GIF 10-7 (Oct. 2012)

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community

Vision Deliverer Letitia A. Long Director NGA

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October 2012 Volume 10, Issue 7

Web Mapping O Video Services O Mobile Apps O Intel Analysis Open Source Geospatial O Industry Roundtable O GEOINT Future

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Geospatial Intelligence Forum

October 2012 Volume 10 • Issue 7

Features

Cover / Q&A

Web Mapping Expands Access

8

The evolution of technology is offering geospatial intelligence data and decision support, in near real time, to the user community.

By Peter Buxbaum

Reaching Farther with Mobile Apps

13

As military demand for geospatially enabled mobile apps continues to grow, both government and industry are responding with vigorous development efforts.

By Karen E. Thuermer

17

From a foundation built on video services, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and its partners have raised the ceiling to accommodate more motion imagery types.

By Cheryl Gerber

Video Program Expands Imagery

Modeling GEOINT’s Future

22

Geospatial Intelligence Forum recently posed this question to executives of key GEOINT companies: “What is the appropriate role for industry in the U.S. intelligence enterprise, and how do you see that changing in the future?”

Opening Up Geospatial Software

46

50

Letitia A. Long Director National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Two current NGA efforts look ahead while defining, studying and analyzing current capabilities and technology applications.

By Laura Lundin

Industry’s Intel Role

40

31

Departments 2 Editor’s Perspective 4 Program Notes 6 People

Defense and intelligence agencies are increasing their use of open source geospatial software for a number of reasons, including the fact that it is seen as more reliable, scalable and rapidly adaptable than proprietary systems.

By Eddie Pickle

28 Industry Raster

Seven Layers of Wisdom

55 Resource Center

An analytical framework developed for forces in Afghanistan has given users unprecedented on-demand access to a wealth of geospatial and other intelligence information.

By Specialist Matthew C. Gossard

A TRUSTED PARTNER WITH VETERAN EXPERIENCE

54 Intel Update

Industry Interview

NATIONAL SECURITY SOLUTIONS

Page 40

Retired Lt. Col. and military intelligence officer Marv Gordner speaks to industry’s future role in comprehensive mission support.

56 Herbert F. Satterlee III Chief Executive Officer MDA Information Systems

Geospatial Intelligence Forum Volume 10, Issue 7 • October 2012

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community Editorial Managing Editor Harrison Donnelly harrisond@kmimediagroup.com Online Editorial Manager Laura Davis laurad@kmimediagroup.com Correspondents Peter A. Buxbaum • Cheryl Gerber William Murray • Karen E. Thuermer

Art & Design Art Director Jennifer Owers jennifero@kmimediagroup.com Senior Graphic Designer Jittima Saiwongnuan jittimas@kmimediagroup.com Graphic Designers Amanda Kirsch amandak@kmimediagroup.com Scott Morris scottm@kmimediagroup.com Kailey Waring kaileyw@kmimediagroup.com

Advertising Associate Publisher Scott Parker scottp@kmimediagroup.com

KMI Media Group Publisher Kirk Brown kirkb@kmimediagroup.com Chief Executive Officer Jack Kerrigan jack@kmimediagroup.com Chief Financial Officer Constance Kerrigan connik@kmimediagroup.com Executive Vice President David Leaf davidl@kmimediagroup.com Editor-In-Chief Jeff McKaughan jeffm@kmimediagroup.com Controller Gigi Castro gcastro@kmimediagroup.com Operations Assistant Casandra Jones casandraj@kmimediagroup.com Trade Show Coordinator Holly Foster hollyf@kmimediagroup.com

EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) recently enjoyed its fourth successful launch of the year, with a classified payload that presumably furthered its mission of “vigilance from above.”

But what really caught my imagination—and, I’d like to suggest, offers a broader lesson for the geospatial and intelligence communities as they gather at the GEOINT 2012 Symposium—was that agency officials arranged to use the extra space and lift capacity to implement its first “rideshare” mission with additional equipment aimed at a variety of missions.

Harrison Donnelly The piggy-back payload itself was intriguing—11 CubeSats set to Editor deploy after primary spacecraft activities take place. CubeSats, which are a relatively new concept but are growing in popularity, are liter-sized miniature satellites weighing about 3 pounds.

NRO officials are enthusiastic about the potential of CubeSats. As one observed recently, “The possibilities are endless. The capabilities and applications continue to surprise and amaze us. These small satellites started as little more than an interesting idea, became a kind of educational science project and are now not only considered a good tool for technology demonstration but a viable option for operational space applications as a gap filler, part of a complex constellation architecture or even a standalone mission enabler.

“This mission will demonstrate a capability that, if managed well, will help support the space community’s desire to launch small satellite payloads on the Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, but will hopefully serve as the first of many for the NRO to support its specific missions with such technology,” the official added.

Beyond that, though, what seems really important about the ridesharing idea is that officials are thinking creatively about new ways to cooperate in the use of scarce resources. Given the virtual certainty of tight budgets in the future—what to speak of the potential train wreck of sequestration—more ridesharing will be vital.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Satellite Constellation Speeds Access to Geo-Information The Astrium-built SPOT 6 Earth observation satellite has been successfully launched by a PSLV launcher from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in India. It will join in orbit Pléiades 1A, the very high-resolution Earth observation satellite with products distributed by Astrium Services. Both satellites will first work together and will form, from 2014, a complete constellation with Pléiades 1B and SPOT 7, the next satellites on the launch track to complete Astrium Services full optical constellation.

As soon as they will be validated in orbit, each of SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 will be operated by Astrium Satellites and exploited by Astrium Services in coordination with the two Pléiades satellites along the same orbit. The constellation will offer unique applications, delivering products in an unrivalled delivery time, to Astrium Services’ customers. Each point of the globe will be seen each day once in high resolution and in very high resolution. Moreover, while SPOT 6/7 will provide a wide picture over an area, Pléiades will be able to offer, for the same zone, products with a narrower field of view but with an increased level of detail (50 cm).

“With four satellites phased 90 degrees apart in the same heliosynchronous quasi-polar orbit, we will be able to offer our customers geo-information products in record time, in as little as six hours,”

said Eric Beranger, chief executive officer of Astrium Services. “With four satellites, we obviously have more freedom in terms of the revisit interval, for better change detection or faster coverage. Users can choose between very high-resolution data capture at a specific point and high-resolution data capture over a larger area. We can also combine the two, of course. For instance, in case of flooding, SPOT 6 can provide the big picture and Pléiades will bring the focus over the most populated or damaged areas.”

Geo-information plays a vital role in converting the latest geospatial information into reliable economic data. SPOT 6 is just one of the remote-sensing satellites that now enables Astrium Services to offer a wide range of Earth observation products and value-added services in response to the needs of its customers in national and defense mapping and other areas.

SPOT 6 is an Earth observation satellite offering optical high-resolution capabilities.

Like its twin SPOT 7, which is slated for launch early 2014, SPOT 6 has a 60 km swath and will serve imagery products with a resolution down to 1.5 meters. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 will ensure service continuity of SPOT 4 and SPOT 5 satellites,

which have been operating since 1998 and 2002 respectively. Moreover, both ground and space segments have been designed for improved performances compared to previous SPOT missions, especially in term of reactivity—from satellite tasking to product delivery—and collection capacity. The constellation SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 will actually provide a daily revisit everywhere on Earth with a total coverage of 6 million square kilometers per day. SPOT 6 and 7 will have a service life of 10 years.

Terrestrial LiDAR Takes on Hurricane Flooding U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists have deployed new technology to map urban flooding caused by Hurricane Isaac. Called terrestrial light detection and ranging (T-LiDAR), this new capability will enable scientists to collect highly detailed information in select population areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama where the hurricane had the greatest impact.

The portable instrument allows scientists to quickly generate 3-D maps of buildings, dams, levees and other structures, and can show areas of storm damage as well. In a four-to-five minute scan, the instrument collects millions of topographic data points in a full 360-degree view to quickly produce highly accurate topographic information and can map areas up to two-thirds of a mile away.

The information gathered from this pilot project will be used by USGS to develop 3-D models of streets and structures, including the levels floodwaters reached, as well as current water levels in the form an interactive 3-D flood inundation map. The map will help identify where the potential threat of future floodwaters is greatest, and will help determine the extent of wind and flood damages caused by Isaac.

“If a picture paints a thousands words, a T-LiDAR scan paints several million words to capture the fleeting aftermath of a hurricane’s impact,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “The ability to rapidly preserve for posterity a quantifiable, three-dimension representation of storm damage is going to open the doors for new flood hazard science.”

4 | GIF 10.7

T-LiDAR looks sideways from ground level, enabling it to capture vertical details, such as water levels, that airborne LiDAR cannot. This enables it to capture the extent of flooding. USGS will be using both a tripod mounted and a truck-mounted version. While the tripod version takes individual scans from multiple locations that later have to be combined to develop its 3-D maps, the truck-mounted version is continuously collecting information that is available almost immediately.

“Using terrestrial LiDAR in this fashion has the possibility of helping us quickly assess high-water marks, current water levels, and to some degree flood damage, in a very short time,” said Athena Clark, director of the USGS Alabama Water Science Center.

“We’re always looking for better, more efficient and cost effective ways of advancing the science and this technology has some great possibilities.”

T-LiDAR, sometimes called “terrestrial laser scanning,” uses a sensor that emits laser pulses and measures distance by how long it takes the reflected laser beam to bounce back to the instrument. It can provide very precise data, to millimeter accuracy, to enable scientists to build high-resolution 3-D models of objects.

In addition to the use of T-LiDAR, USGS also planned airborne LiDAR flights to assess the level of coastal change caused by Isaac along the Gulf Coast.

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Create advanced image analysis web services Publish mission essential tools to forward deployed Deploy seamlessly to an existing infrastructure In today’s fast-moving defense and intelligence world, geographically dispersed personnel need GEOINT from imagery more than ever before, so they can make informed decisions quickly. Mission-critical decisions can’t wait hours while geospatial data is downloaded and analyzed before results are disseminated to the people who need it.

That’s why we developed ENVI Services Engine, a cloud-based image analysis solution that allows your organization to create, publish, and deploy advanced ENVI image and data analytics to any existing enterprise infrastructure. Now, end users can easily access the image analysis capabilities they need for geographic awareness from a web browser, remote desktop, or mobile and thin clients used by your organization. And, since ENVI has been used across the D&I community for years to create geographic knowledge, your analysts know they can trust the proven image analysis services they’re delivering. For more information please visit www.exelisvis.com/ENVIServicesEngine.

SErVICES ENgINE ONlINE, ON DEMAND GEOspATIAl AwArENEss. ©2012, Exelis Visual Information Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. E3De, ENVI, and IDL are registered trademarks of Exelis, Inc.All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Use of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) imagery in this advertisement does not constitute or imply DoD endorsement.

PROGRAM NOTES

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Exercise Tests ISR Challenges Taking up the banner of the canceled Empire Challenge, the annual joint field test of ISR interoperability, the Department of Defense has launched a new, smaller scale format designed to enable defense agencies and coalition forces to continue to test intelligence systems in an operational realistic environment.

The new Exercise Enterprise Challenge, held late this summer at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., was conducted by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency under the authority of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. As

a cost-cutting move, DoD last year eliminated Empire Challenge along with Joint Forces Command, which had staged the event. In its place, officials are working on a smaller partnership program, Enterprise Resolve.

One focus of Exercise Enterprise Challenge was the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), service-based versions of which form the core of the military’s tactical intelligence capability.

The recent demonstration’s goals included develop tactics, techniques and procedures for perform intelligence on the move.

PEOPLE Rear Admiral (lower half) Thomas L. Brown II will be assigned as director, military support, National GeospatialIntelligence Agency. Brown is currently serving as commander, Special Operations Command, U.S. Southern Command.

Dr. Peter Highnam has been selected to be the second director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). He has been serving as the acting director of IARPA since the departure of IARPA’s first director, Dr. Lisa Porter, in May. Highnam joined the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in February 2009 as the director for IARPA’s Incisive Analysis Office. Prior to IARPA, he was a senior adviser in the National Institutes of Health and then in the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. From 1999 to 2003, Highnam was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program manager with programs in electronic warfare and airborne communications.

6 | GIF 10.7

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Ellen McCarthy, who has been serving as executive director of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, has been named as chief operating officer of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

programs and direct all new defense-related business pursuits.

Science Applications International Corporation has selected Lee Carrick to lead the company’s Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group program development efforts.

Keith J. Masback, president of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Fouundation, has been appointed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing, which evaluates economic, technological and institutional developments relating to commercial remote sensing and makes recommendations for federal policies and programs.

Tim Harris

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. has selected Tim Harris to lead its national defense strategic business unit. As vice president and general manager for national defense, Harris will oversee

TASC has promoted John P. Hynes Jr. to executive vice president and chief operating officer.

AGI, which develops commercially available software for the space, defense and intelligence industries, has promoted Travis Langster to vice president, Department of Defense and intel space business development.

In addition, Air Force Colonel Ronald E. Thompson Jr. (Ret.), former chief of the Space and

Missile Systems Center’s Space Situational Awareness Division, has been hired as AGI’s vice president of business development for strategic projects.

Von Gardiner

John Wallace

NJVC has announced new management-level hires: Von Gardiner as senior manager, Department of Defense program, and John Wallace as vice president, market management.

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Web Mapping Expands Access

Technology evolution offers geospatial intelligence data and decision support, in near real time, to the user community.

Armies have used maps since the dawn of cartography, and even moreso in the electronic age, when digital maps enable dynamic situational awareness updates based on the latest intelligence. Now the advent of web mapping means that this information can be displayed in any web browser and on just about any device.

Web mapping has significant implications for the networked force. The light web browser application means that information and insight can be graphically displayed on any number of devices, from the analyst’s desktop to a screen display mounted in a tactical vehicle to a handheld device carried by a dismounted warfighter.

Relying on the web browser means that the heavy computing is done remotely, with little or none done on the local device.

“In its simplest form, web mapping is providing mapping applications via electronic media and delivered to users on fixed and mobile computing devices,” Greg Buckman, head of sales at Astrium Services’ North American geo-information team. “As web mapping has evolved, it has given us the opportunity to provide geospatial intelligence data and decision support, in near real time, to the user community. Clients and partners can now consume products and services online. It is all about ease of use and improving access to services. This will ultimately drive more usage and increase the relevance of web mapping services.”

Today’s web mapping technology providers don’t just provide snapshots of an area of interest, but also intelligent mapping utilities, explained Clark Swinehart, manager of defense solutions at Esri. “We’re not just putting a map in a browser. We are also putting some geo-processing and geographical information system services in the browser as well.”

Intelligent maps allow users to click on map features to retrieve data on that location. “Clicking on the map could provide the name of a point of interest, additional information or a recent photo,” said 8 | GIF 10.7

By Peter Buxbaum GIF Correspondent

Swinehart. “This is the multimedia approach that is expected in the modern web environment.”

Military and intelligence organizations use web mapping to get rapid access to geospatial content and services across various organizations, noted Buckman. “It makes it much easier to get access to the most relevant and up-to-date geospatial intelligence for decision support,” he said.

Desktop to Device Before web mapping, map data was delivered via file transfer protobuckman@astrium-geo.com col (FTP), the standard used to transfer files from one host to another host over the network. It represented a major advance over delivery on CDs and DVDs, and before that on tape and hard copies. “FTP delivery allowed customers to access data quicker and easier,” said Buckman.

“That is one of the main goals of web mapping.”

The processing of map data in the past was generally done on the Clark Swinehart desktop, rather than at a remote server, with heavy desktop mapping applications. “The applications got lighter over time, with less processing done on the desktop and more done remotely,” said Swinehart. “Now it has evolved to where Greg Buckman

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you can have nothing on the desktop but a browser, and have all the processing being done remotely very quickly and efficiently from a variety of web services. Before, mapping was a brute force hardware application. Now, from the user perspective, it is lighter and more ethereal.”

