.GIF-kmi.com
and industry can do to move ahead, but until we do that, the opportunities to innovate will be limited.”
Data Trends Also looking at the trend from imagery to information, Scott considered the question of why the change was happening at the current time. “Why now? This has been talked about for years, so what’s new now to make it possible to use the vast quantity of data being collected from CRS to enable information?” he asked. For one thing, Scott said, “There is lots of data. When you have large quantities of data, and you throw that against real-world training sets, you can start making progress that was previously impractical. You don’t have to understand a problem if you can observe it enough. The beauty of the CRS constellations is that with the ability to collect the equivalent of 10 times the world’s land surface every year, that large quantity of data enables the development of algorithms that previously were impractical, because you can now start testing them on a planetary scale. Because the data is open and sharable, it’s possible for a community of developers to work on this data in ways that weren’t previously possible. “The second trend is having the right kind of data,” Scott continued. “Computers need all the help they can get in order to draw conclusions that people are able to, although that can require decades of training. Having the right kind of data is essential, and the CRS industry has enabled the creation of some of those key elements, such as high quality elevation data. There are a lot of things that are obvious when you have three dimensions that aren’t obvious when you have only two. “Another is time series—the ability to watch things happen over time. The ability to get daily coverage of large areas of the planet is important in being able to see patterns that you wouldn’t be able to see with a static image. The other thing that’s important about having frequent revisit is that the image that was highly accurate a year ago tells you very little about what’s happening right now,” Scott said. The developments are changing the use case for how we think about imagery, he suggested. “The classic use case for imagery is ‘show me there’—whether New York or Baghdad. It’s great if you know what’s important. But it’s not so great if you don’t. One of the things that Google did was to show you where to look. It indexed the Internet. CRS is in the position to do the same for the planet. Just as Google indexed the Internet, CRS can index the planet.”
Use and Applications Roberts argued that the unique operation of the CRS industry at the unclassified level, mated with partnerships with academia, www.GIF-kmi.com
industry, international and government, offers a perspective to move away from some of the limiting factors affecting the industry today. “When we move CRS data into a classified domain, we’ve had to integrate it within a structure that in some cases has been around for 30 years, instead of taking a look at our value proposition of delivering knowledge. We’ve made great strides from an R&D partnership standpoint in trying to build the prototype fabrics to showcase what’s possible. “We have not had a chance to regularly have a conversation about what are the capabilities that can be brought to bear and the information needs that are there,” Roberts said. “Instead, we’re getting to the point of asking what’s the most important information type that is out there, and making sure we buy that one entity. It’s not about a pound of one thing and a little of another.” Although the industry has grown over the past few decades by concentrating on content management technologies, Roberts suggested, what’s needed today is to talk today about use and applications. “There’s a lot that can be done, in revisiting both our technology investment and focus, to shift away from content management technologies. “There is a lot of untapped usability and markets, but if we continue to approach this in terms of coverage, we miss an opportunity,” he warned. “All of these things are going to demand a cohesive partnership. It takes the ability to set aside preconceived notions, glean that in perspective and look at decomposing our perspectives. Our ability, regardless of what happens in terms of collector data volumes, to get more value out of what we have today, and are projected to in the near term, is where we need to focus.” Asked by session moderator Kevin O’Connell, president and chief executive officer of Innovative Analytics and Training, about the next steps for industry and what is holding back the conversation about the future, Roberts offered this: “From a grassroots perspective, I see technologists, users, acquisition managers and those affected by decisions having those conversations as much as they can. It’s about being able to align a small set of organizations and individuals to start having that type of conversation. All parties need to express a willingness to go down that path, independent of the budget realities, and start having those discussions.” “We’re at the point in thinking about the next generation of GEOINT, but there is not enough discussion with the end-user community on the types of services they need,” O’Toole added. “We tend to be very internally focused as an industry about how we operate. But what do we need to do to better enable access to our services?” O For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
GIF 10.5 | 11
INTEL UPDATE Don’t expect a lot of movement on intelligence bills this year. The budgets for 2013 are currently being decided. Since an across-the-board cut is being considered, it’s a great time to educate people and agencies about your programs. Also, there are only a few months left in the 2012 federal “buying season.” Despite the budget cuts, federal, state and local governments combined are still buying over $1 trillion in goods and services each year. The budget path looks pretty rocky, so you should already have your 2013 business plan complete
By George Meyers
to include opportunities, contact plans and bid strategies. There is still much attention on cybersecurity. Much of the current intelligence-related issues pertain to the sharing of intelligence rather than its collection. The “cyber intelligence sharing and protection act” passed the House in April, but faces scrutiny in the Senate. President Obama has threatened to veto the bill if it passes the Senate. This bill intends to create a broad system of information sharing between the public and private sector, including the clarification of jurisdictional boundaries. O
George Meyers
gmeyers@cassidy.com
Bill #
Sponsor
Committee
Summary
H.R.5949
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
House Intelligence
FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012 To extend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 for five years.
H.R.5856
Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.)
House Appropriations
Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2013 Making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and for other purposes.
H.R.5802
Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.)
House Homeland Security
Port Security Equipment Improvement Act of 2012 Authorize use of port security grant funds for replacement of certain security equipment or facilities.
H.R.5803
Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.)
House Homeland Security
Port Security Boots on the Ground Act Amend title 46, United States Code, regarding port security grant funding for mandated security personnel, and for other purposes.
H.R.3523
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.)
House Intelligence
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.
H.R.2764
Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.)
House Committee on Homeland Security
WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act To establish weapons of mass destruction intelligence and information sharing functions and to require dissemination of information.
H.R.2096
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2012 Directs agencies participating in the National High-Performance Computing Program to prepare a cybersecurity strategic R&D plan. It also provides for the award of computer and network security research grants by the National Science Foundation.
George Meyers is senior vice president, Cassidy & Associates. 12 | GIF 10.5
www.GIF-kmi.com
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INDUSTRY RASTER Video Mapping System Offers High-Definition Recording The first high-definition (HD) Video Mapping System from Red Hen Systems combines Red Hen’s VMS technology with the smallest HD digital video recorder available today. Now users can record HD video from existing cameras in digital format. The VMS-HD instantly collects geo-tagged “path” HD video and audio from mobile platforms, such as aircraft, ground vehicles and marine vessels. The use of geospatial multimedia provides a powerful decision support tool by allowing users to instantly see “what” an asset/issue looked like “where” and “when” and easily search and retrieve this information—now in HD quality. Benefits include a competitive price, with HD and multimedia mapping functionality not
available from other companies; lightweight and portable for easy switching between aircraft and vehicles; and removable compact flash cards allow for archiving of original recording. Units may be ordered attached together or detached for flexible mounting applications.