Web mapping creates opportunities and opens up possibilities for new solutions, according to Buckman. “For the distributed enterprise with multiple users in multiple locations, web mapping increases efficiency by providing common access to current and consistent mapping information,” he said. “However, it must be noted that even though web mapping is well-accepted within our customer base, certain clients still rely on the more traditional methods for accessing our data.”

Digital mapping, including web mapping, taps into one or more or several repositories of geospatial data. Two of the most important of these repositories are maintained by the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency and the Army Geospatial Center (AGC).

“Web mapping technologies access the same geospatial database that a non-web application might access,” said Glen Quesenberry, Alion Science and Technology’s program manager for the AGC’s Joint Experimentation, Test and Simulation lab.

These repositories hold what is known as foundation data.

Geospatial intelligence professionals then create a subset of that data that is relevant to a particular mission or project. That subset of data is referred to as source data.

“I may have geospatial data for the entire planet but I only want data for Afghanistan,” Quesenberry explained. “So the foundation data will be the planet and the source data will be for Afghanistan, the specific application that I am working on.”

Over 90 percent of geospatial data used by DoD comes from NGA, according to Quesenberry. “There are also some niche products throughout the services that distribute data independently,” he said. “AGC also provides a great deal of geospatial data for web mapping functions, for everything from mobile handheld devices carried by soldiers to Armywide geospatial deployments.” An example would be the LiDAR data and satellite images distributed by the AGC through the BuckEye program.

Common Data Programs and weapons systems ingest foundational data in run time for functions that could include mapping as well as others such as line-of-sight analyses. But it is important that web mapping utilities that are being used for the same mission access the same source data.

“You want to make sure that the mapping service in a Bradley vehicle, for example, matches the mapping service in a Cobra helicopter,” said Quesenberry. “Otherwise the two systems might not recognize each other’s locations.”

“Rapid access to data leads to increased efficiency among the many units in the field and better coordination between organizations, as the same content and services can be used among entities working together on a given mission or assignment,” said Buckman.

“We have successfully exploited web mapping solutions to push geospatial information to our user base during times of natural disasters. Being able to give them a common operating picture has a tremendous value.”

The web mapping programs themselves slice and dice the data depending on user and mission requirements. “What you are 10 | GIF 10.5

really doing is deriving new products from foundational data,” said Quesenberry.

Most map functions will use three to five different geospatial data standards, according to Quesenberry. “Many weapons and military systems use flat image files obtained from the NGA,” he said.

“AGC data is standardized on the Ground Fighter Geospatial Model.”

While there is a high degree of standardization for geospatial data, political problems and technical problems remain obstacles to their more widespread use. “The political challenge is that neither NGA nor the AGC can require any particular program manager to sue any specific set of data,” said Quesenberry. “The AGC tries to facilitate the use of its data throughout the Army, but neiGlen Quesenberry ther AGC nor NGA is the boss. If a particular program manager wants to use a separate set of data he can. There are a lot of moving pieces in the U.S. military.”

The biggest technical issue involves bandwidth. “Geospatial data sets are large and are hard to deploy to rural Afghanistan,” said Quesenberry. “The tradeoff is local storage on your hard drive as opposed to capturing data over the network. As the networking capabilities of the Army increases, its geospatial capabilities also increase because there is more bandwidth to play with.”

Intelligent web mapping can perform a variety of functions and analyses for the user. “It can provide analyses of the best route from point A to point B,” said Swinehart. “It can calculate the five-, 10-, and 15-minute drive times from a particular location. It can provide visibility information: What can I see from a particular point?”

Decision Support Decision support tools present forces with the most complete and recent view of all geographic characteristics of the battlefield.

“The system displays different thematic information such as topographic maps, recent images from satellites and airborne platforms, digital elevation models, weather conditions and forecasts, nautical maps, and human information,” said Buckman. “This type of system requires generating data layers, to check their compatibility and to design the hardware and software architecture to store, select, disseminate and display the information. Very accurate 3-D databases covering large areas have been generated to guide combat and operations support systems.”

NGA, in conjunction with other agencies, initiated the Commercial Joint Mapping Tool Kit (CJMTK) program over a decade ago. CJMTK provides functionality for command, control and intelligence applications. CJMTK replaced the Joint Mapping Toolkit, a collection of government developed and owned application program interfaces. CJMTK provides mission programs with a set of geospatial intelligence tools, as sets of components with APIs, or as web services for web-based applications, which allow the C2I systems that incorporate them to perform certain functions depending on their requirements.

Thanks to cooperative arrangements with units like the AGC, CJMTK provides functionality for applications, such as battle command systems, that can be used across the armed services. www.GIF-kmi.com

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CJMTK’s core technology is Esri’s ArcGIS, which meets an estimated 95 percent of DoD requirements for CJMTK. CJMTK use cases run the gamut of C2I applications, ranging from very sophisticated analysis work flows such as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Generic Area Limitation Environment program, an analysis and exploitation system for intelligence data, to web-based systems such as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Integrated Weapons of Mass Destruction Toolkit, a simulation system that models the effects of WDM. CJMTK has been cooperating under a technology transition agreement with the AGC’s Battlespace Terrain Reasoning Awareness program, involving the development of advanced geospatial analysis and processing capabilities. CJMTK is using AGC’s expertise in geospatial terrain functions to provide a set of common tools across the enterprise.

Astrium provides data management and dissemination solutions to various U.S. government agencies and supports DoD, the Army National Guard and federal civilian agencies with web mapping services for disaster events. “We have been offering data streaming services to our customers for the past two years,” said Buckman. “We have seen an increased acceptance of this service within the U.S. government at large. All these applications require the combination of data acquisition means,” usually satellite in this context, “processing facilities, storage and dissemination means, and engineering capacities.”

Astrum recently rolled out an online service called GeoStore.

“GeoStore, based on an Esri and i-cubed solution called DataDoors, allows users to search our entire archive of SPOT, SPOTMaps and Pleiades and place orders online,” Buckman continued. “It will also soon allow users with specific account parameters to task our very high-resolution Pleiades and upcoming SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 satellites.

“This is the first service we have developed to essentially put the joystick in our customers hands, and it would not have been possible without a sophisticated web mapping system,” he added.

The Distributed Geospatial Intelligence Network (DGInet) is an Esri technology that can be employed by defense and intelligence organizations to provide an enterprise solution for geospatial intelligence data. The technology was designed as a web-based enterprise GIS for non-technical intelligence analysts, military planners and warfighters. It enables browsers to search massive amounts of geospatial data, using low bandwidth web services, for data discovery, dissemination, and fusion of data and products. DGInet core technology has been deployed at several defense and intelligence community sites.

Among other things, DGInet provides a services oriented architecture accessing a collection of distributed Java web services as well as web map services. DGInet makes multi-terabyte databases available through a common web interface. It provides users with the capability to quickly and easily find, overlay and fuse georeferenced data from multiple sources via web map services for use as map background displays or to support analytical functions.

One of the issues that Esri is now tackling involves the provision of web mapping functions to support far-forward, disconnected warfighters. “They don’t necessarily have high-bandwidth connectivity and sometimes they operate with no data connectivity at all,” Buckman explained. “We have been working on lightweight disconnected technologies that provision maps and processing farther forward on systems mounted in vehicles and carried by warfighters.

12 | GIF 10.7

The computing power is local instead of being accessed by the network. When the device regains connectivity, the information in the mapping function is automatically updated.”

Cloud Environment Esri’s latest of release of ArcGIS, which was shipped over the summer, includes a range of web mapping applications a well as support for these functions and devices in a cloud computing environment. The platform supports a range of devices, including Windows phones and Android devices, and introduces a new product that enables the use of web mapping by disconnected warfighters.

Web mapping providers are also increasingly migrating their applications to a cloud computing environment. “Deploying lightweight web mapping applications in the cloud is a paradigm shift,” said Swinehart.

“Cloud computing is a great technology enabler,” said Buckman.

“It moves web mapping to another level, allowing for much better management of content and services. The use of cloud computing for web mapping applications will allow us to scale up rapidly, and our partners and clients will be able to leverage this technology to develop their own business solutions.”

“The great thing about cloud computing is its elasticity,” said Swinehart. “From wherever I am or need to be I am can apply scalable computing power to any problem without having to do a lot of preliminary work. If a particularly heavy problem is thrown at me, the cloud can take care of it for me and when problems are easier the cloud scales back. That way, I don’t have support an unnecessarily large infrastructure for a problem that might occur. Rich mapping applications can be put on desktops for those who need that functionality while the lighter work can be performed over the network.”

Astrium is expanding its web mapping solutions beyond imagery and vector information into supporting video and various multimedia formats, with i-cubed’s Geospatial Asset Management solution.

“We will provide even better access to our archive, content and services through a newly developed interface, allowing users to better integrate our solutions into their own environment,” said Buckman. “We are expanding our data streaming solutions to include our very high-resolution Pleiades data and TerraSAR-X radar, as well as the upcoming SPOT continuity missions, SPOT 6 and 7. By offering controlled access to combined public, private and proprietary datasets to a customer group, we are able to help the users of this service to provide optimal local decision support.”

Swinehart foresees the continued evolution of web mapping as more of a collaborative effort based on multi-intelligence sources.

“Analysts will be sharing their methodologies and trade craft in order to elicit collaborative contributions from others in the intelligence community. This will allows for greater feedback,” he said.

“More the intelligence problems will be subject to multi-intelligence fusion. That, in turn, will accelerate the capabilities of the analysts. People will try out their theories and hunches. Rather than stovepiping people, the community will be much more multi-INT capable.” 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.

www.GIF-kmi.com

Reaching Farther with

Mobile Apps

Industry continues to explore the many different ways that the

defense and intelligence communities can utilize geospatial apps.

By Karen E. Thuermer, GIF Correspondent

As military demand for geospatially-enabled mobile apps continues to grow, both government and industry are responding with vigorous development efforts.

Ever since National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Director Letitia Long two years ago unveiled her call for putting GEOINT power in the hands of warfighters, NGA has been working hard to spur further exploration of this potentially game-changing approach, both internally and among other federal agencies.

Leading companies in the defense and intelligence fields, meanwhile, have also been expanding the search for the many different ways that the defense and intelligence communities can utilize geospatial apps. “Blue force tracking, inventory management, secure and encrypted devices, training, data collection, remote notification and data fusion are just a Larry Littleton few of the examples, and the potential uses keep growing,� commented Larry Littleton, director of CACI Mobility Solutions. www.GIF-kmi.com

GIF 10.7 | 13

Troops on the ground are particularly attracted to mobile GEOINT apps, observed Clark Swinehart, manager of defense solutions at Esri.

“They want to be able to have the same technology while in a dismounted situation,” he said. “Many are on patrol for a long time and on their own. The mobile device is an extension that allows them to stay connected. It offers them many capabilities in their hands.”

Esri has been working with a number of U.S.-based and international customers who are developing concept of operations and prototype applications for use in defense and intelligence.

“While most are excited at the prospect of using mobile applications for their missions, people are still struggling with startup issues like the selection of devices, security and how applications will be deployed,” Swinehart added.

To meet those needs, Esri offers a wide range of applications being built that bring the company’s flagship software, ArcGIS, into the mobile environment.

“So far, Esri’s ArcGIS for the Military-Land Operations configurations include two applications, available at the ArcGIS Resource Center: Vehicle Commander for mounted operations and Squad Leader for dismounted operations,” Swinehart said.

Squad Leader is an Android application. The source code and documentation are included in the download.

“These particular applications were developed after working with a variety of customers to come up with a basic set of functionality that a mounted or dismounted application would need at a basic level,” Swinehart explained. “The source code is included so that each customer can configure or customize the app to their particular needs.

This cuts the cost, time and risk involved in deploying mobile applications significantly for customers.”

Littleton pointed to natural disasters as one scenario for the use of mobile geospatial services.

“As the disaster unfolds, current imagery can be viewed from a commercial provider and overlaid with vectors showing roads, bridges, buildings, hazards to navigation, and Clark Swinehart points of interest such as hospitals, command facilities, helicopter landing zones and staging areas,” said Littleton. “All of this data is accessible and updatable while in the field so that any relevant changes, such as blocked roads or temporary camps, can be collected in the system and shared with all involved.”

Another feature that the geospatial service could include would be blue force tracking of friendly Mike Manzo personnel.

“Utilizing a CACI patented technology, all members of the team could have their location appear on the maps of the other team members for situational awareness and efficient response coordination,” Littleton pointed out. “This patented technology allows for asynchronous data connections to be established between client mobile devices and a data server over wireless networks.”

A particular CACI patent is for the geographic location information to be overlaid onto the map data and displayed on any of the client 14 | GIF 10.7

The Raytheon Android Tactical System (RATS) delivers multimedia content faster to warfighters.

[Photo courtesy of Raytheon]

mobile devices to indicate the various locations of the various client devices in real time.

“This allows our Department of Defense/intelligence community customers to use this geospatial mobile apps and content driven data exchange in last tactical mile environments,” he said.

“This provides mobile end user devices data in near real time to and from the enterprise.”

The associated mobile device apps enable users to access and manage data, such as geospatial intelligence in the field, anytime and anywhere.

No Location Limitations “Location is no longer a limitation to leveraging an enterprise,” said Mike Manzo, director, Geospatial Solutions Imagery Systems Division, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.

General Dynamics is developing new applications that will increase access and discovery of information, allowing users and decision makers to carry out a variety of defense, intelligence and other government missions, with the information they need, when they need it, where they need it.

“Take hurricane season, for example. We have learned that geospatial data is an important tool for first responders,” said Manzo.

“First responders can be completely connected using mobile GEOINT applications.”

Today flood reports, road and traffic status, and locations of first aid personnel can be obtained through cell phones accessing GEOINT services in the cloud. Rather than trying to coordinate hundreds of individuals over the phone in an ad hoc manner, cloud-based workflows seamlessly manage and adapt to what is occurring.

“Everyone receives updated information and tasking in real time, coordinated through cloud services,” said Manzo.

General Dynamics has piloted a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief event using mobile applications and cloud-based workflows, and is working with analysts to better understand how they should be used.

Additionally, mobile apps could be used by an agency for developing activity-based intelligence to provide real-time situational awareness. With the right enterprise architecture and access, an end-user can be located virtually anywhere in the world and have the same ability as all other mission participants to multi-source data and use exploitation applications, even over low bandwidth communications paths and using thin client devices. www.GIF-kmi.com

“Providing persistent data and analysis applications to users from the enterprise to the edge allows quicker responses that could prevent undesirable events,” Manzo said.

Mobile devices allow Raytheon to extend its knowledge base of geospatial and defense agencies to individual users operating in austere conditions.

“For example, we’re working to provide first responders with powerful, yet simple tools to make their efforts more effective,” explained William Bal, Raytheon, Intelligence and Information Systems, GEOINT solutions lead.

Raytheon has developed a conceptual helicopter landing zone application that utilizes server-side processing for rapid assessment of potential areas suitable for helicopter landing.

Easy to Use Mobile geospatial apps have myriad uses by defense and intelligence agencies, said George Demmy, chief technology officer of TerraGo. “From mission planning to situational awareness, field data capture and collaboration in the field, mobile geospatial apps have the potential to put GEOINT into the hands of those who rely on it most,” Demmy said.

What is essential to making these apps useful and effective, he added, is that they must be able to be used by anyone without the need for sophisticated GIS software or training.

George Demmy TerraGO’s GeoPDF maps and imagery can be accessed on a laptop with the widely deployed TerraGo Toolbar, and soon on popular handheld devices with TerraGo Mobile for Android.

In addition, these applications also enable users to update the map with current field intelligence through georeferenced annotations, photos, audio or video in connected or offline environments. The updated intelligence can then be shared peer-to-peer for further collaboration and then returned back via web services or other means to the enterprise GIS to refresh the geospatial database asset.

“In practice, GeoPDF maps can be used just like traditional maps,” remarked Demmy. “They can be marked up with routes and points of interest for mission planning. Mission debriefs can be annotated in a similar manner. Unlike traditional maps, however the markups can be exported retaining their geospatial context and returned to command for improved decision making.”

TerraGo will soon release its Android solution, which will enable users in the field to interact with portable and intelligent GeoPDF maps and imagery.

The TerraGo Mobile for Android product is designed to allow users in the field to make measurements, annotations and georeferenced notes, or add audio, photos and video attachments on their GeoPDFs on the device.

“TerraGo Mobile also supports the collection of structured field data with user-created forms,” Demmy said. “It can leverage applications and services on the Android mobile device such as email and GPS, and will allow integration with external services like those provided by Google or other Web-based geospatial content or services providers.” www.GIF-kmi.com

The integration of local and remote services enables the delivery of robust geospatial applications to users at the edge of the enterprise and enhances collaboration and the sharing of location intelligence.

An iOS version will follow.

Another TerraGo product, GeoXray, which mines and analyzes unstructured data such as news, blogs and social media by time, topic and place, is a desktop application. “But we certainly see the value in making it easy for remote and mobile users to access the information collected by the system,” Demmy added.

“Deployed in mission critical roles worldwide by defense and intelligence agencies, TerraGo Toolbar and GeoPDF-based maps and imagery are a preferred means to access and interact with GEOINT,” he said.

“TerraGo Mobile was developed in response to our customers’ demand for TerraGo Toolbar functionality in a mobile environment, and the solution uniquely leverages the capabilities of patented TerraGo GeoPDF technology.”

A high-performance rendering engine displays interactive, portable, intelligent GeoPDF maps and imagery, ensuring a user experience consistent with the functionality and ease expected on today’s popular mobile devices.

Mission-centric Apps Raytheon is working with customers to develop mission-centric applications. “Last year we demonstrated an Android application, GOTab,” remarked Bal. This work has progressed over the past year and resulted in a set of widgets, called analyst decision support tools, that are designed specifically for disaster relief.

“These widgets are written in HTML-5 to allow them to be used from a desktop or tablet regardless of branding, and have been developed through direct interaction with users,” he said. “This helps confirm what we are building is needed, and enables the users to have a role in developing exactly what they want. Also, it gives users the advantage of much more tailored and quickly developed tools.”

What makes this app unique among apps is the fact the analyst decision support tool provides a tailorable “scorecard” that helps categorize and classify emergencies such as earthquakes and hurricanes.

“The scorecard is similar to a credit score—an easy-to-read number representing a broad set of variables,” Bal explained. “This tool will allow emergency response providers the ability to estimate the scale of disaster relief operations, and will help them prioritize their response efforts.”

The analyst decision support tools also support real-time and nearreal-time monitoring of events through open source social media in areas of interest (like watch boxes) to provide automated “alerting” to analysts/users when user defined thresholds are met or exceeded.

CACI develops geospatial apps and services for customers based on strong relationships and growing needs.

“These developing apps allow for the overlapping display of datasets from multiple sensors, data repositories, and collaborative tools supporting a true team-based response to evolving situations,” remarked Littleton.

One of the mobile geospatial services from CACI, DipFac, delivers imagery from DigitalGlobe, overlays vectors from proprietary and open source repositories, and enables collaboration between users for messaging and vector creation.

“A significant discriminator of DipFac versus other systems, based on user feedback, is the vetting and validation of current open source GIF 10.7 | 15

data and system user edits by CACI staff,” Littleton described. “CACI has developed training-based mobile apps for an Army customer that takes advantage of mapping data for route recon training. These mapbased geospatial training apps are intuitive and deliver content rich media to the warfighter in training.”

CACI develops other mobile applications using location-based solutions in conjunction with data layers with geospatial data.

“We take a device-agnostic approach to mobility based solutions,” Littleton said.

CACI is in the beginning stages of other mobile development efforts utilizing the company’s content management solution, Highview, which allows users to select geospatial based data sets and push this information down to any mobile device or mobile operating systems.

But apps are only half of the story when it comes to meeting geospatial needs, Manzo observed.

“General Dynamics has designed a cloud-based environment that can be tailored to specific missions, requirements and user needs, providing remote access to data and applications by leveraging enterprise services, for example cloud storage and applications within the cloud,” he said.

By housing applications and data in the cloud, users do not need to download massive files, such as full motion video, or maintain licenses for large applications on their local computers or workstations.

“In addition to the main benefit of data anywhere, anytime, agencies can experience cost savings by reducing hardware and hardware dependencies, operations and maintenance costs, and sharing appropriate infrastructure services; enhanced capability through rapid integration of new technologies; and enhanced security and better intelligence as data is combined into common data repositories,” he said.

Many security issues in the field impacting data at rest are also eliminated through this architecture.

What makes General Dynamics’ app unique, Manzo argued, is the fact its cloud architecture is based on integrating open standards systems, enabling greater data access and applications over thin clients (desktops, tablets, smartphones) and supporting very limited bandwidth connections.

“This facilitates self, assisted and full-service access to data and applications,” Manzo explained.

Developmental Challenges Companies are actively addressing the challenges facing the technology. Among those challenges, analysts say, are the need to keep current with the multiple evolving operating systems; design and deliver patches (both for the OS and applications); tailor apps to different screen sizes; meet the level of security from device, transport and application levels needed while minimizing bandwidth; staying ahead of the cyber and insider threat with actively monitoring mobility solutions; addressing single-user login environments common on most mobile devices; and bandwidth restrictions and restrictive data delivery methods.

Littleton points out that CACI proceeds with a device-agnostic approach that allows for tailoring solutions to meet each use case.

“Finding the right solution set and providing the highest ROI with the best user experience is the rewarding challenge our engineers face with mobile based GEOINT apps,” he said.

16 | GIF 10.7

Focus is an ongoing challenge where mobile apps are concerned, noted Swinehart of Esri.

“Successful apps that are already out there in the civilian world are simple and focused. So you end up having several on your device to do a variety of tasks,” he explained.

“People tend to want a single application to do too much, so it ends up doing things poorly” due to limited compute power, connectivity or screen size, Swinehart said. “By keeping the app simple and focused, you end up with more apps, but you also tend to have more successful apps.”

The challenges General Dynamics faces are minimized, Manzo said, because open standards allow the company to leverage existing open-source technologies and commercial standards.

“This openness also creates an opportunity to ‘build a little, test a little’ with the users as part of a continuous feedback process, helping to create effective and usable services,” he continued.

Manzo sees this technology unleashing the power of the cloud, putting the enterprise in the hands of all users.

“It creates an open environment for people and analysts across all of the communities to solve the intelligence needs of the United States,” he said. “It changes the extent of data availability throughout the geospatial intelligence enterprise and allows analysts and disparate users to access and use the data in place, rather than moving data.”

An example might be for an intelligence analyst to access, view, process and analyze full motion video data provided by a UAV launched from a ship halfway around the world. “In short, it allows you to go to the data and use it in place rather than moving the data to you,” he said.

The ability of the apps will continue to grow with the capabilities of the mobile devices, Littleton predicted.

“With mobile devices in the field, there now exists a dynamic network that will react to situations, and collect a diverse variety of data, in a geospatial context,” he said. “Collecting both passive locations and active data streams from the devices will help determine when an event occurs, before any formal reports get submitted.”

When combined with other open source data and government foundational and sensor data, these apps will generate some very powerful notification and analysis tools that will directly impact lives.

CACI executives say they will continue to develop mobile apps for its customers to fit their missions.

“CACI will also help them design their internal systems to support the mobile enablement of information, including geospatial, provide the tailored apps, and supply the devices necessary to survive in the mobile environment,” Littleton said.

As computing power and network bandwidth continue to increase at a rapid rate, Bal believes the industry will see more capable mobile and wearable technologies being deployed.

He cites one example being Google’s “Project Glass,” which replaces the handheld display and interface with a wearable tool capable of overlaying the virtual world in real time.

“In five years technology will push us even further,” he concluded. 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.

www.GIF-kmi.com

NGA system brings wide area motion imagery data to the warfighter.

By Cheryl Gerber, GIF Correspondent From a foundation built on video services, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and its partners have raised the ceiling to accommodate more motion imagery types in their constant effort to deliver actionable GEOINT to support the warfighter.

The NGA’s National System for Geospatial-Intelligence Video Services (NVS) program has taken on wide area motion imagery (WAMI), also known as wide area surveillance (WAS) data, alongside its swelling stream of full motion video (FMV).

Concurrently, the NVS program and partners have boosted FMV functionality while building an extensible, standards-compliant, virtualized enterprise that offers a broad array of data sources online, on-demand.

Lockheed Martin, the NVS prime contractor, is working with subcontractors and industry providers such as Harris, Pixia, Front Porch Digital and General Dynamics to merge programs, integrate systems and interoperate more fully.

Part of the NGA effort to merge programs involves the planning of an NGA Motion Imagery Services (NMIS) program.

The broad initiative will consolidate tactical data storage dissemination and integrate the NGA enterprise library architecture.

As a key GEOINT data and software provider, the NVS aims to support multiple clouds and compute environments. The Full Motion Video Asset Management Engine (FAME) from Harris drives the back end of the NVS enterprise. FAME is an open, scalable platform from which to build out third party and custom applications. www.GIF-kmi.com

Video/Chat Fusion

simply search ‘two guys getting out of a white truck,’ then tag it and associate it with a specific file, which we archive online for One of the many achievements of the key searches. It will find all the videos with NVS enterprise this year is the fusion of the annotation ‘white truck,’” said Charlie chat with video streams. NVS users often Morrison, Lockheed Martin FMV subject operate in chat rooms, with Army and Air matter expert.

Force users, for example, Cross-domain metadata conveying their observations sharing has advanced as well. of motion imagery to achieve “Over the course of the last shared actionable intelliyear, we added a capability gence. “They used to have to to FAME that synchronizes time-sync the chat and try metadata across multiple to fuse it with the motion security domains,” said John imagery. Now we can fuse Delay, chief strategist and the chat that we used to store architect, Harris Geospatial separately,” said Lawrence Products. “Users now get L. Turner, NVS program John Delay the benefit of the metadata manager. everyone adds. Multiple incidences of FAME “For example, they will write: ‘Did you on the SIPRNet on multiple nodes allow us see that white truck in the image? Here are to leave data at rest and not have to move it the coordinates for it.’ And they can now fuse around the network,” he said. the chat so it’s in time-sync with the video With FAME systems located on various stream they observed. Later, when they pull security domains, NVS has been ingestup the video stream, they’ll have the associing data from overseas locations, accessed ated chat with it,” he said. from CONUS. “We copy the service from Better metadata tagging tools, includlow to high security domains, and we’re ing assisted tagging, reflect another FMV working on high to low, taking advantage enhancement. “The tools have improved to of the security data fields within the metaallow analysts to do better metadata tagdata. Security in metadata blocks data ging with drop down menus. The analysts from crossing the security guard,” said can now click on video and easily apply tags Delay. from menus,” said Don Self, director, NGA FAME has expanded the data types Services Transition Office, Architecture and users can discover, regardless of where they Engineering. are located. “You can do a single query The NVS program also made searchfor multiple types of data, including light ing FMV metadata tags easier. “The sysdetection and ranging, FMV or WAMI data,” tem allows you to point a pointer where he said. the events are taking place. We can now GIF 10.7 | 17

Expanded Data Access On the wide area front, expanding access to WAS data represented one of the most crucial NVS developments in support of battlefield awareness. “We made WAS data available for all the analysts to see. Before, there was no way to share it. The analysts could see their own data, but not each other’s data. We also made access to the data faster. It now takes seconds to minutes within NVS,” said Turner, adding, “Hiper Stare is the actual application used to make access to the data faster.”

Pixia’s Hiper Stare is a data access solution used to catalog and share large volumes of WAS data quickly within a cloud-based architecture. The software organizes diverse WAS data collected from a variety of sensor platforms and spectrums (electric-optic or infrared). It can transform frame-based files into spatially specific products in various file formats or streaming feeds in MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 file formats.

Faster access to big data translates into easier access. “Knocking it down from, say, one million to 10 files in the file system makes it easier to access the requested data.

In 1/100th of a second, we can access any point within the file. It doesn’t matter how big the data gets—40 terabytes of data per day in the near future won’t matter—since users can only view a finite amount of data depending on the screen size of the device they are using,” said J.T. Robinson, Pixia NGA program manager.

Hiper Stare ensures that the original integrity of the data is maintained as it is ingested and stored. “We store the data as it was sent to us,” said Robinson. “As we are ingesting the data, we pull the metadata associated with it and index it. How we index it allows us to store hundreds of thousands of files per mission. But to the file system, it looks like one file.”

Pixia tackled big data through automation and a more intuitive GUI with drop boxes in Version 2.1 of Hiper Stare. “Our goal is to give data to users ASAP. We want to decrease the time that field service reps have to touch the system to support the ingestion of data. So we did a lot of work to automate and enhance the ingestion of data to support operational activity in theater,” Robinson said.

By adhering to standards, GEOINT data can be shared more readily across different programs and systems. The NGA Motion Industry Standards Board (MISB) 18 | GIF 10.7

and the NGA Interoperability Action Team (NIAT) have been working for years with the Constant Hawk program, for example, to define data formats and metadata standards to support interoperability and integrate Constant Hawk WAS data into the NVS. Constant Hawk is an Army intelligence system used in Iraq and Afghanistan to collect and produce WAS motion imagery to help defeat a complex insurgent network of IED makers, suppliers and their infrastructure.

NVS, as a whole, leverages MISB standards to increase interoperability and ease of use. For instance, by using MISB-compliant search methodology, users can query distributed databases for information from diverse sources. “The standards make motion imagery—tactical imagery—more discoverable and searchable across different vendors’ systems,” said Bryan Blank, chair of MISB. “For example, Pixia is able to produce MISBcompliant data streams, which allow for cross-vendor interoperability.”

To be MISB-compliant, any new motion imagery system must comply with the MISB Minimum Metadata Set (MMS). Adhering to MMS during collection makes it easier for analysts to access the motion imagery. The standard also provides for the information needed for improved situational awareness and content retrieval. The MMS is part of the Motion Imagery Standards Profile (MISP) which codifies all MISB requirements.

Commercial Broadcast Technology On another front, the NVS tapped Front Porch Digital to apply commercial broadcast technology to the mix. The company’s private cloud-based content storage management solution, called DIVArchive, is a virtualization software product that allows multiple applications to have concurrent access to a central repository of video files. DIVArchive provides a hierarchy of different storage types across multiple facilities.

“DIVArchive from Front Porch Digital provides the long term archive for the NVS systems. For the initial NVS implementation, the storage hierarchy includes a nearline disk and an Oracle data tape robotic system. It operates as a seamless extension to Harris’s FAME,” said Mike Knaisch, president and chief executive officer of Front Porch Digital. “The operational impact for FAME and other applications is that the end-users continue to access data

through the interface to which they are accustomed.”

Nearline storage is the on-site storage of data on removable media, such as magnetic disks, magnetic tapes, CDs or DVDs. DIVArchive is highly scalable and flexible. “The DIVArchive system for NVS is virtually unlimited in terms of both storage and data types,” Knaisch said. “The system separates storage management from physical devices such that capacity and I/O can be added independently. It stores and manages objects as collections of files rather than individual files. This allows multiple data types, including video, audio and still images, to be stored within a single object.”

Exploitation Tools FMV, WAMI and WAS motion imagery are gathered day and night by various types of airborne, elevated or ground-based sensors, resulting in a mountain of footage to be processed, exploited and disseminated to discover nuggets of actionable intelligence.

Other airborne examples are the Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial systems, configured with FMV, SIGINT and other sensor payloads, data links and communications equipment.