New Satellite’s Imagery Now Available
Spatial Modeler Combines Processing, Vector Analysis The ERDAS Imagine next-generation spatial modeler provides a unique environment for the creation of solutions, combining ERDAS Imagine’s processing capabilities with the powerful vector analysis functionality of GeoMedia. ERDAS Imagine’s existing spatial modeling capabilities enable users to graphically create models of complex raster imagery processing workflows. Those with less domain knowledge can easily execute the models to obtain the same accurate, reliable results as more expert users. By reducing training time and helping automate complicated workflows, the ability to process imagery using automated spatial models has become a quintessential feature for many customers. The new spatial modeling framework expands this proven technology by providing full extensibility and true interoperability with other systems, enabling users to construct complete geoprocessing workflows. Users can also enhance existing solutions with the spatial modeling technology, allowing the addition of new types and operations and providing full extensibility. The new spatial modeling framework offers the option of creating models graphically using drag-anddrop components or through widely used Python scripting. Stephanie Deemer; stephanie.deemer@intergraph.com
Alliance Offers Tactical Data Link Solutions High resolution imagery from the Pléiades satellite is now available. The Astrium Services GEO-Information team recently announced that the imagery is now available to all users, notably through its Geostore portal. Astrium GEO-Information Services, which has already signed partnership agreements to supply Pléiades data with three leading players in the remotesensing industry—PASCO Corp. in Japan, Beijing Eastdawn Information Technology in China and MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) in Canada—is thus adding very-highresolution products for precision mapping and photo-interpretation to its portfolio, available to customers
14 | GIF 10.5
worldwide. Pléiades 1A, launched late last year, is the first in a constellation of twin Earth-imaging satellites, the second of which is set for launch in the coming months. This constellation offers exceptional performance for civil applications. Besides their 50-cm resolution after resampling, the Pléiades satellites’ agility enables them to image points out to 1,500 km either side of nadir. The two satellites will be phased to guarantee daily revisits to any point on the globe. Pléiades complements the SPOT satellites, the latest of which, SPOT 6, is set to be orbited in September this year. Jessi Dickl; dick@astrium-geo.com
Envitia and Tactical Communications Group (TCG) have entered a technology alliance that provides ongoing developments in next-generation mission critical systems worldwide. The partnership will continue to enable global defense organizations and the major defense contractors that serve these organizations to deliver standards-compliant, reliable, highly cost-effective tactical data link solutions. Envitia’s MapLink Pro SDK is the geospatial tactical display engine that powers TCG’s Battlefield Operations Support System and Ground Tactical Data Link System. LinkPRO is the implementing DLP in advanced military communications platforms. Using LinkPRO, major defense contractors and ground C2 systems providers can now easily embed high fidelity tactical data link capabilities into their systems and solutions and deliver standards-compliant TDL operational solutions to customers across the globe. Envitia has recently launched the next generation of MapLink Pro and introduced the most powerful and flexible version of the tool kit to date. MapLink Pro 7.0 64-bit pushes the envelope of visualization performance and continues to increase the usability and effectiveness of mapping applications. Robin Parrish; robin.parrish@envitia.com www.GIF-kmi.com
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Online Service Offers Expanded Collaboration Tools Esri has officially released ArcGIS Online for organizations, a service that offers expanded collaboration tools for cataloging, visualizing and sharing geospatial information. Early adopters of ArcGIS Online have already realized immediate benefits from extending their existing geographic information to reach more people across the enterprise and the public. The system supports better collaboration among teams and departments by allowing data to be easily integrated and shared. ArcGIS Online provides
Motion Imagery Suite Offers Modular PED Architecture 2d3 Incorporated, a provider of computer vision, image understanding, and full motion imagery exploitation technology, has released Catalina 2.0, its server-side motion imagery processing, exploitation and dissemination (PED) software suite. Catalina is available to the global motion imagery market. Catalina 2.0 marks the evolution of the Catalina product line, the first release in the product line to take full advantage of the full breadth of 2d3’s expanded Tungsten 3.1 SDK, scheduled for release later this summer. Catalina 2.0 goes well beyond the significant capabilities of version 1 with a brand-new, modular PED architecture, an interactive framework designed to ease the analysts’ workload. The framework exposes an array of processing methods during the ingest, capture, processing, exploitation and dissemination of motion imagery and related metadata, applicable to live or archived feeds or clips. It is entirely standards-compliant and is tailored for easy interoperability with existing and legacy motion imagery systems through an open SOAP API. Danny Proko; danny.proko@2d3sensing.com
www.GIF-kmi.com
on-demand, self-serve mapping and is closely integrated with Excel for making maps from spreadsheet data commonly accessible. ArcGIS Online provides new insights and opportunities for organizations to visualize their information spatially and quickly turn these visualizations into web services that can be shared anywhere. Organizations can mash up map services coming from a variety of sources and configure an array of readyto-use applications that can be embedded and run in browsers and on mobile devices.
Through the purchase of an annual subscription, an organization can obtain a private and secure instance in Esri’s cloud that’s scalable and ready to use. No additional hardware or software has to be purchased or installed. An organization has access to tools for mapping and location analytics, global basemaps and imagery, demographic information, a library of templates, and applications for browsers and mobile devices. Matthew DeMeritt; mdemeritt@esri.com
Backbone Enables Sharing of Ground System Intelligence The Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) Multi-Service Execution Team office has awarded Lockheed Martin a $2.6 million contract to upgrade the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), the software infrastructure that allows intelligence sharing between national agencies, coalition partners and military services. The DCGS integrates and draws intelligence data from various manned and unmanned ISR sensors and systems, then correlates that data into a coherent, easily interpreted picture for the end user. The DIB, with its open standards architecture and horizontal integration approach, is the software backbone that connects these previously stovepiped ISR systems to enable intelligence sharing through the DCGS family
of systems. For the latest version of the DIB, Lockheed Martin developed the Distributed Data Framework (DDF), an enhancement that uses free and open source software, which reduces integration and lifecycle costs for customers and provides U.S. partners with improved access to DCGS data without having to purchase expensive commercial off-the-shelf software licenses. Capabilities in this upgrade include increased security filtering capabilities, an enhanced data ingest framework, and orders of magnitude increases in ingest and query capability. The DDF also ushers in a new level of flexibility, modularity and standardization for integrating new data sources, data transformation services, and user interfaces into the DIB.