The NVS has adopted Pursuer exploitation tools, developed by the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), as a method of ingesting and exploiting WAMI data. Pursuer also provides a GUI for assimilating multi-sensor imagery and metadata into one composite display with digital video recording functions. Using either Pursuer or a thin client viewer, NVS users can reach from CONUS to theater. Pursuer interoperates with Lockheed’s Audacity, Harris’ FAME, Pixia’s Hiper Stare and General Dynamics’ MultiINT Analysis and Archive System (MAAS).

Using Pursuer can be relatively easy for analysts. “Pursuer is really elegant. Users simply write plug-ins to different servers and tool sets for all source exploitation,” noted Robinson. “You can load the NVS plug-in to access the data in theater and then all you need is the web URL.” Abetted by leveraging the best practices of the broadcast industry, the NVS program and its partners achieved FMV milestones, providing U.S. and coalition military customers with NVS tools that work like a boosted version of a consumer video delivery service. NVS users at all levels can order the motion imagery they need, based on how they define it and which mobile device they www.GIF-kmi.com

are using. They search for video relevant to a specific time and location using keywords and phrases. And there is no risk of bandwidth gorging.

“Much like Netflix, we don’t care where the data is. One node is in Missouri, and another’s in Florida. You’re just pulling what you asked for, conserving bandwidth in that manner. You’re not sending files across the network, only bringing what you need,” said Turner. “We have broadcast industry consultants on our team. We’re applying the same type of technology they use, plus the value added from our users who tag and make the data searchable.”

The primary difference between the broadcast industry and military motion imagery is the huge data collection from FMV, WAMI, WAS and other sources altogether.

“Commercial broadcast streams and military streams are similar, although the military has a larger area for metadata, timing and synchronization,” said Blank. “When you are collecting for the military, the metadata will be much larger. You are collecting

been looking at better ways more imagery than you are to do searches with more and for commercial broadcasting. better metadata. That’s the When you step it up to wide real key to making the data area, you are then collecting useful after the fact.” a lot more and you have additional video sources happening at the same time, so the Enterprise amount of information rises Collaboration exponentially.”

The ongoing work on The development of a metadata reflects the milithin client in NVS Version Len DiGregorio tary’s big-data challenge.

2.0 provided web-based capa“With millions of minutes of bility for GEOINT analysts to FMV archived from Air Force collaborate across the enterPredators and Reapers, we do prise on the development of the best we can at tagging all finished product. “It permits the data with date, time and a clips or chips of video posted geolocation,” said Self. as discreet intelligence prod“But we still don’t have ucts, as elements of a multithe metadata tagging to INT finished product,” noted search certain characterisLen DiGregorio, program tics we need,” he continued. manager, FMV and WAMI, at “We can’t search ‘sniper’ with Lockheed Martin.

Bruce Gutcher metadata to discover where The NVS baseline now snipers are active at what time and location. supports any type of user, whether it’s the We have to know where to look. So we have warfighter in theater or the intelligence

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GIF 10.7 | 19

analyst studying patterns and change detection. “The system allows users to create metadata tags that are immediately searchable. When the tag is queried and located, NVS streams the video to the user at the exact location the tag was created, all in mere seconds,” said Bruce Gutcher, NVS program manager, Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed’s Audacity exploitation tool offers a telestration feature that allows users to pause a video and draw a box around an area of interest, which then automatically becomes a metadata tag associated with whatever word or words the user chooses.

“We recognized that direct video markup was a desired feature, so we built it into our Audacity solution. The telestration is a software function which does not require any special device,” Gutcher said, noting that the company is in the process of adding graphics features.

NVS comes with Audacity, although the company works actively to support other tools. “Lockheed Martin’s vision is an open analytical framework. We currently use Pursuer and are updating to provide MAAS users access to our data. We have not devoted time to comparing Audacity to the other tools, but are focused on enabling other tools to access the system’s data holdings. Our goal is not to supplant tools currently in use but to increase their capability,” Gutcher said.

General Dynamics’ MAAS provides automated processing, exploitation and dissemination to the Department of Defense and intelligence community at any point in the enterprise workflow. MAAS enables activity based intelligence (ABI), which uses social media such as Facebook to analyze the time-sensitive activities and interactions of individuals or groups with the environment. Sensor imagery locates the ABI geographically.

“MAAS incorporates WAS and WAMI as well as FMV. Based upon analyst feedback, General Dynamics integrated the Pursuer player into the MAAS framework, employing an AFRL standard to achieve wide area intelligence interoperability,” said Mike Manzo, director, Geospatial Solutions, Imagery Systems Division, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.

Without standards, it would be next to impossible to exploit all the data streaming in, considering the different data formats and file structures from such data contributors as the Joint Warfighting Analysis 20 | GIF 10.7

Center, the Distributed Common Ground System or NATO, with its large volume streaming data (LVSD), a designation of motion imagery sensors. In addition, ground sensors and space unmanned systems with various sensor payloads have varying formats and structures.

Much of the LVSD uses the JPEG 2000 standard, created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 2000 for image compression, and adopted by MISB and the National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF). A MISB standard in progress will address metadata and file formats for the interchange of LVSD data.

MISB standards have significantly bolstered advances in the use of metadata.

The most important standard for the NVS and NMIS program is the Motion Imagery Standards Profile (MISP) current version 6.3, which specifies motion imager and metadata encoding. “The MISP current version 6.3 is the guiding document for the community to follow to ensure interoperability of motion imagery,” said Blank.

MISP 6.3 contains various numbered standards. One is for metadata on unmanned platforms, sensor location and orientation. Another, the MISB MMS, establishes the set of metadata elements needed for discovery and retrieval of source imagery and situational awareness for ISR missions.

MISB developed this standard jointly with the NITF and NIAT. General Dynamics integrated the MAAS underlying web services with NVS, including the ability to search by any value defined in the MISB MMS. “This provides greater query capability and more refined data retrieval to all end users,” said Manzo. “General Dynamics also implemented a new search interface to allow MAAS analysts to search NVS holdings by the same minimum metadata set, allowing analysts federated data access to FMV.”

Big-Data Issues MISB standards use the key length value (KLV) data encoding standard to embed information in video feeds. Pixia supports KLV, the JPEG 2000 standard for data dissemination, NITF formats, MISB standard data formats and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services for interfacing, Robinson noted.

To facilitate a solution to the big-data problem resulting from differently designed WAMI sensors, Pixia authored the WAMI

Web Services specification, which provides features and functions to handle big data coming from various sensors and platforms.

Using a type of HyperText Transfer Protocol grammar modeled on existing standards, the WAMI spec provides a scalable, high-performance WAMI interface and is now a candidate standard in the OGC. To answer the call for standards compliance, Harris is migrating all its interfaces to be OGC compliant in NVS. The OGC does not have one motion imagery standard. “To meet the needs of motion imagery, we have a stack of standards that play well together,” said George Percivall, OGC chief architect.

The OGC currently has nine test bed phases to develop advanced states of interoperability, the latest being OGC Web Services-9 (OWS-9) and OWS-8. NIAT was one of the sponsors on both. OWS-9 provides the fusion of motion imagery from airborne and ground-based platforms and the recognition and characterization of observed objects, features and events. It also references MISB and NATO standards.

“The key result of OWS-8 was to implement the NATO standard for tracking information within a motion imagery stream by feature, say, to identify a moving car. To identify a feature you want to track, a box is placed on the motion imagery, which follows that car as the video plays,” said Percivall.

It’s not surprising the military has so many diverse sensor types, data formats and file structures considering the nature of the business. “Most DoD sensor systems have been implemented in war mode, with crisis additions to the architecture. Now, given the increasing involvement of NIAT with sensor developers, we are seeing increasing compliance with standards and improvements in motion imagery quality,” said Self.

The NVS is now beginning to address the loss of quality resulting from sensors getting dirty or shaking during takeoff or landing, analog to digital conversion or encoding and decoding the data. There is also time sensitivity of motion imagery that causes random delays. “There is still significant work to do, involving the variety of sensors. We still need video quality monitoring tools to optimize the network to work with video to maintain image quality,” said Self. 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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Two current NGA efforts look ahead while defining, studying and analyzing current capabilities and technology applications.

By Laura Lundin

For many organizations, shrinking budgets and constrained resources mean slashing existing programs and limiting future investments. But how do decision makers determine where to cut and where to invest while limiting risks often associated with new technologies and aging legacy systems?

For the geospatial intelligence community, the answer lies in computer models, data sets, visualization tools, system configurations and an increased awareness of system capabilities.

www.GIF-kmi.com

GIF 10.7 | 23

Two current efforts—underway in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Office of Geospatial Intelligence Management (OGM) Frontiers Division— apply these tools and techniques to help the GEOINT community look to the future while defining, studying and analyzing current capabilities and technology applications.

The division’s modeling and simulation efforts and the Community Information Needs Forecast (CINF) database work hand in hand to ensure that intelligence community and Department of Defense leaders and National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG) partners have up-to-date, data-driven information at their disposal to objectively inform their decision making.

The Frontiers Division builds upon today’s GEOINT capabilities by identifying potential “system after next” systems, which can take years to design, build and deploy.

Given these lengthy development cycles, the CINF database is crucial to understanding current system capabilities and building fact-based, objective recommendations for future ones, often in response to queries from the GEOINT functional manager (NGA Director Letitia A. Long), Congress, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Community Forecast Primarily supporting the NSG modeling and simulation community, the CINF outlines a target set populated with information on the community’s GEOINT requirements and systems’ performance measures from partners around the world.

Starting as a simple dBase II file in 1990, the CINF is now a large, complex, relational database that contains projected future imagery and geospatial information needs for the NSG and documents the community’s end-to-end intelligence foundation, peacetime and crisis requirements.

Built to represent the needs of the NSG user, the Frontiers Division, Future Needs Branch, maintains the CINF and engages with NSG and Allied System for Geospatial Intelligence members to identify intelligence priority areas and projected requirements.

“The CINF provides a holistic snapshot of projected GEOINT needs 10 to 15 years in the future,” 24 | GIF 10.7

said Robert Spans, chief of OGM’s Current and Future Needs Branch. “We reach out routinely to the subject matter experts and ask them to think hard about the types of information they will need to answer their GEOINT problems.”

The CINF impacts future GEOINT operations by validating GEOINT user needs coupled with an evaluation of possible gaps in capabilities across the NSG, said Spans.

This ensures the CINF represents community needs for GEOINT capabilities that are robust, flexible, integrated and readily available—providing a critical baseline on which to advance GEOINT. Building on the CINF’s tools and information, OGM’s modeling and simulation program generates “computer models that simulate the performance of GEOINT systems in an effort to analyze their performance and explore alternatives,” said Riley Jay, chief of OGM’s Modeling and Simulation branch.

Initially, the CINF team produces a subset of the CINF database, tailored to the anticipated global and regional needs appropriate to the questions at hand and supportive of multiple scenarios.

The modeling team then defines the sensor, intelligence cycle requirements and operations concept for the architecture being modeled. These elements are combined with the tailored CINF needs information and input into OGM modeling tools, which provide quantity and quality collection statistics over a specific time period for the system being modeled. The CINF’s visualization tools provide breakouts of day by day and cumulative collection results, which can be broken down by things such as architecture, sensor type and target type.

These performance results may also be incorporated into a value model that combines multiple metrics into a single utility value, which can then be plotted to show systems’ performance versus cost of investment.

“Having an unbiased, hard numbers analysis of performance and of alternatives for the overall GEOINT architecture helps decision makers determine where investments are needed while at the same time providing our GEOINT stakeholders a better understanding of how their requirements are going to be satisfied,” Jay said.

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have focused on specific questions or systems from GEOINT partners concerned with systems’ performance while facing looming budget cuts.

“In some cases, the studies allowed us to show our partners what the realistic possibilities were and give them an opportunity to refine their original requirements to help ensure cost savings without negative impact to the mission,” Jay said.

One such partner at the Defense Intelligence Agency is U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JFCC-ISR).

“OGM has been a vital partner in supporting efforts to improve national and tactical modeling and simulation products and service available to the combatant commands and defense leadership,” said Bob Metcalf, chief, JFCC-ISR Modeling and Analysis Support Branch.

According to Metcalf, OGM’s models and studies have helped DoD and IC senior leadership make timely, well-informed decisions by distilling complex geospatial intelligence questions down to necessary details in a concise, accurate and repeatable fashion.

This is evident in the 18-month, communitywide 2010–2011 Integrated Radar Way Ahead (IRWA) study, which aimed to inform IC and DoD senior decision makers on the NSG future radar architecture.

Within IRWA, NGA’s modelers led the Modeling and Simulation Working Group, which included six teams from the NSG-ASG community running models and integrating results into the final assessment.

“Where previous community studies would have multiple teams working independently, the Radar Way Ahead study was very much an integrated effort, with everyone working together,” Jay said.

This integrated approach has distinct advantages over past efforts, including an increase in decision makers’ confidence in the results. “Having the various models packaged together showed decision makers not only a range of possibilities but the similarities provided by multiple models,” Jay said.

The team’s understanding of how diverse operational procedures could influence system performance encouraged them to look at the scenarios differently, leading to a more critical, well-rounded assessment.

“Ultimately, we are really about informing our decision makers so they can shape our future architecture,” Jay said.

26 | GIF 10.7

Defining Future Efforts Both the CINF and OGM’s modeling and simulation efforts are vital to ensuring the community’s success. By developing robust system data sets and operating advanced models and quantitative tools with analytic flexibility, OGM can address a range of scenarios, deliver results quickly and enable independent verification and validation of analyses.

Given today’s austere budget conditions and evolving analytic environment, these objective evaluations grow in importance.

The criticality of meeting NSG users’ mission needs, while being good stewards of public investment, necessitates a rigorous examination of each GEOINT capability. As national security priorities evolve, NSG commitments to global and defense operations will continue to demand timely and accurate GEOINT support to U.S. and allied missions around the world.

Additionally, the Frontiers Division is expanding modeling efforts and data sets, providing new capabilities to better inform NSG leadership. The group is working to include phenomenologies like overhead persistent infrared and light detection and ranging, both of which have seen increased usage in GEOINT operations, such as during the 2010 Haiti earthquake humanitarian and recovery efforts.

“OGM is leading the way in developing modeling and simulation techniques for accurately representing contributions of emerging capabilities, like OPIR, to the warfighter,” Metcalf said. “They have excelled at making sure GEOINT capabilities are well-understood and accounted for, guaranteeing the best level of support is provided to its mission partners and customers.” O Laura Lundin is with the NGA Office of Geospatial Intelligence Management. This article originally appeared in the September/October issue of Pathfinder, the magazine of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency.

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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INDUSTRY RASTER Video, GIS and ISR Technologies Support the Warfighter PAR Government Systems Corporation has received a contract from the Army Contracting Command/Aberdeen Proving Ground Natick Contracting Division to provide advanced full motion video (FMV), GIS and ISR software and hardware technologies. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract has a five-year period of performance with a total contract ceiling value of $48 million. The contract supports rapid response capability for the FMV, GIS and ISR technologies required in forward

Sensors and Geolocation Technology Find GPS Jammers ITT Exelis has announced the Exelis GPS Interference, Detection and Geolocation (IDG) system, which will provide near realtime geolocation of intentional and unintentional GPS jamming sources through a network of sensors and advanced geolocation technology. IDG technology is based upon a network of threat detection sensors that are networked to a centralized server running Exelis-developed geolocation algorithms. These sensors would be strategically located around high-risk areas, such as airports or utility grids, to instantaneously sense and triangulate the location of the jamming source.

Should a threat be detected, users would receive pinpoint geolocation information and actionable intelligence in order to respond.

The Exelis solution would benefit a broad range of GPS customers and users. Jamming devices can send out signals capable of disrupting the synchronization of a utility power grid and creating significant infrastructure and economic damage. In each of these scenarios, IDG would detect, analyze and geolocate the hostile signal, sending the intelligence through a secure network in order for the user to mitigate the threat.