Acquisition Offers Solutions for Enhanced Awareness TerraGo Technologies, a provider of geospatial intelligence software solutions, has acquired the complementary software products and technologies of Geosemble Technologies. Geosemble’s flagship product, GeoXray automates the process of discovering, geospatially visualizing, monitoring and sharing relevant unstructured information from any source. The software mines and processes text from news, blogs and social media and analyzes data by place, time and topic. GeoXray decreases the amount of time analysts spend sifting
through the ever-growing amount of available data and produces more germane information specific to an area of interest. The solution, which is used by a number of intelligence agencies, frees analysts to spend more time on quality analysis and enables better collaboration with decision makers and field personnel. The new TerraGo suite of solutions will facilitate enhanced situational awareness and actionable intelligence. John Deaver; jdeaver@terragotech.com
GIF 10.5 | 15
Intelligence Integrator
Q& A
Strategically Aligning the IC to the Nation’s Highest Priorities Robert Cardillo Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration Robert Cardillo was sworn in as the first deputy director for intelligence integration, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in September 2010. This newly created position facilitates information sharing and collaboration through the integration of analysis and collection. Prior to this assignment, Cardillo served as the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA]. The deputy director is the second-ranking position at DIA and assists the director in both the daily operation and long-term planning for the organization. Cardillo also served as the agency’s deputy director for analysis. Cardillo began his career with DIA in 1983 as an imagery analyst. In May 2000, he was selected to the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service. Throughout his career, he has served in a variety of leadership positions within the intelligence community. In the summer of 2009, he served as the acting J2, a first for a civilian, in support of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Other key leadership positions have included director, analysis and production, and director, source operations and management, at the National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Cardillo earned a Bachelor of Arts in government from Cornell University in 1983 and a Master of Arts in national security studies from Georgetown University in 1988. Cardillo was interviewed by GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly. Q: What is your mission as deputy director of national intelligence for intelligence integration? A: The top-level description is pretty straightforward. The DNI created this position and asked me to stand up this office to deliver on his vision for the intelligence community. The touch-point, foundation and central idea that he brings to his job is integration. I am to create positions, mechanisms and governance processes to strategically align the IC against the nation’s highest priorities. That’s easy to say, but it gets more complicated after that. There are a number of sub-components to that, which I’ll list in no particular order. I have the responsibility for the presidential daily briefing [PDB], so on any given day I can be the last person to edit it before it is finalized for the president. If it’s my morning to brief, I’m the first person to engage with him about what he thought of what we wrote the night before. That is really job one. The second job I have is to be Director Clapper’s principal deputy on the National Security Staff [NSS]. The way the NSS runs is that there are principals’ committee meetings, where he is the principal, and many deputies committee [DC] meetings under that. When there is a DC meeting on Somalia, Yemen, North Korea, Iran or elsewhere, I’m always the invited participant, although I can delegate that www.GIF-kmi.com
function, since there are only so many hours in the day and there are some issues I don’t need to cover. That takes up a good chunk of my time, because three hour-and-a-half meetings in a given day add up. Third, within the ODNI structure, I manage the directorate called Intelligence Integration. It is the “homeroom” for a number of activities, including as I mentioned the PDB, where the staff works for me. I haven’t mentioned the National Intelligence Council [NIC], where the staff and chairman, Chris Kojm, work for me. Both the PDB and NIC existed before I got here. In addition, we created a new division, Mission Integration, which is largely the combination of what used to be the DDNI for Analysis and the DDNI for Collection. Going back to Director Clapper’s initial focus and mission mantra, integration, he didn’t want analysis and collection to be in two separate entities. Finally, we have the Integration Management Council, which is the homeroom for the new positions we have stood up, the national intelligence managers [NIMs]. The NIMs are built on the legacy, best practices and good results of the original mission managers as authorized under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. Congress legislated the first set of mission managers, of which four are designated: Korea, Iran, proliferation and terrorism. Over the years from passage of the law to September 2010, we added some, including Cuba/Venezuela for a period of time, and we were working on one for the Horn of Africa, Somalia and Yemen. They were designated by the prior DNI on a caseby-case basis. When DNI Clapper came in, he said he wanted to be about integration. He liked the model of mission managers, and wanted to extend it GIF 10.5 | 17
across all regions and functions. So I have a set of 17 NIMs who work for me, of which nine are regionally designated and eight are functional, including proliferation, cyber, threat finance, military, science and technology, economics, counterterrorism and counterintelligence. If you think about what Director Clapper wanted to do, which was to strategically align the IC with the highest priorities, those are his and my soldiers’. They have his authority to do a number of basic efforts. First, through interaction with our customers, whether the administration or the combatant commanders, the priority is to understand the need. What are the intelligence questions, the key enigmas and the policymakers’ priorities? Two is to understand what the IC is doing on those issues—if that’s the need, what are we doing across 17 different agencies? Three, where are the gaps between need and capability, and can we turn those gaps into opportunities by finding new ways to align the community? When you line up need and capability, you see the gaps. The other piece is to understand not the gaps that are specific to a problem set like Iran, but to the intelligence profession, such as information access, compartmentation or open source. We call those our enduring challenges. Each NIM is responsible for capturing and documenting those. I then bring the NIMs together, and we try to adjudicate across the 17 accounts and figure out what are our highest priority gaps, and which enduring challenges affect all of the missions that I need the community to work. Finally, let me also discuss the NIM structure. While all of the NIMs are different, because all of the accounts are different, they have four key components. There is the NIM, the manager in charge; a national intelligence officer, who is a member of the NIC and is the IC’s chief analyst; a national intelligence collection officer, whose job is to effect the best collection against the priorities in the NIM’s account; and a national counterintelligence officer who is looking at the counterintelligence risks and opportunities in the account. That was another theme that the director brought to the job when he came on board in August 2010—to make more visible and effective the entirety of our counterintelligence effort. Each NIM has a designated counterintelligence officer for his/her account. Q: How will you know if you are successful in achieving integrated intelligence? A: Another part of the DNI’s focus is output. This is a very complicated business—the nation spends a lot of money on its intelligence capabilities, with 16 agencies or departments, laws, statutes and directives. Let’s face it: Our adversaries don’t make it easy, and it’s a complicated job. Running that enterprise is very difficult, and figuring out how to connect everyone so they can communicate, and setting up processes and procedures so that we can share the same information base before we make assessments, are all necessary. But I wouldn’t answer the question with any of that—that we’re more internally effective, or we’ve cut the cycle time for production. You should expect me to do that—to be as efficient as possible. My definition of success is this: when the policymaker makes a more informed decision, the combatant commander makes a more confident troop deployment, or a specific operator engages his target. All of those are outputs, which leads to the reasonable question of how we are doing on outputs. I can’t give you a percentage increase in our outputs, or tell you that are customer satisfaction ratings have gone up. That is probably unrealistic, given the business we are in. We’re in the confidence business. If you ask me a question that is a 18 | GIF 10.5