Jared Adams; jared.adams@exelisinc.com

28 | GIF 10.7

theaters of operation for both U.S. military and coalition warfighters.

PAR Government has been working with the Natick Contracting Division and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Battle Management Directorate, Force Protection Division to streamline the transition of nearready, ready and working technologies to the warfighter.

Chris Byrnes; chris_byrnes@partech.com

New Framework Supports Agency Cloud Transition Cloudcuity from NJVC is a new framework for the company’s cloud service offerings designed to help customers transition their technology applications to a cloud environment while cutting spending, improving process and billing efficiencies, and complying with a myriad of regulatory and security requirements. The first service being introduced under the framework is the Cloudcuity Management Portal—the first commercial, multi-cloud broker service specifically designed to support federal government customers. The underlying technology behind the Cloudcuity Management Portal is a

unified cloud life cycle management platform, cloudMatrix, created and powered by Gravitant. The platform allows users to try, design and price an array of services from multiple cloud providers before placing an order or spending any money. The cloud providers currently offering their services through the Cloudcuity Management Portal are Amazon, GoGrid, Savvis and Terremark.

Amazon GovCloud is expected to be available through the portal by midOctober. NJVC and Gravitant also are evaluating a number of other cloud providers for future integration in the portal.

GPS III Satellite Passes Launch Readiness Exercise Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have successfully completed the first launch readiness exercise for the Air Force’s next generation GPS III satellites.

The exercise is a key milestone demonstrating the team remains on schedule to achieve launch availability in 2014. The Lockheed Martin-built GPS III satellites and the Raytheon-developed next generation GPS operational control system, known as OCX, are critical elements of the Air Force effort to affordably replace aging GPS satellites while improving capability to meet the evolving demands of military, commercial and civilian users worldwide. This is the first space and ground enterprise successfully building the ground control and space vehicles by two independent prime contractors. The launch readiness exercise, completed over a three-day period by mission operations personnel, validated the basic satellite command and control functions, tested the software and hardware interfaces and

demonstrated basic on-console procedures required for space vehicle contacts during the launch and early orbit mission.

Michael Friedman; michael.1.friedman@lmco.com Kim Warth; kim.j.warth@raytheon.com www.GIF-kmi.com

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Software Offers Improved Support for Landsat Imagery To assist scientists and land and resources managers in evaluating the earth’s changing landscape, Esri has announced further improved support for Landsat imagery, including simplified workflows for ArcGIS 10.1 for Desktop and improvements in the World Landsat Services on ArcGIS Online. In addition, Esri and the Department of the Interior worked closely to make all Landsat Global Land Survey (GLS) imagery, including the latest—GLS 2010—available through dynamic, multispectral, multitemporal image services on ArcGIS Online. Landsat 7, the current earth observation satellite, produces 30-meter-resolution, calibrated, multispectral imagery in 185 by 185-kilometer scenes. The imagery is free for use by everyone and has become a rich data resource for agriculture, forestry, natural resources exploration and many other industries. The existing Landsat image services were refined by adding the GLS 2010 dataset and improving the visual quality with radiometric enhancement.

Army Geospatial Center Orders Enterprise Services Support The Army Geospatial Center (AGC) has awarded a prime contract to Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to provide geospatial research, intelligence and support related to geospatial enterprise services (GES). The indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract has a one-year base period of performance, four one-year options, and a total contract value of $200 million, if all options are exercised. The AGC provides the warfighter with timely, accurate and relevant geospatial information, capabilities and domain expertise for Army Geospatial Enterprise implementation in support of unified land operations. Under the contract, SAIC will provide geospatial research, intelligence and support services, including: systems engineering and software development processes related to GES; develop, inte-

grate and operate various ISR payload systems; joint capabilities technology demonstrations relevant to GES and C4 ISR requirements; and acquire, fuse and disseminate geospatial information and other sources at various echelons.

Meanwhile, SAIC executives recently announced a plan to separate into two independent, publicly traded companies. The two separate organizations would be a technical services business focused on government technical services and enterprise IT businesses, and a solutions-focused business concentrated on delivering science and technology solutions in the national security, engineering and health markets.

Melissa Koskovich; melissa.l.koskovich@saic.com Jennifer Gephart; jennifer.a.gephart@saic.com

Appliances Offer Efficient Big-Data Storage Solution Cleversafe, the solution for limitless data storage, has announced a new series of storage appliances, based on Intel Xeon processors, to achieve performance level throughput for ingesting and storing data at Exabyte scale. Cleversafe’s new 3000 series of appliances can be configured in a system capable of capturing data at 1 Terabyte per second at Exabyte capacity, making the company’s Object-based Dispersed Storage solution extremely effective for high levels of data throughput. The 3000 series of appliances allows thousands of simultaneous readers/writers to maintain continuous, aggregate performance at a data throughput rate of 1-TB/second in a 10-Exabyte system configuration. The Object-based Dispersed Storage technology combined with the performance benefits of Intel Xeon processors delivers the most reliable, costeffective and power-efficient big-data storage solution in the industry.

Agreement Offers Online Imagery Dissemination GeoEye and Fugro have announced an agreement for online imagery dissemination through Fugro World, Fugro’s global portal for delivery of data and solutions. GeoEye’s EyeQ platform will be integrated with Fugro World to support online access to satellite imagery. Fugro is a provider for the collection and interpretation of data about the earth’s surface and sub-surface. Through Fugro World, clients are able to seamlessly discover, order and obtain data from multiple sources and suppliers in a single website. Fugro chose

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GeoEye’s EyeQ platform for its ability to provide online access to premium high-resolution satellite imagery content from an extensive global catalogue, as well as new collections using the GeoEye-1/ IKONOS constellation. EyeQ offers fully managed service in the cloud, a scalable infrastructure and the availability of open and secure standard Web services.

Caitlin Carroll; ccarroll@gibraltar-llc.com

GIF 10.7 | 29

Vision Deliverer

Q& A

Providing Accurate, Timely GEOINT to Deployed Forces Letitia A. Long Director National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Letitia A. Long was appointed director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on August 9, 2010.

Prior to her appointment, Long served as deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from May 2006 until July 2010. Previously, she was the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence (policy, requirements, and resources) from June 2003 until May 2006. She also served as the deputy director of naval intelligence from July 2000 to June 2003 and as the director of central intelligence’s executive director for intelligence community affairs from January 1998 to June 2000, where she was responsible for communitywide policy formulation, resource planning, and program assessment and evaluation.

Long entered civilian federal service with the Navy in 1978 as a project engineer in training with the David Taylor Research Center. Upon completion of her degree in 1982, she continued with the David Taylor Research Center for six years, working on various submarine acoustic sensor programs. In 1988, she joined the Office of the Director of Naval Intelligence, where she managed intelligence research and development programs.

Long was selected into the Senior Intelligence Executive Service in July 1994 and was dual-hatted as the director, Requirements, Plans, Policy, and Programs Office for the Navy intelligence staff, as well as the director of resource management for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). From 1994 to 1996, she was on rotational assignment from ONI to the DIA as the director of military intelligence staff. In 1996, Long joined DIA as the deputy director for information systems and services, where she directed DIA’s worldwide information technology and communications programs. She was also DIA’s first chief information officer.

Long earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech and a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from the Catholic University of America.

Long was interviewed by GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly.

Q: What is the status of EnhancedView and the community’s use of commercial satellite imagery?

A: Commercial imagery remains an essential element of the U.S. government’s geospatial portfolio. Working closely with industry partners, we restructured EnhancedView in a way that ensures national security priorities continue to be met in the context of national fiscal realities. Commercial imagery is a unique resource in many respects, including the capability to www.GIF-kmi.com

simultaneously collect panchromatic and multispectral imagery.

The intelligence community and Department of Defense rely on these and other aspects of commercial imagery to meet many of our information needs. High-quality commercial imagery will continue to be a critical information source for policymakers, analysts, operators and allies to support a range of national security and civil requirements.

Q: How is NGA’s support for the warfighter changing given our country’s plans for the drawdown of forward-deployed forces?

A: Our mission remains the same: to provide accurate, timely geospatial intelligence to support our deployed forces. One change that models deep and positive impact across the National System for Geospatial Intelligence [NSG] is the Mini-Southwest Asia Strategic Node [Mini-SWASN] in Afghanistan. This new capability, fielded in July 2012 by NGA with our partners’ support, consolidates data and information collected by several ISR platforms in a single location. Mini-SWASN also provides GEOINT exploitation tools, including visualization services. Analysts both in and out of theater can use all of these capabilities in a unified manner, without needing to access different software, hardware, GIF 10.7 | 31

or systems. This is just one example of how NGA and the NSG work together with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force to ensure that our support meets the warfighter’s needs.

Q: What are NGA’s most significant achievements in supporting operations in Afghanistan? What did you learn about how GEOINT can best serve tactical operations?

A: We are very proud of the positive feedback on our support to the warfighter. The MiniSWASN mentioned above provides substantial support to operations. We also delivered the Theater Integrated GEOINT System, which among other capabilities advances the use of hyper-spectral imagery to support the warfighter. And we pioneered methods for geospatially representing the battle space in ways that are easily understood and usable by a variety of coalition forces.

Our most significant support, though, continues to be through our people. Our expert and experienced workforce deploys in theater to work alongside our armed forces, providing on-the-spot GEOINT knowledge at all levels: from kinetic operations to peace and reintegration activities, local government redistricting projects, or to helping resolve international border disputes. It is our people who have had the most—and most positive—impact on our country’s operations in Afghanistan.

In addressing GEOINT 2011 last year, Director Long said that NGA was building “irreversible momentum.”

[Photo courtesy of Oscar Einzig]

Q: Please elaborate on the NGA strategy’s call for transitioning the agency from a product producer to a content and services provider.

A: We are fundamentally transforming how we deliver GEOINT content and services to all our partners and customers, who are exceptionally diverse and require a wide variety of GEOINT support for their missions. To this end, we will ensure that GEOINT content is discoverable, accessible and usable across multiple security domains. We will develop and share new analytic methodologies that take advantage of the full spectrum of geospatial phenomenologies, and draw on traditional and nontraditional sources alike. We will provide an online environment that enables these capabilities and more, including virtual collaboration with our in-house experts across all disciplines.

We are already changing our static “product line” to a model emphasizing that intelligence, including GEOINT, is never really “finished.” Intelligence must be continuously refreshed as new source data and analyses yield useful results. GEOINT content will span the range of data, information and aggregate knowledge provided by both NGA and our partners, and will include continuous intelligence reporting, live imagery feeds and dynamically updated feature foundation data. The realization of our strategy is essential to NGA’s mission, and we’re excited to partner with the entire GEOINT community to accomplish it.

32 | GIF 10.7

Q: What steps are you taking to foster information sharing and interoperability through an open IT environment?

A: Open IT is at the heart of almost everything we plan to accomplish. We will enable highly interactive engagements with all of our partners, who will not only consume our content and services but will themselves contribute new information and sources that we will make available to everyone. We are engaged on the Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise through our expeditionary architecture. We are integrating with the IC’s cloud computing and common desktop environment. We are working closely with DoD’s chief information officer on the Joint Information Environment.

Our biggest step so far is the launch of the Integrated Analytic Environment [IAE]. The IAE is a lightweight environment developed to provide users with the ability to dynamically change their virtual workspace based on the issue at hand, and to allow the rapid deployment of new tools for intelligence analysis and production. Users can customize their virtual workspace with apps, widgets, workflow and data services. All they need to use the IAE is a browser. The IAE is currently available on JWICS, secret and unclassified domains, and will be further expanding in terms of capabilities to benefit thousands of users on multiple domains in 2013.

All of this is underpinned by the NSG Operational Workspace [NOW], which provides the processing, storage and capacity www.GIF-kmi.com

needed to extend these capabilities to NSG users no matter their location. NOW already provisions the largest virtual desktop infrastructure in the federal government, and we are working with the Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] to provide this capability to the entire IC. The first users will come online next spring.

These activities will move us together with the community into an era of enterprise services and shared responsibility. While it will be hard work, we are committed to our joint success.

Q: How is NGA enhancing its analytic capabilities, including the anticipatory analysis described in the NGA strategy?

A: One great example is how we can use the IAE to layer reference nautical charts, ports and mobile offshore drilling units with temporally enabled content like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data on weather, hurricane tracks and flood levels. We have used this capability to identify transit routes for readiness, response, and recovery support. Our analysts are now using geospatial and temporal models, such as those within our Decision Support Tool, to streamline the discovery process, standardize repeatable analysis [for example, what roads are covered with water in a flood, eliminating ingress and egress routes], and automate anticipatory analysis [for example, what roads, piers and airfields would not be accessible if this area floods more]. The power of these tools increases dramatically

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as more content is service enabled, and therefore discoverable and visualized within applications. For example, our partners at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have exposed the power grid status as both content and as a mobile application, which first responders and reach-back analysts can use in real time for their immediate needs.

While NGA will develop some applications, we are banking that most will be developed by our expert partners in government, industry and academia, and made available to everyone through our GEOINT App Store. We will also integrate partner content through standards like Open Geospatial Consortium web services.

Q: How are analysts gaining ground on anticipatory analysis?

A: We’ve begun a dramatic shift and are evolving away from being predominantly “producers of products.” Take for example our facilities outlines and range ring widgets. We use these to call reference vector information and dynamically apply it against specific analytic problems. Analytic assessments can be developed in minutes, enabling analysts to capture, document and publish their findings very quickly.

We’ve applied innovative solutions to meet critical requirements, like the response to Hurricane Isaac. These include automated flood extents, a tool that automatically creates shape files outlining areas inundated by flood waters that are detected using commercial synthetic aperture radar imagery. With our map atlas app, we compiled and exposed before-and-after imagery, and shape files of flooded areas were published as a disaster planning atlas in the GEOINT App Store. Updates were available to decision makers within hours of Isaac’s impact.

We’re actively using our new country-specific violent events viewer. This visualization capability allows analysts to identify underlying sociocultural factors that can help predict violent events. For example, users interact with our structured data holdings to better understand violent events in Yemen through a geospatial lens. Users can query the type of event, the actors involved, and dates of incidents to create custom views that meet their specific needs.

We also have a new product for senior policymakers. At its heart is a single, page-sized graphic—frequently built on a map with insets, annotations and text boxes—that portrays strategic developments at a glance. Policymakers can drill down, as needed, to a wealth of supporting text, sources, and background data. This new product is portable, easy to use on a tablet or other mobile devices, and serves as a simple and intuitive entrée to our GEOINT. Q: How is the “three tier” service model working in practice?

A: It’s pretty complex, but we are gaining ground. I mentioned the IAE earlier. Users can now configure their own desktops and select from a wide variety of applications without waiting for a technician to load software on their workstations. They can use available capabilities on demand, tailored to the analytic problem they are working at any given time. We had a recent example of an analyst identifying a new feature using IAE widgets, overlaying the feature location in her IAE map, and sharing a draft product with IC counterparts—all in about www.GIF-kmi.com

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10 minutes. Without the IAE, the analyst would have worked all day to assess the information and then create the same product.

A great example of assisted service is how we are increasingly managing content. Senior NGA analysts select and bundle key intelligence products on a particular topic or theme, and share these collections online. Any user can access the collections as an alternative to searching or browsing for themselves. And when a user’s particular interest is not featured in a collection, she can use advanced search capabilities with pre-defined “dials” or “filters” to drill down to content that meets her needs.

We’ll use these types of capabilities and others to provide full service when customers need a little extra help. Knowing our partner and customer base as I do, though, I am confident we’ll see an explosion of self- and assisted service as we open up the IAE and other capabilities to thousands of users in the next several months.

Q: How are you advancing functional management as a means of unifying the broader GEOINT community?