knowable fact, we’ll find the source to answer you. But I usually don’t get that type of question, and I probably shouldn’t. I get more questions about a series of different events, and what they all mean. And after you’ve told me what it means, where is it going? Is that going to go into something that’s potentially a threat to the U.S. or U.S. interests, or is it moving to a place where there is an opportunity to engage diplomatically or militarily in a partnership? To answer those questions, I have to get inside someone’s head, not just what they are thinking about, but also how they think about us and how they react to external questions. What I try to do is to raise my customer’s confidence as high as I can at his or her point of decision. They have tough decisions to make. If you’re in the State Department, for example, you may be trying to decide whether to engage diplomatically with Burma. Have they made enough progress in reinstituting democratic governance? That’s a complicated question, and highly classified sources and methods are required to address it. All the decision-maker cares about is whether I’m convinced that we’re seeing a trend that is either positive or negative, and leads to a decision to engage diplomatically. At the point of decision, you want to make sure that there is the highest likelihood of having the effect you want. So while I can’t give you a pure measure of our progress, I do feel that because of the interactions that I have, we hit the mark more often than not. I know that’s the case. And now that we have the NIM positions, we’re affecting your output informally as much as formally. These are the phone calls and meetings that don’t get into production. These are the meetings that you can go to and diffuse or amplify, depending on the situation, a certain policy prescription. You save lots of people time and effort by doing that. As I tell my NIMs, you should be seeking to create conversations that are uncomfortable but necessary. What you want to do is to create some tension in the system, to get to the heart of the decision-maker’s problem. Back here, in our business, you should also be creating the critical conversations that are needed to find the best practice in this. I designate you the lead for the DNI; you clarify the lanes in the road, and people move out smartly. Although we’re sometimes accused of being the opposite, I tell the NIMs that they should be macro-managers. If you find yourself with a screwdriver or adjusting a small knob, back away. That’s not your job. Q: Why do you want to unify analysis and collection, given that they appear to be different functions, and what are some of the issues involved in doing so? A: Collection is a specific job, with a professional tradecraft, discipline and career field. I’ve been in that business, and I would never tell anyone that we all need to become homogenized, integrated officers. There is a role for those, but if we didn’t have collection specialists, we wouldn’t have anything to work on. If we didn’t have the analytic specialists, we wouldn’t have any products to turn in. So don’t take the mantra of integration to mean that everyone has to be cross-educated. In September 2010, when I had just joined, the director had pulled together a proposal for President Obama about his integration concept. It was my first time being in the same room as the president, and I remember when we got to the briefing slide that talked about bringing collection and analysis together. I thought we’d get through that slide pretty fast, but the president asked the same question you have: Aren’t those businesses unto themselves? It’s true, they are. But if you’re the customer, you shouldn’t have to worry about that. You have a question, www.GIF-kmi.com
not a collection question or an analysis question, and should only have to worry about communicating that to me. We’re under no illusion that we invented the idea just because we’ve labeled everything integration. Integration has existed since the beginning of this business. The director’s purpose was message— everyone should be thinking about output, regardless of their individual contribution. Some part of your day, you should be thinking about that. Now we have the NIMs, who are specifically charged with being the hub on the 16-spoke wheel that is the IC. I think of the NIMs as a way of creating an atmosphere and environment in which people can come together. Trust me, when the NIM pulls back the cover, he or she is going to see a lot of integration. If it’s working and the output is there, you should be doing nothing other than checking it every once in a while. You don’t need to start putting NIM labels on things and taking credit for good work. There are wonderful examples of integration across the community today, and they happened way before the ODNI stood up. Sometimes, I tell the NIMs that their job is to be the spotlight—you find good work that is humming along but isn’t well known. People aren’t aware of it, so they aren’t leveraging it or may be duplicating it unknowingly. So you introduce the two capabilities. It’s not all wine and roses, and sometimes they aren’t happy and tell the other person to stop. So the DNI has to tell people to get in line. He prefers the alternative, to use communication and to shine the light on something to enable the community to come together. Q: You have written about the importance of cultural change in the IC. Have you seen positive change in the past decade, and is there more to be done? A: I have, but I don’t know if we should take any credit for it. We’ve hired a lot of people recently whose experience is very different from my own. I like to think of myself as an integrated kind of person, but when I was hired in 1983, I was sent to a cubicle in the basement of a windowless building, where as an imagery analyst I focused only on the imagery on the film. It was a very isolated world. Compartmentation ruled, and “need to know” was the mantra. Even though you and I might have the same badge, we might have been working on different projects, so it was better to be safe than sorry, and not share. I stayed in Washington, and hardly even knew what a deployment was. This was the ‘80s, when the Soviet Union was the big, bad adversary and production was very deliberate. Contrast that with someone we hired in 2003. We were already in Afghanistan, and in or about to get into Iraq. You would have already had forward-deployed intelligence specialists, at least, if not collectors and analysts. They were there in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if not there, in Qatar or Bahrain, and if not there, back in Tampa, Fla., supporting CENTCOM. You got hired into a completely different business model. It was much better connected to the customer, and had much more direct interaction, like live theater as opposed to a movie. We now have had 10 years of that experience. When I was at DIA, beginning in 2006, more than 50 percent of my workforce had not been there on September 11, 2001. A quarter of the workforce had been deployed, and even if you hadn’t been deployed, the person in the next cubicle had, and they would come back with a different mentality. It shapes how you interact with your computer. When I was an analyst in 1983, I wondered whether anyone cared how many Soviet tanks I counted in the desert. But there was no one I could ask that question, so I just kept typing the answers into the computer. Now, when you 20 | GIF 10.5
come back from Afghanistan, you could see what happened to your intelligence product. You don’t have to go back to a job on Afghanistan, but could work on another region or proliferation. The mentality— that what I’m working on needs to be contributory to someone’s output—is hugely improved. And it’s going to get better, because the young people of today are going to get promoted into management positions, and they will have that experience. I moved through all that management experience, but I was weighed down by the Soviet Union. I’m not saying that everyone we have hired was very young, since we hired a lot of former military, contractors and academics. But all of them with that experience are going to be wonderful analysts and managers. In my generation, you were as good as the number of billets you had under you. If another person had 11 billets and I only had 10, he or she was 10 percent more valuable than me, so I had to figure out how to get one of their billets. Some of that still goes on today, but I like to think that the people who were forged with the mindset of output will cause more integration to occur. Q: Intelligence community CIOs are working on a plan to restructure the community’s information architecture. How can technology contribute to intelligence integration? A: You could have exquisite, connected, online IT, but if you had the wrong culture it wouldn’t help. So let’s build on having people with the right intentions and mindset. Today, they are inhibited by IT. I can go to a terminal to try to integrate across the IC, and be held back by email addresses, firewalls and classification levels. The IT is definitely holding us back today. It’s much better than in 1983, but it still is holding us back. The DNI knew early in his tenure that if he didn’t tackle that, along with everything else I’ve mentioned, we’d have an uneven output, with wonderful integration, personnel, mindsets and business processes, but that you couldn’t access through a network. Now he is serious about the push to the cloud, and is investing billions of dollars on this. He’s already counting on IT savings in the out-years, to accommodate some of the cuts. That’s not a new idea, but the reason I think we have a fighting chance on this is because of the budget cuts. I mentioned how the decade after 9/11 saw positive changes on culture. We had a lot of new money, and our budgets got larger. The negative of that is when your budget is getting larger, you’re not so interested in connecting with the next guy. Life is good; there’s more money and people, so I’ll integrate with you later. It’s not that way anymore. The budgets are capped, we’ve already taken some reductions, and who knows where the economy is going, or where the congressional budget debate will end up. That focuses everyone’s attention on efficiency. We know we can’t afford the exquisite NSA IT system, or the optimum CIA or DIA system. Everyone knows we have to find savings. So while no one wants budget cuts, the cuts have had a side benefit mentally, and have caused people to think and act differently. At the recent DoDIIS conference, I told attendees that I was counting on them to set the IT conditions for us to change those behaviors. If we fail at the IT piece of this, we will fail overall. Q: A widely noted recent photo shows you giving President Obama his daily intelligence briefing, with a mobile computing device in your hands. How is mobile technology changing how the IC does business? A: We’re still on the cusp. I’d describe what we are doing today as the equivalent of paving a cow path. We’re speeding up a pre-existing www.GIF-kmi.com
process. We know how to type things on pages or put pages in a binder for an executive to read. It’s easy to put that on a tablet, and instead of turning pages, they are clicking or touching the screen. It’s not really advancing very much. I believe that we have much to learn from education, the entertainment industry and medicine about what humans can get out of an interactive digital display that we haven’t yet figured out. As you can see from the photo, we have given a few such briefings to this president. But I would never take in a tablet to impress him with the graphics. Every time we’ve used one, there’s been a purpose, to simulate some scientific event or kinetic scenario, or to help him to think differently or challenge an assumption. We’re really at the beginning here, and I don’t think it’s something we need to figure out on our own. There are a lot of people thinking about how to make the best use of technology. We’re on the cusp of something here, and there’s more to be done in leveraging that technology. Q: With increased mobility come increased security challenges. Where do you draw the line between making information more accessible and protecting it? A: We’re going through that issue now. It’s now much easier for an adversary to get the totality of the U.S. intelligence community’s effort in one small device, so smart people are figuring out ways to mitigate the loss of that. And if lost, how do you mitigate further exposure? Today, we basically “kill” a tablet to use it, because we don’t want it
communicating or transmitting. That’s today, because we’re trying to figure out how to use the interface, but eventually we want it to communicate. We want it to communicate securely, encrypted and with confidence. My job is that when I tell you something at the secret or top secret level, I’m going to keep that, and so are you, because of our trust relationship. This is not without risk, and we need to be mindful about how we protect as we evolve. But I’d remind you that we’ve been dealing with that ever since we entered the computer age. As the director has said, you can put all the fixes, checks and monitors in the system you want, but the weak link was and will be the human. It comes down to doing good internal counterintelligence awareness, and having procedures for security review. Q: Is there anything else you would like to add? A: We think we’re on the right track, and making progress. But we’re sure we don’t have all the answers. I’ve always believed that an open marketplace is good for everyone. In the marketplace of ideas about how best to integrate our efforts in the IC to support customers doing their job better, we’d like to be challenged—challenged against the assumptions that we may have about what’s needed, as well as with innovations that are beyond my current bias. So I would invite input. We spend a lot of time on outreach, formally through the National Intelligence Council, as well as a partnership engagement effort here at ODNI led by Lieutenant General Flynn. We would welcome ideas and help on how to do this better. O
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GIF 10.5 | 21
Wide area aerial surveillance holds promise for border security, but providing meaningful access to imagery data will be a challenge.
In the ongoing struggle to secure the U.S. border, particularly that with Mexico, homeland security officials are exploring ways to use wide area aerial surveillance. As they do so, however, government and industry are facing a number of significant technological challenges. Besides the issues involved in collecting the real-time data, developers will also be faced with providing access to that data in a meaningful way, not only as far as monitoring the imagery in real time, but also in retrieving it for after-the-fact analysis. The interest in aerial surveillance comes as the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are putting together a new border monitoring program in the wake of the cancellation of the ill-fated Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet). CBP’s alternative, the Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT) program, will incorporate off-the-shelf technologies into a surveillance program to replace SBInet. The request for proposals (RFP) for IFT, which involves mounting radars and cameras on interlinked towers at key locations along the border, is now on the street. While IFT seeks to cover the border comprehensively from fixed locations, DHS also has another program, the Wide Area Aerial 22 | GIF 10.5
By Peter Buxbaum GIF Correspondent
Surveillance System (WAASS), which would concentrate surveillance assets at key locations as they are needed. DHS recently released an RFP for WAASS as well. Unlike IFT, WAASS, which is sponsored by DHS’s science and technology directorate, is not contemplated for deployment just yet. Instead, the department expects the chosen contractor to demonstrate an airborne WAASS capability in Arizona sometime later this year. “The emphasis of this program initiative is on technical performance in an operational environment,” says the RFP. “The current primary objective of WAASS is to provide persistent, long-term surveillance over urban and rural terrain.” “What we have seen is that DHS has been performing tests on all kinds of technologies and evaluating them for use along the border in various places,” said Chuck Willoughby, senior program manager at L-3 Integrated Optical Systems. “Certain locations along the border will have a lot more activity. DHS will want to monitor the border from different viewpoints to get the best look. That is done by a combination of sensors, including sensors mounted on towers and sensors carried by aerostats. There may be some areas where those systems won’t work so you www.GIF-kmi.com
will want to go with an airborne solution,” Willoughby observed.
Motion Imagery
to simultaneously monitor 15 100-meter by 100-meter areas of interest within the imaging area and to track all activities in and out of those areas of interest. The system is also expected to provide recorded video and tracking data, tools for visualization of the real-time and forensic imagery, and tools that georeference and track vehicles. DHS wants the system to simultaneously track and monitor 10 mid-size automobiles in near real time. The department is also interested in other tools such as automated tracking, automated moving vehicle detection, realtime and forensic compression, target identification, behavior analysis, and automated cross cueing with off-board sensors. For the purposes of the test flights, the department expects the system to conduct 10 four-hour flights over a consecutive five-day period.