A: We are focusing on aligning GEOINT priorities with available resources. We now have an NSG assessments program, where we have invited NSG members to share information on the GEOINT disci- NGA last year opened its NGA Campus East facility in Springfield, Va. [Photos courtesy of NGA] pline as practiced in their organizaQ: What advances in human geography would you like to see tions and to suggest areas where we can align capabilities and in order to help that discipline realize its full potential for eliminate redundancies. These NSG assessments are creating a intelligence? shared understanding of community GEOINT capabilities and programs, and will inform the establishment of an NSG-wide A: I look forward in 2013 to significantly more multi-agency strategy with goals and objectives that guide unified solutions human geography production, not only with the combatant comto GEOINT challenges. mands, but with DIA and other IC agencies, the service intelSuccessful functional management also relies on standards ligence centers, and others. Our Senior Steering Group, with and policies. In today’s collaborative and interoperable environrepresentatives from the intelligence agencies, military services ment, we must embrace and apply standards for technical capaand several federal agencies, has this year laid the foundation for bilities, data management and storage, analytic reporting and this outcome. We also made headway this year on human geogtradecraft, and other GEOINT elements. The development of raphy tradecraft, data standards and data storage. We will conNSG policies has focused and matured our community. We are tinue to drive for tradecraft improvements that integrate human starting to see more sharing of information across the commugeography data in products and analysis. We will also codify and nity, and with international partners. As with any activity, we implement additional standards for our disparate data sources, have a lot more to accomplish, but I am encouraged by our progand in so doing make human geography content more discoverress and know that we each approach functional management able, accessible and usable. O with the best interests of our national security in mind.

36 | GIF 10.7

www.GIF-kmi.com

Transforming Government Through Location Intelligence An interview with Matthew Gentile, Matthew Gentile is a principal at Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP and leads the Geospatial Analytics Group. Matt has more than a decade of experience providing world-class strategic consulting and software development services toward the collaborative exchange, display, and analysis of geospatial content.

Deloitte recently published a report on how location intelligence is transforming government entitled, The Power of Zoom.

What is the concept behind the study?

What’s exciting to me is how several disruptive forces are transforming geospatial technology from a “power user” analytical tool into a universal platform for decision-making. GEOINT practitioners are familiar with the evolution of geospatial software, but it’s the convergence of these technologies with location-aware mobile devices and sensors, found on everything from buildings to buses, that is creating new opportunities for government. The wealth of location data provided on a daily basis by these objects — the “digital exhaust” created as a byproduct of millions of our daily lives — can power new models for gathering and delivering geospatial intelligence, help the intelligence community better understand the challenges of diverse communities, and design more effective solutions tailored to place.

The Power of Zoom discusses how this convergence of technologies changes the way policymakers and mission planners see and understand our world—when each point on the map can provide an historical and predictive perspective on the mission, and the map itself has been transformed from a static picture to a living platform for shared decision-making and real-time collaboration, we stand to make a leap in geospatial intelligence tradecraft.

In the report, Deloitte argues that the use of location intelligence is accelerating—what is driving the evolution of location intelligence?

I think there are two key factors. First is the increasing prevalence of connected devices that are able to provide location information.

For example, we spoke with a team from the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory about a project they did called Trash Track. By attaching location sensors to thousands of objects and

following the objects over the course of a few months, the team was able to visualize the invisible infrastructure of our waste disposal network; in one case following a printer cartridge that traveled almost 4,000 miles from Seattle to its final resting place in Florida.

It’s staggering to think of the implications for government when sensor technology is so cheap we can literally throw it away.

Second, the “location-based arms race” currently going on between Apple and Google, perhaps Amazon will be next, with their mobile mapping platforms is indicative of how valuable location is as an organizing paradigm. Users love it because they can receive contextualized information that is relevant to their location at any given point in time, and providers benefit from permission-based sharing of user locations, destinations, and local search habits; data that is highly valuable to target services and customize products. Similarly for government, location services allow agencies to push context-based information to their field operators based upon where they are, while capturing a wealth of geospatial data that enables decision makers to visualize the choices individuals make, the relationships we create, and the impact of our actions based upon the relationship to place.

How will some of the topics discussed in The Power of Zoom affect the tradecraft of GEOINT? This study outlines the potential of location intelligence through three lenses: seeing the big picture to make better policy decisions with geospatial analytics; finding a common focus by using place-based collaboration to improve program delivery; and creating a new frame by designing new delivery models with locationbased data. I believe that all three approaches have implications for GEOINT. Some new approaches to geospatial analytics, particularly in regards to the combination of traditional GIS and imagery with social data from the Web and social media, tells us something about human geography which we are only beginning to understand. New boundaries are emerging and old ones erased, yielding to understand communities based on behavior, not traditional geopolitical borders.

As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.

Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

Copyright © 2012 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

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From the collaboration perspective, the GEOINT community has recognized the impact of cloud-based storage to share geodata, but something we’re just starting to think about is how to use the abundance of open source data that can be (is) geo-tagged. For example, what is the appropriate role of crowd-sourced tools, such as Open Street Map (OSM) or Ushahidi, in GEOINT? How does it get integrated into decision-making? These kinds of issues are increasingly common questions for executives.

From a new models perspective, I think Sandy Pentland from the MIT Media Lab describes it well—our devices know us better than we do, and can illustrate real behaviors vs. what we believe about ourselves and our communities. The result is the ability to deliver field operators, or citizens, with the information they really want and need, based upon where they are and what they’re doing.

How is location intelligence powering innovation in government?

Government is certainly at the front of the curve when it comes to imagery collection and analysis and The Power of Zoom report describes how innovation with location analytics and the implementation of new operating models is also happening in smaller, more nimble organizations—in nonprofits, tech startups, academia, and also in cities. In Boston, the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics created a new mobile app called Street Bump that runs in the background on a user’s phone and collects data about road conditions, particularly potholes, via the accelerometer in the device. Each bump gets measured and geotagged, giving the city a real-time picture of road conditions. That kind of passive geodata collection is just one example of a whole new range of possibilities for information gathering, and service delivery for government.

For more information on how to put “zoom” into practice in your organization, download the full report at www.deloitte.com/us/zoom.

The power of zoom Transactions. Tweets. Texts. Big Data. Learn how government can leverage the power of zoom to develop policies and deploy services informed by place, overcoming the challenges that seize the gears of good policy making. www.deloitte.com/us/zoom

As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.

Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

Copyright © 2012 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited

Industry’s Intel Role

Key executives examine the private sector’s current and future contributions to the intelligence enterprise.

GIF recently posed the following question to executives of leading GEOINT companies: “What is the appropriate role for industry in the U.S. intelligence enterprise, and how do you see that changing in the future?” Their responses appear below.

Positioned for Partnering By showcasing thought leadership and forward-looking solutions, contractors can proactively introduce new innovations to government.

By Marv Gordner Senior Program Manager, Mission Support Solutions Division MorganFranklin

With sequestration looming and U.S. troop drawdowns almost completed in Iraq and underway in Afghanistan, many defense and national security contractors are wondering what the future will hold.

Where an era of organic year-over-year growth once existed, government and industry alike are heading into more challenging times. Despite this adversity, ample opportunity exists to do meaningful work and meet the nation’s security needs both at home and abroad.

Industry members will be tasked with meeting more challenging missions with less resources, which will spur successful contractors to become increasingly nimble, agile and narrowly focused. Contractors will also need to be flexible in order to take advantage of emerging opportunities as the intelligence landscape continues to evolve.

With U.S. military missions changing drastically, contractors will be tapped to support special operations forces, counterterrorism, counter-narcotics and humanitarian efforts, as well as training missions abroad. The intelligence community will also see a growing need for international vendor vetting, which involves identifying threats and preventing hostile organizations from diverting reconstruction contracting dollars to fund nefarious activities and gain access to U.S. and coalition equipment, facilities and personnel. These ongoing missions are critical to ensuring that military efforts meet continued success long term.

Contractors will also continue to provide COTS solutions as well as build and manage UAVs and mobile communications systems.

Though pricing will be a challenge and competition will increase, 40 | GIF 10.7

most competitors will reside in professional services arenas, which will force contactors to further differentiate their offerings and solutions.

Industry must continue to position itself as a true partner to government customers. By showcasing thought leadership and forward-looking solutions, contractors can proactively introduce new innovations to government—especially in high-priority areas such as big data, cybersecurity, vendor vetting and ISR. The growing popularity of social media is also a hotbed of information for intelligence professionals who will find a plethora of opportunities to exploit this new area of information gathering.

What is the appropriate role for industry in the U.S. intelligence enterprise? It all comes down to numbers and mission complexity not diminishing, and government customers being tasked to do more with limited resources. To truly function as intelligence partners, members of industry must share this same mindset and uncover new ways to solve challenges with fewer resources.

This will involve taking on lowest price technically acceptable and fixed-price contracts. While not ideal, these types of contracts are the new reality of doing business with government. Conversely, there will be more small business set-asides for smaller contractors and veteran- and woman-owned businesses, which will create opportunity for niche players to provide new innovations.

Industry will also play a key role in offering career opportunities for military personnel as veterans transition into the private sector. The IC will experience an increase in qualified intelligence www.GIF-kmi.com

analysts moving into industry, which will strengthen the talent pool.

Contractors that employ higher numbers of veterans will be able to provide meaningful work for highly trained intelligence professionals, helping them transition into civilian life by providing additional skills and training. Most important, this investment will make contractors stronger by bringing the right talent onboard to support mission-critical work and build military partnerships.

The golden era of military growth is coming to an end, but industry will continue to be a driving force and the right partner to help keep the nation secure. It will all come down to meeting the intelligence community’s needs through proactive innovation.

Contractors that strive to be trusted partners and focus on agile solutions will continue to be a critical component for the nation’s security.

A Generation’s Challenge The intelligence enterprise needs to evolve to operate more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

By Tim Reardon President Lockheed Martin IS&GS-National

The interconnected world around us continues to move at blinding speed, introducing new threats and complexities seemingly every minute of the day. This level of challenge has become the new normal, and it requires our intelligence enterprise to move faster and more effectively to stay ahead of our adversaries.

And of course, the mission must be accomplished within difficult new fiscal realities.

We in industry have been and remain proud to be a partner in the advancement of the intelligence enterprise mission and we appreciate the urgent need to evolve as an industry. We believe that the balance of fiscal responsibility and dominating mission success is attainable. With enhanced partnership, communication and collaboration across the intelligence enterprise, industry can more effectively develop new technologies, optimize existing capabilities and establish new business models that help our national security customers get the greatest possible mission impact from their tightening budgets.

Industry stands well positioned to provide the connection between unique mission needs and the rapidly evolving world of commercial technology. When commercial technology alone is not sufficient, industry stands ready to close the needs gap rapidly. If we consider recent high profile technology trends such as advanced cyber-protection and big data analytics, we see massive investment from commercial industry. We see wonderful technology, but unfortunately we do not always see products focused on the unique needs of the intelligence mission.

For example, commercial big data analytic tools for fraud detection, web trends and market projections represent great technology, but they will not give us an advantage over our adversaries without appropriate tailoring and mission alignment. The bottom line is that off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all solutions do not create mission advantage. Mission advantage takes mission domain knowledge, innovation and smart adaptation of leading commercial technologies.

That’s where the industrial community can deliver high value impact. We can scour the markets, identify differentiating technologies, build the vendor relationships, and quickly and affordably take commercial technology up to the intelligence mission level.

We can also help to finance the development and growth of intelligence-relevant technologies and commercial start-ups. We can efficiently serve as the “app store” ofintelligence capability solutions.

At Lockheed Martin, we call that Mission-on-Demand. www.GIF-kmi.com

For far too long, the intelligence community enterprise has relied on traditional acquisition processes and business models that do not optimize the probability of mission success. The fact is we often over-rely on the mechanical interactions of the acquisition process and the hyper-branded messaging of business development to communicate. However, when we do talk to each other, collaborate and partner, we have proven we can accomplish great things.

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So how can industry make a difference? Collaborating with our customers and industry partners, we can help the intelligence enterprise by sharing more of the risk and responsibility for mission success. These “shared risk partnerships” will feature more outcome-based contracting, and a requirement for intelligence community contractors to put more skin in the game up front—a radical departure from the cost-plus mindset of the past.

The threats, opportunities and complexities of the world—combined with increasingly stressed intelligence community budgets— demand that the intelligence enterprise evolve to operate more efficiently and effectively than ever before. Industry can play a large role in this evolution, but the enabler is active collaboration with our customers.

This collaboration is in itself an investment on the parts of both industry and government: an investment that we are confident yields rewards for both parties and most importantly the intelligence mission. The results of enhanced collaboration between industry and the intelligence community are evident. In the past year, I’ve seen mission critical contracts established in less than 24 hours, high technology research and development programs delivering results in weeks instead of months or years, and everything from cyber to big-data analytics provided as scalable, outcome-based services. But there is much more work to be done. We in industry are ready for this challenge and ask you, the intelligence community enterprise, to collaborate and partner with us—now more than ever.

Winning Through Analysis Fostering and preserving innovation from the IC’s industry partners must be a core value and priority.

By George Demmy Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder TerraGo

The appropriate role of industry in the U.S. intelligence communities is the role or collection of roles that industry plays today, and, writ large, these roles probably won’t change much. What will change will be the particular ways that these roles are fulfilled by the services that industry delivers, and how these services are monetized. This is where some interesting questions lie.

In almost any aspect of the intelligence life cycle, there is probably a role that is appropriately addressable by industry. This may seem a bold claim, but consider that industry has its own intel to look after, and many of the high-level requirements and workflows are not so different. The specifics of content, applications and some of the technical challenges may be radically different, but the bulk of the essential, day-to-day, block-and-tackle chores are similar. Rather than break out and enumerate all of the similarities, let’s focus on some aspects of data collection and delivery and analysis.

One major role industry plays is as an interface between the classified and unclassified worlds. Almost by definition, the “high side” is systematically incapable of operating effectively and collaboratively with entities and actors outside the high side. There are different areas where industry can add significant value.

On the data collection side, commercial entities are uniquely positioned to collect and aggregate a wide variety of data from sensors and open-source inputs. GeoEye or DigitalGlobe can provide relevant imagery and imagery-derived products that are immediately shareable with collation partners, non-governmental organizations, other assets in theater and often our military that national technical means or other classified sensors and programs simply cannot. Google News lets you sort through what’s happening on the web and lets you email a link to share what you found with anyone in the world.

Programs like NGA’s Protected Information Exchange help, and represent a move in a very interesting and exciting direction, in my opinion. But as you look across the different theaters, you see there is an almost universal need for programs and capabilities like this and for all sorts of INT. Industry could have a role here in standing 42 | GIF 10.7

up information kiosks and services for use in troubled areas and in post-disaster situations. Moreover, these services shouldn’t be seen as one-way pushes, but rather two-way flows of information and knowledge sharing. Architecturally, the concepts are similar to those found in social media applications, which are pervasive in the consumer world.

Industry’s role in analysis is where I think there is some real potential for huge wins for the IC. Naturally, analysis is not just some monolithic activity, but rather an iterative, collaborative process with many steps that can be automated, circumvented or off-loaded to industry. Automatic contextualization of information and identification of that which has a high degree of probability of being relevant to a particular mission or interest is a service that industry must provide if the IC is going to maintain a level of capability with static or diminishing financial and human resources.

I mentioned these particular examples because they are where we at TerraGo are trying to add value as a private company in service to the IC. They are top of mind, because they address specific challenges we face when serving other, often underserved communities that elements of the IC also serve, including warfighters, law enforcement, border security and first responders. These communities operate at the security or clearance gap in the field and in theater, and industry is uniquely positioned to help bridge that gap, whether through software, systems or personnel.

One of the challenges, of course, is how industry will be able to provide these services in a sustainable fashion. Traditional means through shrinkwrap software and burning down hours at GSA rates are simple enough to understand. But as services move to on-demand and the value-add comes from making what was once impossible possible, that’s going to make for some interesting business models and negotiations.

If the IC is going to remain inside the observe, orient, decide and act loop of this country’s rivals, then fostering and preserving innovation from its industry partners must be a core value and priority. www.GIF-kmi.com

t t 5 si a 41 Vi aGo th rr oo Te T b

N OI GE

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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.