Wide swaths of real estate, and the individuals, objects and activities to be found on it, can now be captured with wide area motion imagery (WAMI) sensors. These sensors, which include both electro-optical and infrared varieties for daytime and Rudi Ernst night operations, are essentially low-rate video with image formats measured in tens or hundreds of millions of pixels. These large formats make possible systems that don’t need to be tasked to specific targets. Rather, multiple users can find different targets in the field of view of the sensor. With efficient storage and retrieval solutions, it is possible to find things that may not have been originally expected. A platform such as a UAV may be flying Camera Innovations over an area for a period of several hours. Chuck Willoughby Analysts can use data captured by WAMI “Airborne sensors have been a topic sensors to determine what has changed— of interest for us for a while now,” said such as traffic and patterns in behavior—in areas of Willoughby. “Our sensor product line is typically turreted interest. with cameras that can cover reasonable areas but with not “There are two wavelength regimes, visible and infraa lot of resolution. The new camera technology has come red, which can give night and daytime coverage,” said forward recently to improve this situation and provide Willoughby. “Wide field of view cameras historically more resolution across much wider fields of view.” have not provided the highest resolution. Our comThe innovation that enables the performance of WAMI pany has been at the forefront of developing focal point sensors comes from focal plain technology. “A picture is arrays, which is the basis of large format, high resolutaken and an array of pixels looking at images from a teletion, wide-field-of-view cameras. We are trying to exploit scope or a camera lens is displayed,” said Willoughby. “Our that technology in this market to be able to provide sufsister division Cincinnati Electronics has developed 4,000ficient resolution to be able to track people across large by-4,000 pixel focal point arrays. That’s 16 million pixels coverage areas.” that can be applied to this problem. For infrared arrays The large volumes of data collected by WAMI sensors that is a big number. That is the technology innovation challenge users to effectively retrieve and exploit the most we are exploiting.” relevant of that data. “The focus of what we are doing is to The ability to chip out pieces of WAMI imagery enables enable the access to the data on the back end and the storoperators to track multiple targets within a single field of age piece,” said Rudi Ernst, president of Pixia, a provider of vision at the same time. For example, operators may be high-performance scalable data access solutions for a variobserving a vehicle of interest when suddenly the vehiety of high-volume data problems. cle’s occupants become aware they are being observed and “The first challenge is to send only the data that scatter in all directions. users want to address before sending all of the data to the “When you have parties of interest going in multiple ground. The second part is how to make use of archival directions at once and you are interested in all of them, data,” Ernst said. you need more than one eye to track all of them,” said The basic requirements of the system DHS is seekWilloughby. “The notion is to be able to detect and track ing are demanding. The system will have a near realall parties involved as they move from the central position time video downlink to a control room and to ruggedized and track them individually. You can chip out the videos mobile ground receivers. The wide-area imagery collected of each target and track them wherever they go within the by the aircraft must be displayed in the control room in field of view of the sensor.” near real-time, which the RFP defines as a total delay of A single camera, in other words, can now act as mulno more than 12 seconds. DHS expects an operational tiple versions of narrow-view, “soda straw” cameras. “It is, coverage of the wide area surveillance sensor of 10 square in effect, a force multiplier,” said Willoughby. kilometers. Transmission of large data sets is also a big challenge. DHS envisions that the system will work under dayThe capacity of the downlink may be limited and the time, low-light and night conditions, with the capability wide-area camera, together with data from other on-board www.GIF-kmi.com
GIF 10.5 | 23
sensors, may have to be piped down the same link. “There are ways to reduce the amount of data,” said Willoughby. “The most obvious one is data compression. But it is important not to lose data, particularly if you want to do some processing on the ground.” Then there is the question of how much of the data the operators really need. “They really want various pieces of that big picture,” said Willoughby. “You want to be able to find the relevant pieces and chip that out of the big picture and then stream out the relevant pieces.” Limiting volumes of data and providing greater levels of on-board processing will be the way of the future for wide-area motion imagery, Willoughby said. “You can some pull some of that processing on board and do it before transmitting. That will likely be the way it will be handled in the future.”
Huge Data Files Pixia’s focus is on managing huge datasets collected by sophisticated sensors, including airborne sensors. “Operations like these are being conducted worldwide and produce massive amounts of data that must be organized and made readily available globally,” said Ernst. Dissemination of these huge data files also presents a problem. Imagery is dense with data, and this raises the question of how this is to be transferring across busy networks. “Once you collect massive amounts of data, how do you disseminate it on existing
networks to a lot of concurrent users?” said Ernst. “If you can’t access the data what is the point of collecting it? We are focusing on the data access piece.” Pixia’s HiPER Stare product ingests individual sensor frames into logical containers and serves them up by way of a serviceoriented architecture. “A major benefit of containerizing these frames is the dramatic reduction in the quantity of individual files,” said Ernst. “The server retrieves any of the individual frames on disk at extremely high speeds, enabling not only many concurrent requests, but also complex queries requiring random access at the storage level. Only the desired view into the actual large frames is served up based on the user’s request, thereby greatly reducing the required bandwidth.” Pixia’s HiPER Look suite for geospatial imagery enables massive amounts of data to be served via service-oriented architecture interfaces to a very large number of concurrent users, while scaling from large enterprise systems to small portable systems. “HiPER Look ingests most standard file formats and mosaics them into single layers,” said Ernst. “Additional imagery can be updated or patched to each layer in real-time. The individual layers can be extremely large and can still be patched with new imagery very quickly.” Pixia allows data to be accessed at the object, rather than the file, level. That way, users are able to access the snippets of data that they need rather than having to wade through an entire WAMI image file. This, in turn, enables users to access data while the platform is still airborne. “Instead of the aircraft landing to transfer data and then an archive being searched,” said Ernst, “the aircraft is carrying a server in the sky so that live data as well as historical data can be searched.” Many of the use cases for WAASS involve after-the-fact forensics and pattern recognition. “Having access to historical data is very relevant,” said Ernst. “It is now mostly used for tactical mission overwatch, but there is forensic component, too. A user can query the system to show what a certain place looked like at this time every day for the last 60 days. “In certain cases sensors are flying for very long periods of time, for a day or multiple days. The challenge then is to access data from a few hours or a day ago. With this capability you can access that data. Otherwise you can wait many hours if not days until the data reaches the ground,” he added. Pixia participates in a program sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency called National System for Geospatial Intelligence Video Services (NVS), which provides access to wide-area imagery through standard HTTP interfaces. NVS allows users to access data from divergent WAMI sensors through a single interface. “Once a consumer of that data has built its software to that interface, it can access all WAMI sensors instead of having to write an interface to each sensor. Once implemented, the standard interface can access all servers whether from Pixia or someone else,” said Ernst. O
For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
24 | GIF 10.5
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Framework for Synergy Software enables military to build integrated geospatial
enterprises that are geared to the needs of distinct operations.
By Cheryl Gerber GIF Correspondent To support the growing synergy between military operations and intelligence functions, Esri has created an ArcGIS framework for the military to build integrated geospatial enterprises that are geared to the needs of distinct operations. The enterprises will provide information sharing across echelons and between dissimilar units. ArcGIS for the Military (AFM) contains subsets or communities of interest, such as intelligence operations, land operations or maritime operations. Each subset provides ArcGIS applications, data, maps, tools and workflows, accessed and shared via a central web portal within the operational context. The plan is to build out the standards-based frameworks with enterprises that can update continuously in near real time the needed operational information in forms that are appropriate to the specific mission and computing environment. The geospatial enterprise will connect ISR and C2 by integrating sensor data feeds from ISR and sharing information from C2 planning in a convergence of operations/intelligence or ISR/C2 to bring actionable intelligence to the warfighter in a timely manner. The goal of the new structure is to establish the first steps on the road to resolving the issues of reduced situational awareness that result from isolated applications, lack of data standards or an inability to transfer and share actionable intelligence in a timely manner on the battlefield. “We are delivering ArcGIS in a way that is easier and more intuitive for particular communities. Air operations and National Guard operations are coming next,” said Simon Warwick, ESRI CJMTK program manager. The Commercial Joint Mapping Toolkit program, run by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, has provided the baseline technology for building geospatially enabled C2 systems in the Department of Defense for the past decade. “As we built this ecosystem, we made sure the multiple parts all fit together to support the geospatial enterprise concept and vision,” he said.