Check out TerraGo Mobile® for Android™

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Building the Next Aqueduct Industry must carefully balance providing technical knowledge and innovation with today’s tough economic times.

By Al Pisani Senior Vice President, Intelligence Group TASC and Robert Silsby Vice President, Business and Technology TASC Industry has been an essential contributor to societies and the governments that run them since the beginning of time.

Think back to antiquity and the advantage the Romans gained from building aqueducts, which connected roads and carried water throughout their empire. They weren’t built by the ruling parties, but rather designed by systems engineers and acquired by others. It’s an example of how advances in engineering and industrial achievement—and government working in partnership with industry—can aid the government and the country.

In the case of 21st-century America, our government has used industry in three ways: to gain industry’s insight and perspective on key problems and trends around the world; to acquire greater capability; and to augment staff. In the context of our nation’s intelligence community, the role of industry needs to be further sharpened as we enter an economically challenging time in which technology is advancing at an astonishing rate, both here and abroad. And it must be done in a manner that will allow the intelligence community to improve the collective ability to predict and influence global outcomes, acquire information technologies that deliver needed capabilities at less cost, and maintain qualified staff rather than settle for lowest bid offerings.

At its most fundamental level, the practice of intelligence is the placement of trust on government officials who are sworn to uphold the constitution. These officials can lead us to war or peace, resolve conflicts and stem problems. Industry’s role in intelligence is to deliver technical solutions that enable government to improve their practice of intelligence—solutions that deliver a distinctive information advantage. We can do that in four ways: by harnessing technology, retooling the workforce, providing technical knowledge and innovation, and helping government address budget constraints without putting the nation at risk.

The speed at which we can identify and harness technology to gain the information advantage will be the great differentiator for the U.S. intelligence community in the next decade. Today, industry plays an important role in applying advanced technologies to associate volumes of diverse intelligence data across the community, and applying them faster than our adversaries can identify and counter them. Because government intelligence analysts must have a deep understanding of the regional and topical trends and problems in their domain of expertise, they often don’t have the opportunity to look across data and find connections. Industry can fill that role. We don’t interpret the data, but we serve it up to the 44 | GIF 10.7

intelligence community in a way that allows them to see the big picture.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for industry is to carefully balance providing technical knowledge and innovation with today’s tough economic times. We can fulfill this role through the use of systems engineering, which is the application of technology and systems to go from what appears to be an impossible problem to an achievable solution. At TASC, we like to say systems engineering is the conduit between the need of the mission and the application of technology that enables new and better capabilities. As a consequence, our government partnership yields what the government needs, but not necessarily what it initially envisioned. The intelligence community must look to industry for ways to apply the dollars we have available to maintain our global advantage.

In today’s information-dominant world, industry’s multiple roles will not change, but how the government leverages industry must. Government should be less prescriptive of the requested outcomes; technology is evolving so quickly that an early mandate means an innovative tool can’t be inserted into the solution when it’s delivered. Government should expect shorter development timelines and lower risk by allowing for interim use to shape follow-on refinements.

Government should be willing to compromise some elements of performance, and enforce early and independent systems engineering to enable developers to repurpose COTS components for “good enough” solutions. Government also should examine the layers of oversight. With shorter timelines, less prescriptive outcomes and strong system engineering, fewer resources will be needed to cross-check developers.

It is time to challenge ourselves to alter the interchange between government and industry in ways that will raise the bar of what is technically acceptable. It is up to those of us who enable the practice of the intelligence enterprise to apply emergent technologies and provide innovative solutions within budget realities. To be successful, we need the government to define the problem and let the wheels of private-sector innovation and competition build the next aqueduct. O Robert Silsby is the former chief executive of the NRO Ground Enterprises Directorate.

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.

www.GIF-kmi.com

Partners in Risk Reduction In collaboration with government, industry will be there shoulder to shoulder to ensure mission success.

By Jane Chappell Vice President, Business Development Raytheon Intelligence & Information Systems

Without any doubt, industry is shoulder to shoulder with government in ensuring protection of our missions. We are riskreduction partners, and that is our first and foremost priority.

Technology is changing rapidly. Big data is growing exponentially. We all are in this together to assure mission success.

To that end, industry carries the role in this partnership of bringing to bear new technologies. We have to be looking continually across the horizon on behalf of the government to assess new technologies, and to determine how to introduce the best of breed into the missions.

Someone coined the phrase, “We can’t get beyond the end of our ski tips.” So this is our imperative to know when the timing is right to bring in new technology and capability without introducing undue risk.

We have proven again and again that there is a fine line to traverse in knowing how to find the right technical solution, while assuring the insertion is done at the ideal time to both advantage the capability and protect our valuable role in national security. We run pilots, we fund internal research and development, and we develop proofs of concepts—all to advance the mission.

Raytheon is partnering now, for example, with government on a pilot for the data and systems architecture that enables sharing of big data across multiple nodes in the defense intelligence information enterprise environment. We are layering on high performance analytic tools for entity resolution from emerging technology vendors.

This key industry partnership ensures we have the right architecture and the right software elements, and that end-users

www.GIF-kmi.com

have what they need to get their job done—before anyone in this partnership invests in an enterprise implementation.

These pilots give us opportunity to take an early look at various data architectures and cost models. One key task is to look at the cost trades between software license costs and bandwidth across a multi-node enterprise. We contribute our own R&D, and we are working with small highly innovative companies to make sure their products scale and work effectively in this larger enterprise.

The government has invested many decades in building strong industry partnerships across the data management space.

We are there together to ingest, process, store, manage, retrieve and present the data—and to make available valid and valuable “knowledge as a service” to the end users.

We know the data, and know how to secure it to protect not only the data, but also the mission.

That data knowledge from industry partners will become even more valuable as we together progress toward greater shared enterprises that bring better mission product and greater efficiencies to what we do.

In the future, it is certain the volume, variety and velocity of data and the vast warehouse of new technologies will continue to be overwhelming. Our co-investment partnership between government and industry becomes even more cherished in this ecosystem of insatiable demand, seemingly infinite data stores, and rapidly emerging and maturing technology.

The good news: We have fertile space for innovation. And in collaboration with the government, we will be there shoulder to shoulder to ensure mission success. O

GIF 10.7

Open source geospatial software seen as more reliable, scalable and rapidly adaptable than proprietary, closed source systems.

by

Eddie Pickle

and acquiring information technology that best fits the needs of the Defense and intelligence agencies are increasing their use of federal government, which included comments on being technolopen source geospatial software for a number of reasons. Many pology- and vendor-neutral in IT acquisitions. In particular, they noted: icy barriers that once constrained open source use have been elimi“In the context of developing requirements and planning acquisinated. Open source geospatial software is increasingly proving to be tions for software, for example, this means, as a general matter, that more reliable, scalable and rapidly adaptable than proprietary, closed agencies should analyze alternatives that include proprietary, open source software. source and mixed source technologies.”

The emergence of companies offering enterprise class, commerSpecific agencies, including NGA, have released their own polcial support has further encouraged the transition towards open icies, shifting their attitude towards open source. In a 2011 statesource. Organizations supporting the Department of Defense and ment entitled “Taking Ownership of IT Infrastructure through Open intelligence communities are now offering education and best pracSource Technology,” NGA officials explained that a tices sharing of open source technologies. combination of financial, technical and operational Finally, open source software is proving that it factors had convinced them to embrace open source can lower costs for defense and intelligence users, technologies. freeing funds to be re-applied towards innovation and There have also been significant technological operational priorities. advances in open source software systems. For many DoD and the intelligence community, specifically years open source systems have offered superior scalthe National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, have ability and reliability compared to closed source alterclarified or adopted new policies aimed at encournatives. Now open source is increasing in feature aging use of open source technologies to spur innoparity with closed source software as well. Companies vation and reduce system development costs. There like OpenGeo have worked hard to match and exceed are countless examples where DoD and/or intelliEddie Pickle closed source counterparts, and the latest release of gence agencies have embraced the open source prothe OpenGeo Suite does so in terms of processing and cess and are contributing to open source software security, resulting in an even better production platform. development efforts; these in turn provide benefits back to all users.

Additionally, many open source technologies are built “from the These innovative agencies have made open source geospatial softground up” on web-based technology, taking advantage of the web in ware the emerging choice for geospatial web services. ways proprietary, closed source systems with desktop legacies do not.

The nature of these systems development results in software that is Adoption Drivers substantially better at interoperating than proprietary alternatives, resulting in increased leverage and added value without having to Defense, intelligence and other federal agencies are often conadd infrastructure assets. strained by legislative and acquisition requirements that make it difThe major fiscal factor favoring open source is that its total cost ficult to evaluate and adopt new systems. In recent years, however, of ownership is lower than for proprietary, closed source systems. a number of policy changes have been instituted that support open Software license costs for proprietary systems can be a huge burden source usage. on agency budgets, and these are only likely to increase as data being In January 2011, the U.S. chief information officer, together served increases and users and delivery modes proliferate. with senior procurement officials, published a memo on selecting 46 | GIF 10.7

www.GIF-kmi.com

VIDEO TECHNOLOGY DECISIONS ARE

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Open source is free of software license costs, and offers agility for organizations seeking to engineer their own services and solutions without the structures of proprietary software vendors.

However, the do-it-yourself nature of open source maintenance and feature development has been problematic for some agencies. As a result, commercial open source companies like Red Hat, OpenGeo and RadiantBlue are lowering the cost of open source usage by providing enterprise-grade, expertly supported versions of open source software.

Commercial, or “supported,” open source companies actually lower the total cost of ownership compared to proprietary software, and, for many organizations, compared to unsupported open source as well. Commercial open source provides an enterprise face and gives defense and intelligence agencies a reliable partner to work with on issues from feature development to security enhancements.

This cuts software development costs and gives agencies a chance to share and optimize resources by working with a provider to steer the software development roadmap.

By developing open source based solutions, DoD and IC elements may be able to share software with mission partners such as foreign military services and non-governmental organizations while potentially avoiding foreign military sales issues The defense and intelligence communities are locked in a struggle to out-innovate our country’s adversaries. Historically the United States has held a monetary advantage, fueling innovative growth through traditional channels. For software this has meant spending big dollars on funding commercial vendors, growing their offering.

These companies, now quite large, are slow to react to market needs.

Once leading the way they are now selling software which evolves at a glacial pace. We are losing our edge waiting for closed source software to merely catch up.

Growth and Innovation On the other hand, open source growth is outpacing closed source in nearly every case. Open source growth and innovation patterns are fundamentally different: While slower at first, once they outpace their closed source counterparts they never look back. For truly agile and innovative breakthroughs, don’t look to the old guard.

Open source geospatial software is also immensely scalable, partly due to its lower cost and partly to its technical makeup. Look no further than the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to use open source for the national broadband map (broadband.gov). At launch the site had 500,000 visitors, with a peak load of 9,000 requests per second—more than five times the expected load.

The site remained online, and new mapping servers were pressed into service during to handle the traffic.

The technical foundation of broadband.gov is a modular, open source web-centric approach. Michael Byrne, geospatial information officer the FCC, has stated that there was no way the agency could have afforded that level of proprietary hardware and software, fiscally limiting closed source scalability. With open source not only do you get more robust and reliable infrastructure, but you can get a good deal more of it.

Finally, as more government agencies take advantage of the power and savings of open source, misconceptions regarding open source security, reliability and communities are falling away. In fact, agencies that frequently partner with the defense and intelligence communities, such as NOAA and the Department of State, 48 | GIF 10.7

have contributed to open source software development that provides direct benefits back to DoD and intelligence efforts.

Organizations like MIL-OSS are dedicated to dispelling these misconceptions and promoting open source throughout DoD, and this is helping ease open source adoption. The U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Forum has also begun to provide educational programs on open source during the annual GEOINT symposium. The shifting focus at the annual conference is reflective of the hunger for information about open source software, and for stories of successful implementations.

These positive experiences have put to rest much of the fear, uncertainty and doubt about open source. Indeed, many times now the burden is on closed source firms to prove that they should be considered instead of open source, as more and more agencies become aware of the downsides of closed source software on a number of critical factors.

One leading open source advocate, Eric Raymond, has outlined these harms as: • Reliability: The secretive nature of proprietary, closed source software can lead to poor engineering and lower reliability than open source alternatives, which frequently benefit from the combined efforts of large communities of skilled developers.

• Modification: Enterprises lose agility, speed and innovation when they give up the option to modify software to suit their own needs, or hire anyone of their choice to do the work. With open source, enterprises are free to improve reliability and repair deficiencies on their own terms.

• Agency: Closed source, proprietary software creates an asymmetrical power relationship between its users and the entities or people who control the software code. Owners of closed source IP rights can and do use this asymmetry to limit choice, depress functionality and increase prices.

• Lock-in: Closed source software locks-in enterprises to use the distribution and service outlets set by the entity controlling the code, increasing costs to upgrade away from the software or to integrate it with other components.

• Amnesia: This is an extreme case of the lock-in, and occurs when closed source software or its developers go away, for example because of acquisition or bankruptcy. Often, entire capabilities can be forgotten or go away with their authors.

Use of open source software for geospatial applications is becoming more and more common in the DoD and IC communities. Open source software offers excellent functionality with lowered total cost of ownership. Companies like Red Hat, OpenGeo and RadiantBlue, along with organizations like MIL-OSS, have made it increasingly easy for members of the defense and intelligence community to adopt supported open source solutions to meet their mission goals.

These communities are creating a virtuous cycle where individual players may fund development of a feature that will benefit many others in the GEOINT community. O Eddie Pickle is chief executive officer of OpenGeo, an open source geospatial company.

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.

www.GIF-kmi.com

THE WIDEST SPECTRUM OF GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES

Integrated multi-sensor global ISR, maritime domain awareness, environmental monitoring, automated change detection, and advanced data mining techniques for intelligence users, commanders, and warfighters.

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Analytical framework developed for forces in Afghanistan has given users unprecedented on-demand access to a wealth of information.

By Specialist Matthew C. Gossard (Editor’s note: Excerpted from an article by the author entitled “GeoGlobe and the Seven Layers of Analysis.”)

The difference between data and information is context. Without background or basis for comparison, the value of the data is limited to a single scope. The goal of the “seven layers of analysis” is to consolidate a vast array of both current and historical data into a single user-friendly platform to create a common operating picture for the Afghanistan operational environment, removing the need for multiple systems or software applications. The seven layers builds its data from the most fundamental geospatial layers up to the active threats operating throughout the country, providing the user the ability to visualize a comprehensive, tailored view of the current condition of the operational environment.

The seven layers of analysis has already impacted an extraordinary amount of users within Regional Command-East (RC-East) through it remains at a relatively early stage. Users of the seven layers structure for analysis span the gamut from decision makers at the regional command headquarters to the company intelligence support teams in the most austere areas of the battle space.

Paired together with the Army Geospatial Center’s (AGC) GeoGlobe, the seven layers have given an unprecedented ability to users throughout Afghanistan for on-demand access to a wealth of information, which in the past would have required extensive preparation and multiple systems to visualize. The structure also provides endless possibilities to how the data can be visualized, analyzed and used to create fuller understanding of complex problem sets, all contextualized and customized by the user.

The inspiration and planning of the seven layers of analysis began well before GeoGlobe was selected as the geospatial visualization service of choice for the project. Lieutenant Colonel David Pendall, the First Cavalry Division G-2, envisioned creating a structured analytical process spanning the entire operational environment. The goal was to form a method of analysis incorporating multiple information and intelligence sources into a single platform. Almost as important as the data, however, would be the way it was structured. The data needed to be structured in a manner that was conducive to an analytical mindset. Information needed to be categorized according to its type, but placed in a user-friendly environment that allowed the different layers to be integrated on demand for a variety of analytical assessments.