Mobile Integration Much of the enhanced functionality in ArcGIS for the Military arrived with the June release of ArcGIS 10.1. The version introduces a long list of new capabilities in mapping, data management, geo-processing tools, mobile GIS, data interoperability and military-specific feature templates. ArcGIS 10.1 provides increased mobile and web application integration. The server framework in this version can run natively on 64-bit Windows and Linux operating systems. It provides expanded support for cloud computing with full certification on VMware for virtualization and the ability to deploy on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Windows or Linux. This release of the Portal for ArcGIS ushers in a simpler, more intuitive platform for the discovery, use, collaboration and dissemination of data, maps and applications. In addition, a suite of software developer kits (SDK) called ArcGIS Runtime, along with web APIs, supports the development www.GIF-kmi.com
of lightweight, customized web and mobile applications for devices running Windows or Linux or embedded in handheld devices running Android, iOS and Windows Mobile/Phone platforms. Examples include field operators using applications on mobile devices to collect information about local infrastructure, enemy disposition or key terrain. Users would then upload the information to the server for consumption through the portal. The ArcGIS 10.1 basemaps were built to work specifically with data available to the defense and intelligence communities. An expanded online template gallery contains workflows that assist in loading raw data from mapping agencies into multi-scale basemaps for use with the appropriate computing environments. For ArcGIS-Land Operations, there are operationally relevant tools such as situation awareness, position analysis, military aspects of terrain, vehicle checkpoint and patrol data capture templates. The operations server can be deployed on ruggedized equipment in the field, connected to secure networks. In the case of land operations, brigade staff interacts with the system via the portal’s weblike interface. The land operations server is designed for mission and battle command at the brigade and below levels while the maritime operations server is designed for operations and planning at the carrier strike group level. ArcGIS for Intelligence Operations provides many apps, data and maps, including tools to manage the deluge of information coming from an ever-growing number of sources and sensor platforms. For instance, the imagery catalog is a lightweight web application for searching only for the most current and useful imagery from large collections. Using the ArcGIS Runtime SDK, geo-intelligence developers can create customized applications that capture the most valuable knowledge, with the ability to clip out only the data and map section needed for high resolution of an immediate area of operation. This prepares data for mobile users with relatively small storage capacity to provide them with improved situational awareness. A helicopter landing zone template can capture the tradecraft from senior analysts, standardize it across brigades and make it accessible through the portal for use in particular areas of operation. Using Silverlight, a web browser plug-in that enables interactive media, users can create a patrol planning tool to plan routes by simply drawing on a map. They can extend the tool information to C2 to prosecute the mission. The intelligence analysis maps and templates provide a framework and specialized tools for performing analysis to support planning and operations and to assist in creating effective intelligence reporting products. O
For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
GIF 10.5 | 25
HOMELAND VECTOR
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Oblique Imagery Prepared for London Games On the eve of the 2012 Summer Olympics, Pictometry has completed capturing more than 200 square kilometers of high-resolution, aerial oblique imagery over central London. The resulting image database—unmatched in its accuracy, detail and compatibility with 2-D and 3-D applications—is now available for license by governments and businesses preparing for the security and other challenges posed by the world’s largest sporting event. The data-rich images and accompanying analytic systems deliver unique potential for use by defense, intelligence and security agencies, mass media and sports outlets, and advertising and promotional organizations. Unlike traditional orthogonal—or top down—aerial and satellite capture, Pictometry’s high-resolution metric oblique images show each side of every structure, roadway and other outdoor objects across central London, with views from all four cardinal directions. Since each pixel is individually geo-referenced, users can quickly and precisely measure geographic position, height, distance and altitude directly on the images in real time, even without GIS expertise. In addition, the images are flexible to enable seamless integration with advanced applications and workflows.
Enforcement Tools to Add Geographic Crime Analysis Azavea and the Omega Group, two developers of GIS software for public safety, have announced a partnership to integrate HunchLab’s early warning system and predictive analytics into the CrimeView suite of law enforcement tools. The Omega Group has significant experience developing public safety applications, with a portfolio of crime analysis tools for the law enforcement market, including CrimeView Desktop, CrimeView Dashboard and CrimeView NearMe Mobile applications. Azavea has developed HunchLab, a web-based geographic crime analysis, risk forecasting and early warning system that brings leading forecasting research from world-renowned criminologists and statisticians to the web and into the hands of law enforcement personnel. As municipal budgets get cut, law enforcement agencies face the increased responsibility of improving public safety with fewer resources, doing more with less. Prioritizing the deployment of limited resources is challenging. Traditional retrospective hot spot mapping, while useful, is not able to forecast future trends and simply assumes that what has happened will likely occur again. The Azavea-Omega Group partnership is aimed at making sophisticated analytical and risk forecasting features available. 26 | GIF 10.5
Census Bureau Map Application Adds Emergency Data New features in the Census Bureau’s OnTheMap application improve access to workforce and demographic statistics for emergency preparedness, response and recovery activities. The application automatically incorporates realtime data updates from the National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center, Department of Interior, Department of Agriculture, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). New features include: addition of FEMA disaster declaration areas and National Weather Service
snowfall probability forecasts; capture and archiving of all daily National Hurricane Center storm updates; addition of 2010 Census demographic and housing characteristics, and 2010 jobs and worker statistics; reports with charting and thematic map overlays showing population and worker origin and destination distributions; new tool for exporting event areas to use in OnTheMap or other GIS applications; and improved user interface speed and navigability, event searching and help documentation.
Police Solution Leverages GIS-Focused Technologies BAIR Analytics and Esri have partnered to integrate Esri’s powerful GIS technologies into BAIR’s intelligence-led policing solutions, ATACRAIDS and Raidsonline.com. ATACRAIDS is a law-enforcement-only solution that enables information sharing, facilitates mapping and analysis with the outcome of providing commanders and officers the ability to develop better informed strategies to fight crime. Raidsonline.com displays agency defined crime information via an interactive national crime mapping solution that includes tips and an alerting system. BAIR Analytics provides the site as a free service to law enforcement and the public. Recently, BAIR re-programmed the applications to leverage Esri’s powerful GIS-focused technologies. Esri enables BAIR to make crime information and analysis available to users through a
unique and interactive GIS experience. Using this new capability, ATACRAIDS and Raidsonline.com can now display useful demographic information spatially so law enforcement and the public can look at socioeconomic factors as they relate to crime.
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The advertisers index is provided as a service to our readers. KMI cannot be held responsible for discrepancies due to last-minute changes or alterations.
GIF RESOURCE CENTER
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Advertisers Index American Military University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 www.amuonline.com/geospatial Astrium-Geo Information Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 www.geostore.com BAE Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 www.baesystems.com/gxp DigitalGlobe Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2 www.digitalglobe.com/fullpicture Esri. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3 www.esri.com/gif
Exelis Visual Information Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 www.exelisvis.com General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . C4 www.gd-ais.com/sensors-to-knowledge IHS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 www.ihs.com/beyondmaps MDA Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 www.mdaus.com TerraGo Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 www.terragotech.com/products/terrago-publisher-arcgis
Calendar July 23-27, 2012 Esri International User Conference San Diego, Calif. www.esri.com
September 25-27, 2012 Modern Day Marine Quantico, Va. www.marinemilitaryexpos.com
October 22-24, 2012 AUSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition Washington, D.C. www.ausa.org
September 17-19, 2012 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exhibition National Harbor, Md. www.afa.org
October 8-11, 2012 GEOINT Symposium 2012 Orlando, Fla. http://geoint2011.com
October 29-November 1, 2012 MAPPS/ASPRS 2012 Specialty Conference Tampa, Fla. www.asprs.org
NEXTISSUE
Volume 10, Issue 6 September 2012
October 22-24, 2012 AUSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition Washington, D.C. Cover and In-Depth Interview with: www.ausa.org
Major General Stephen G. Fogarty Commanding General Army Intelligence & Security Command
Special Report: USMC Intelligence Command profile
Features: • Aerial or Satellite?
• Video Services
• Mission Planning
• Intelligence Media
Insertion Order Deadline: August 17, 2012 • Ad Materials Deadline: August 24, 2012 www.GIF-kmi.com
GIF 10.5 | 27
INDUSTRY INTERVIEW
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
Richard M. Cobb President and Chief Executive Officer TerraGo Technologies overlap and we are able to expand our engineering and product development resources and gain an office to support our growing West Coast base of customers.
Rick Cobb joined Atlanta, Ga.-based TerraGo Technologies in 2008 and has 25 years of leadership experience in the domestic and international software industry, including the computer-aided design market and enterprise IT. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree in management engineering. Q: TerraGo announced this month that it acquired the software products and technologies of Geosemble Technologies. What is Geosemble and what does it do? A: Founded in 2004, Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based Geosemble Technologies is a spin-off from the University of Southern California and, like TerraGo, is an In-QTel portfolio company. Geosemble also is a strategic partner of BAE, Google Earth Enterprise Partner, a developer in the Oracle Partner Network, and a DARPA SBIR Phase II contractor. Geosemble’s flagship product, GeoXray, automates the process of discovering, geospatially visualizing, monitoring and sharing relevant unstructured information from any source. The software mines and processes text from news, blogs and social media and analyzes data by place, time and topic. GeoXray decreases the amount of time analysts spend sifting through the ever-growing amount of information available and produces more relevant information specific to an area of interest. The solution, which is used by a number of intelligence agencies, frees analysts to spend more time on quality analysis and enables better collaboration with decision makers and field personnel. Q: What does the acquisition mean for TerraGo and the defense and intelligence customers it serves? A: The acquisition of Geosemble builds on TerraGo’s growing geospatial intelligence reports and applications expertise. The combined companies’ solutions will now enable users to selectively discover relevant spatial content; compose dynamic, 28 | GIF 10.5
Q: What are some of the most significant programs your company is currently working with defense and intelligence market?
interactive geospatial intelligence applications and reports; and collaborate in online and disconnected environments. With Geosemble, TerraGo now offers a comprehensive suite of solutions allowing organizations to discover the spatial information they need from any source and produce a multi-INT, 2-D or 3-D interactive, portable and intelligence package that can be dynamically shared and updated by anyone, anywhere. Q: Why did TerraGo acquire Geosemble? A: We saw synergies between the companies’ complementary geospatial intelligence software solutions. We both deliver situational awareness for better planning, improved decision making and faster response, and offer collaboration capabilities for sharing geospatial information between analysts, decision makers and edge users. We share common customers in the GEOINT community and we share a similar vision for expansion into other markets. From a technology standpoint, Geosemble’s IP will work well with products and services we are developing to enable defense, intelligence and homeland security agencies to intake and process large amounts of disparate information from multiple sources and sensors and to produce applications and reports for situational awareness that can be easily disseminated to first responders and officials in catastrophic recovery scenarios. Culturally, the acquisition also is a good fit: the companies were founded about the same time; we share investors (In-QTel) and partners; and we are both focused on innovation. Organizationally, there is no
A: TerraGo is a proud and proven partner for agencies in the defense and intelligence market and unfortunately, we cannot disclose some of our most interesting work. There are, however, a few engagements we can mention. As part of the Distributed Common Ground System-Army, the Army has purchased TerraGo geospatial collaboration software to produce, access, update and share geospatial information and applications in support of warfighter efforts around the world. The multi-year, multimillion-dollar contract award also includes the TerraGo Toolbar to enable warfighters in mission critical roles to use virtually any mobile computer to access and share interactive, compact, portable and intelligent 2-D and 3-D GeoPDF maps and imagery. The contract also provides Army personnel who use the TerraGo Toolbar with support, training and product updates as part of an enterprise distribution agreement. The Army Geospatial Center [AGC] has worked with TerraGo Technologies Professional Services to develop eIndex Server, a browser-based application that allows users to define an area of interest anywhere globally and discover all of the available geospatial content falling within that area. Acting as a geospatial library navigation, data retrieval and integration tool, the eIndex Server greatly simplifies map selection and accelerates map book production. This technology saves the AGC time both in fulfilling requests and in shortening delivery intervals for its users who can now self-serve browse and select GeoPDF maps and imagery to be automatically assembled for a specific mission application. Since the introduction of eIndex Server, demand for the AGC’s geospatial information has dramatically increased. O www.GIF-kmi.com
Mission Informed, Mission Controlled Fuse sensor data with geography to deliver ISR to the edge of the battlespace. With EsriÂŽ Technology, you can analyze and view information in a common operational picture, transforming ISR data into accurate, actionable intelligence to support your mission.
Learn more at esri.com/gif Copyright Š 2012 Esri. All rights reserved.
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General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems is a provider of end-to-end ISR solutions to help ensure our customers have the right information when they need it to act decisively in their high stakes missions. Our domain understanding and proven experience fielding mission solutions allow us to quickly and accurately draw actionable intelligence from Big Data. Taking an open architecture approach to capability and systems integration, we provide customers with seamless, remote access to missioncritical intelligence at any time from the enterprise to the edge.
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