Contextual Relationships The core of the seven layers process revolves around creating contextual relationships between differing categories of information.

50 | GIF 10.7

The critical requirement is the capability to easily display and compare the selected data sets by the analyst or staff user. Each of the seven layers are overarching categories (meta layers) to catalog information. When a particular layer is opened, a wide range of data sets (micro layers) become available that can be individually turned on and off (visualized) at the analyst’s discretion. This feature provides the user the ability to evaluate and relate information that at first look may have not appeared to correlate. Compiling a vast data set and including it within a 3-D environment removes the data mining and organizational process for the user and allows immediate comparison, analysis, presentation and most importantly understanding.

The seven layers concept begins with the geospatial foundation.

Annotated natural features such as valleys, mountain passes and rivers provide the foundational datasets within the geospatial layer. Also included are slope maps based off of terrain, display areas that can be traversed by vehicle or foot traffic, and areas that are level enough to be used as a helicopter landing zone. Weather data also plays a role in the geospatial layer. Within the first layer, the user can view a variety of dynamic information on the weather, not just in Afghanistan but in the entire region including air transit corridors.

The second layer centers on the social framework of the country.

The data focuses not just on where people live, but also their organization. Basic social data such as city and village locations are supplemented with population density and annotated areas of specific tribal, ethnic and religious groups. This layer also contains atmospherics measuring the populace’s support for the Afghan government, Afghan national security forces and coalition forces.

Infrastructure comprises the third layer, which ties in heavily with the social aspect. Infrastructure consists of anything man-made that causes or supports human interaction. Lines of communications as well as essential structures such as dams, bridges and karez systems (or underground irrigation channels) are included within the third layer. Infrastructure also includes cell phone tower data with detailed information on specific nodal locations and signal propagation coverage.

The fourth layer consists of both formal and informal political information at all levels of the Afghan government and society, including local powerbrokers, tribal elders and village councils.

International boundaries as well as provincial and district boundaries for both Afghanistan and Pakistan are annotated. The political layer also contains detailed information about the primary members of the provincial and district government with an included assessment for www.GIF-kmi.com

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each of them, providing the user an immediate review of the governance structures in the selected province, district or village.

Development and infrastructure construction for the country is the focus of the fifth layer. The data within this layer displays information regarding public works projects that benefit the people at the district and provincial level, as well as changes in the community brought about by development which impact the way people will interact, such as new roads, electrification or schools. The layer not only contains current projects, but also historical locations and information about past works. Each category is based on the status of the project and is color coded allowing a quick look of the stages of projects in an area. Selecting a point provides detailed information on the project type, goals, priority and cost. The development layer also allows the user to view where commander’s emergency relief program funds are being utilized and how these relate to the situation and populous of the area.

The subject of the sixth layer is security. The most important and necessary components to the security layer are Afghan national security forces and coalition force mentorship locations throughout the country. The layer also contains boundaries for major task forces, minor task forces and the Afghan national security forces. To accompany the task force boundaries, there are also named areas of interest for each of the battle space owners. Operational graphics for named operations of concern to the division and campaign plans have also been added to the layer to allow interaction with other datasets in order to enhance what has traditionally been a static product.

Threat Visualization The seventh layer contains the current enemy situation (confirmed and templated) for the region, developed by CJ2 analysts and vetted with each battlespace owner. The seventh meta-layer of the seven layers is intentionally the last. The seventh layer visualizes the threat throughout the battlespace and is best understood when viewed in context of the previous six meta-layer relational analysis.

To further enhance the enemy visualization, both current and historic densities of kinetic events are provided, available by month, season and year. Gaining understanding of the threat necessitates the use of the other six layers in order to gain perspective on why and where events occur. Without integrating the threat with supplementary data, the relevance and significance diminishes as the context is lost.

The seven layers process was initially tested during the First Cavalry Division headquarters military readiness exercise in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan as the RC-East Headquarters.

During the exercise, six paper maps were created, each representing one of the first six layers. The seventh layer, threat, was a transparency that could be overlaid on any of the other layer maps.

By overlaying the threat on any of the other maps, the benefit of the concept was immediately evident. An example of its effectiveness was when the threat layer was overlaid to the security layer. Instantly there was a visible correlation between the gaps in coalition force presence and their effectiveness, where governance was strong or weak, and where demographics trended in support or opposition to the government or the insurgency, viewed in relation to where the insurgency was actually operating.

At that point it became clear to the staff that this tool would be crucial in providing a greater understanding of not just the enemy situation, but also how it relates to every other dataset that was displayed in this manner. The concept was proven to be successful, though a highly manually intensive effort, but the actual system in which it would be employed was still undetermined. The solution wasn’t clear until the division arrived in Afghanistan.

The first time the GeoGlobe software and servers were used by First Cavalry Division was upon arrival in theater. The outgoing unit’s geospatial intelligence cell was using the software heavily for 3-D geospatial visualization. The 101st Airborne Division was relying on the GeoGlobe platform more than the established Google Earth servers already available. The capabilities of the tools within GeoGlobe were explained and its impact was evident by the extensive use of the software in daily imagery production. The division G-2 and the GEOINT team critically examined the software and server infrastructure already in place. The power and utility was clearly apparent; GeoGlobe was the ideal software for visualization of the seven layers.

The primary interface for the user is the software TerraExplorer.

TerraExplorer contains an abundance of unique features that made it the leading candidate program to incorporate and visualize the seven layers. O Specialist Matthew C. Gossard is a GEOINT analyst, First Cavalry Division and RC-E/CJTF-1.

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.

52 | GIF 10.7

www.GIF-kmi.com

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INTEL UPDATE

By George Meyers

With the congressional year all but over, there is still much to be done. There are still over 40 pending intelligence-related bills on the calendar, but the list below contains only the seven bills I think are still relevant and stand any chance of being passed. Of these, I only expect four to be passed into law—and those are the intelligence and defense authorization bills. All of these appear to be stalled as we wait for the November elections. The appropriations bills also appear to be stalled, so it looks like a six-month continuing resolution will be passed.

The lame-duck Congress will have much to do in the short legislative period from November 7 to December 14.

To date, in the past two years (112th Congress) there have been 9,917 bills introduced

Bill #

in Congress and 173 laws passed. Of those 173 laws, six were related to intelligence—and all those passed affected FY12. We are still waiting on the outcome of the FY13 bills.

In spite of the turmoil caused by the presidential election and the lack of “progress” being made on Capitol Hill, I still expect intelligence to be a central part of future discussions on defense and the security of the U.S. Although budget cuts loom on the horizon, intelligence will remain one of the “bright spots.” As we decrease our presence around the globe, intelligence becomes more important.

One area everyone agrees should not be cut is intelligence. The need for knowledge is increasing and people who can help provide that knowledge will be in high demand. O

George Meyers

gmeyers@gmeyers.com

Sponsor Sen. Feinstein (D-Calif.)

STATUS On Senate calendar waiting for vote

Summary Senate Intelligence Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorize appropriations for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States government.

H.R.5743

Rep. Rogers (R-Mich.)

Passed the House and referred to Senate

House Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2013 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States government.

H.R.4310

Rep. McKeon (R-Calif.)

Passed the House and referred to Senate

House National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2013 for military activities of the Department of Defense, and prescribe military personnel strengths.

S.3254

Sen. Levin (D-Mich.)

Passed Committee and on Senate calendar

Senate National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2013 for military activities of the Department of Defense, and prescribe military personnel strengths.

H.R.3523

Rep. Rogers (R-Mich.)

Passed the House and referred to Senate

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act Add provisions to protect intelligence and information sharing from cyber-threats and allow the intelligence community to share cyber-threat intelligence with the private sector.

H.R.3834

Rep. Hall (R-Texas)

Passed the House and referred to Senate

Advancing America’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2012 Amend the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 to authorize activities for support of networking and information technology research.

H.R.4251

Rep. Miller Passed the (R-Mich.)

House and referred to Senate

S.3454

54 | GIF 10.7

Securing Maritime Activities through Risk-based Targeting for Port Security Act Authorize, enhance and reform certain port security programs through increased efficiency and risk-based coordination within the Department of Homeland Security.

www.GIF-kmi.com

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

Calendar

American Military University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 www.amuonline.com/geospatial Astrium-Geo Information Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 www.astrium-geo.com BAE Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 www.baesystems.com/gxp Ball Aerospace & Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 www.ballaerospace.com Cleversafe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 www.cleversafe.com/news/press-releases CSSS.Net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 www.csss.net Deloitte Services LP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38-39 www.deloitte.com/us/zoom DigitalGlobe Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 www.digitalglobe.com/power Esri. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 www.esri.com/gif Exelis Visual Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 www.exelisvis.com/enviservicesengine Front Porch Digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 www.fpdigital.com Fugro Earthdata Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 www.fugrofederal.com General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . C4 www.gd-ais.com/cloud IBM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 www.ibm.com/federal IHS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 www.ihs.com/geospatial ITT Exelis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 www.exelisinc.com/jagwire Lockheed Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 www.lockheedmartin.com/mission-on-demand MDA Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 www.mdacorporation.com MorganFranklin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 www.morganfranklin.com/intel MorganFranklin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 www.morganfranklin.com NetApp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2 www.netapp.com/agile Overwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3 www.overwatch.com Raytheon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 www.raytheon.com SAIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 www.grglobe.com Sierra Nevada Corporation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 www.sncorp.com TerraGo Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 www.terragotech.com UTC Aerospace Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 www.utcaerospacesystems.com

October 22-24, 2012 AUSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition Washington, D.C. www.ausa.org

January 21-23, 2013 Defence Geospatial Intelligence London, U.K. www.wbresearch.com

October 29-November 1, 2012 MAPPS/ASPRS 2012 Specialty Conference Tampa, Fla. www.asprs.org

February 13-15, 2013 International LiDAR Mapping Forum Denver, Colo. www.lidarmap.org

November 8-9, 2012 GEO Huntsville Conference Huntsville, Ala. www.geohuntsville.com

February 25-27, 2013 Esri Federal GIS Conference Washington, D.C. www.esri.com

NEXT ISSUE

Volume 10, Issue 8 November/December 2012

www.GIF-kmi.com

Cover and In-Depth Interview with:

Vice Admiral Kendall L. Card Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance DON Deputy Chief Information Officer (Navy) Director of Naval Intelligence

Special Report: Full Motion Video

Features: • Maritime Domain Awareness

• Feature Extraction

• Visualization

• 2013 Industry Outlook

Insertion Order Deadline: November 30, 2012 Ad Materials Deadline: December 7, 2012 GIF 10.7 | 55

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW

Geospatial Intelligence Forum

Herbert F. Satterlee III Chief Executive Officer MDA Information Systems production and all-source human geography to provide near-real-time information, such as sentiment analysis, population trends or operational planning, to government and commercial customers. We’ve made good progress in developing open source solutions and will continue to invest in this area.

Herbert F. Satterlee III joined MDA Information Systems as the chief executive officer in 2010. He has more than 30 years of leadership experience within the aerospace and defense community, and has extensive experience in growing emerging companies. He received his B.A. in business administration from Washington State University and his Executive M.B.A. from the University of Washington.

Q: With the impending U.S. government budget cuts, there has been a great deal of emphasis on finding efficiencies and doing more with less. What is MDA’s contribution to providing more efficient solutions to its defense and intelligence customers?

A: For over 40 years, MDA has had a business philosophy of “first-time-right and on-time.” So we’ve gotten very efficient at providing the highest quality products and services. This efficiency has translated into the types of solutions we offer, whether it is new and improved geospatial modeling techniques, big-data mining or imagery production. Our patented imagery change detection product is a relevant example of how we have persisted in finding more efficient means of mapping and intelligence collection.

Q: Can you elaborate on MDA’s change detection product and its benefit to your customers?

A: For years, mapping organizations have struggled to maintain current maps due to the expense associated with the laborintensive process of extracting features such as roads and buildings from imagery. MDA’s Persistent Change Monitoring product enables customers to perform map updating up to 10 times faster by indicating where land changes have occurred and targeting analysts’ feature-extraction efforts.

In addition, this automated change detection product provides “tipping and cuing” alerts to assist with more efficient intelligence collection. This product uses publicly available Landsat data, so MDA is able 56 | GIF 10.7

Q: How do MDA’s solutions coincide with NGA’s vision?

to offer it at extremely competitive prices to its customers such as NGA, DHS/FEMA and others.

Q: Do you have concerns about the future of the Landsat program?

A: Our nation needs to support the continuation of medium resolution Landsat satellite data regardless of the type or size of satellite, or which agency oversees the program. For over 30 years MDA has exploited publicly available Landsat data. We created the first global orthomosaic using Landsat imagery, which has now become the baseline “skin” for a multitude of applications including Google Earth. More recently, we have exploited Landsat to cost-effectively update maps critical to our war fighting efforts. From agriculture to environmental management to disaster response, Landsat continues to be a national treasure that we must continue to support.

Q: MDA is known as a pioneer in the area of image-based change detection, but what other products or solutions are on the horizon for the company?

A: We are very excited about recent developments in open source data mining. While many organizations struggle with “big data” challenges, MDA has made extraordinary advancements in highly efficient and low-cost means of social media and open source data mining to provide value added intelligence analytics. We leverage our strong heritage in automated geospatial

A: I believe that Director Long’s vision of making geospatial data easily discoverable and usable through online, on-demand access is the type of forward thinking that will ensure our military remains the strongest and most advanced in the world. MDA is working to put geospatially enabled realtime open source and commercial data and information directly into the hands of the user. An example of this is our work with social media and open source big-data mining and analysis. Another example is the work we’ve done in developing transportable remote sensing ground stations for downlinking imagery data directly to the hands of the warfighter, first responders and other end-users.

Q: What keeps you up at night?

A: I experience many restless nights associated with the uncertainty about government budgets. As with most companies who do significant business with the U.S. government, the threat of sequestration and the seemingly never-ending pattern of continuing resolutions causes a great deal of apprehension when it comes to resource planning and future investments.

The recent studies and business leader testimonies that assert potentially devastating job losses and cuts to R&D have me very worried about the impacts to our defense industrial base and global science and technology leadership. Fortunately, I believe that MDA, with its diversity in the government and commercial sectors, is strategically positioned to weather a potential government budgetary crisis. O www.GIF-kmi.com

DELIVERING UNDERSTANDING Overwatch is at the forefront of technology innovation, providing mission critical defense intelligence software and services for decision makers, counterterrorism analysts and warfighters. Our geospatial applications, human cultural software and cloud-enabled technologies simplify the integration, analysis and exploitation of intelligence in order to present a complete operational picture and accelerate the time-to-decision.

Join Overwatch in Booth #401 during the GEOINT 2012 Symposium to gain new insight from 20-minute briefings on next generation intelligence solutions.

Geo TheaTre PresenTaTion schedule: Tuesday, October 9th 2:00 p.m.

3:00 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

Enabling the Analyst of the Future Mapping Human Geography RemoteViewTM and Beyond

Wednesday, October 10th 2:00 p.m.

3:00 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

Intel Collection for Modern Conflicts Generating Mission Critical High Res 3D Data from LIDAR A New Overwatch Geospatial Solutions Paradigm

For more information: www.overwatch.com GeoSalesTeam@overwatch.textron.com (800) 937-6881

www.overwatch.com Š 2012 Overwatch Systems, Ltd. All rights reserved. RemoteView is a trademark of Overwatch Systems, Ltd. Overwatch Systems is a strategic business of Textron Systems Advanced Systems, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company.

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UNLEASH THE POWER OF THE CLOUD GEOINT TO THE USER ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANY MISSION GEOINT

IMINT

SIGINT

HUMINT

COMINT

General Dynamics’ open cloud architecture grants users remote access from any device to mission critical data in a consolidated, shared environment, enabling reliable collaboration and intelligence distribution.

Visit Booth #500 at GEOINT 2012 and experience our Open Cloud Demo to learn how we help provide users with intelligence they need, as they need it.

www.gd-ais.com/Cloud