Gif 13 4 final

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community

Analytic Innovator

Cathy Johnston

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Director for Analysis Defense Intelligence Agency

May/June 2015 Volume 13, Issue 4

Inside: Intelligence COMMUNITY POSTER

3-D Modeling O Video Analytics Visualization O SAR

O

Digital Elevation Models

GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE FORUM Features

May/June 2015 Volume 13, Issue 4

Cover / Q&A

24

SAR Power in Small Packages

Although the ability of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to see through night or clouds has made it an important sensor capability, the technology’s significant size, weight and power requirements have mostly restricted its use to large and expensive vehicles. That is changing, however, as small and nano SARs are making this tool suitable for small UAVs.

By Henry Canaday

Intelligence COMMUNITY POSTER

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GIF is proud to present a guide to the 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

17 Cathy Johnston

4

2-D to 3-D GEOINT Although modern technologies that transform 2-D into 3-D imagery have been around for a number of years, their use by the U.S. military and intelligence communities has really taken off in the last few years.

By Peter Buxbaum

9

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A new global digital elevation model presents a significant increase in resolution and accuracy, providing a wide range of users with a unique and valuable information source.

By Gertrud Riegler

As the power of sensor technology grows, companies in imagery and related geospatial fields are having to beef up their information infrastructures to manage torrents of imagery data that dwarf the data streams that seemed so formidable only a few years ago.

By Harrison Donnelly

Global Elevation Model

Departments

Geospatial Data Challenge

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Video Analytics

With strong roots in diverse fields such as physical security, retail marketing and transportation, video analytics technology holds out promise for military and intelligence ISR programs struggling to cope with enormous amounts of video data.

By Harrison Donnelly

Industry Interview Stuart Blundell

2 Editor’s Perspective 14 Industry Raster 27 Resource Center

General Manager Visual Information Systems Harris

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Geospatial Intelligence Forum Volume 13, Issue 4 • May/June 2015

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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE Even to an outsider, it is clear that Director Robert Cardillo is shaking up the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, leading what he calls a “seismic shift” in organizational culture, pushing transparency and developing new ways to work with industry. At the same time, the world of commercial satellite imagery has also been shaken up by the constellations of small satellites being planned by new players such as Surrey Satellite Technology and Planet Labs.

A recent NGA request for information suggests that those two trends may come together as the agency seeks ideas from industry about how to Harrison Donnelly develop a paradigm for commercial imagery acquisition different from the Editor traditional model, under which the agency purchased imagery from a small number of providers through programs such as EnhancedView. While only an initial inquiry, heading toward a new contract no earlier than fiscal year 2017, the document sketches the outlines of the new system.

As described, the contract would involve one or more prime vendors serving as focal points for commercial GEOINT capabilities who could work with a wide range of providers, including those based in other countries. The new strategy would support a major goal of the agency’s NextGen Tasking Initiative, which seeks new approaches to the tasking, collection, processing, exploitation and dissemination processes for using commercial GEOINT capabilities. The contact would go well beyond imagery acquisition, incorporating imagery-derived analytic products and services.

The NGA documents also emphasize that significant amounts of the imagery and services would be used in unclassified environments, with data hosted at the vendors’ locations and accessible to users via cloud computing. NGA intends to share the information with allied nations and non-governmental organizations, as it has done increasingly in recent years in response to emergencies and natural disasters.

The NGA statement also opened the door to a variety of technological approaches, offering to consider alternative creative or unconventional solutions and architectures, especially Web/cloud-based systems that are scalable and do not require government investments in multiple architectures.

Although the period for industry responses closed in early June, it seems clear that we will be hearing a lot more about these ideas in the months ahead.

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Getting to an accurate 3-D perspective of the real world takes geospatial intelligence to a new level.

By Peter Buxbaum, GIF Correspondent

Although modern technologies that transform 2-D into 3-D imagery have been around for a number of years, their use by the U.S. military and intelligence communities has really taken off in the last few years. Analysts point to a number of reasons for the surge in interest.

One is the existence of vast collections of 2-D imagery, and the desire to squeeze as much useful information from them as possible. Second, and related to the first, is the commitment by U.S. forces to use technology to develop the highest level of situational awareness, especially in urban operations, as has been the case in recent conflicts. Industry, meanwhile, has been developing technology to make the process of creating 3-D models from 2-D imagery easSteve Du Plessis ier and more automatic.

A major part of the reason for obtaining 3-D from 2-D imagery lies in the nature of human perception. “If you want to bring the geospatial world to a broader audience, you need to create a world that they can understand,” said Steve Du Plessis, director of remote sensing at Hexagon Geospatial. “3-D emulates the real world in a digital format. The real world exists in 3-D.” “Getting to an accurate 3-D perspective of the real world takes geospatial intelligence to a new level,” said Leslie Ledda, director of the Processing, Exploitation and Fusion Capability Center, Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS).

“If we want to accurately reconstruct the real world from imagery, we need data that captures the complexity of the scene including shape and surface characteristics. This allows you to use the 3-D as a model on which to run analysis and simulation,

4 | GIF 13.4

including addition of the fourth dimension of time. This sort of exploitation and understanding is something that is limited with 2-D imagery.”

Beyond the situational awareness application, 3-D enables communication and collaboration using geospatial intelligence to non-experts, offering rich content and analytic value paired with visual and geographic accuracy, noted Ledda.

“We have cosmic stores of 2-D pixels collected over time, and these continue to be acquired at every moment,” said Karen Ebling, director of strategic development and analytics at Raytheon IIS. “We have invested in collection technologies ranging from highly sophisticated imaging systems on orbit to cameras in every device we personally carry. It makes sense to make Armando Guevara use of the data we have.”

Generating 3-D models is also a matter of making use of readily available technology. “We have the technology capability to build a 3-D picture from a 2-D picture, with any set of pixels available,” said Ebling. “Therefore, we don’t create just realistic 3-D models, but rather we use precise georeferencing algorithms to create real 3-D models. The applications for 3-D are endless, so we have an urgency to make use of the data at hand in order to get 3-D to users as efficiently and timely as possible.”

“Creating 3-D models from 2-D images has become very efficient,” said Armando Guevara, president and chief executive officer of Visual Intelligence. “It used to involve a lot of manual labor and the use of analog technologies in isolation. Now this has all moved to the digital realm and the technologies have converged into a set of methodologies that we call pixelgrammetry.”

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Navigation and ISR

2-D images. Operators can figure out line-of-sight problems so they know where they can be seen from, and therefore places to avoid, and where to take their shots from as well as the best ingress and The 3-D models generated from 2-D imagery facilitate an enoregress points.” mous number of military and intelligence applications, as well as Targeting is another important military and intelligence applicivilian. “Navigation is one,” said Guevara, “especially now that we cation for 3-D models, as is immersive are moving to autonomous vehicles. training. “3-D is used for target selecYou need 3-D when you merge robottion for drones and minesweepers,” said ics with navigation for applications like Guevara. “They provide rich informacollision avoidance.” tion to determine the best approach to “These models can be used in targets. 3-D models can also be used traditional ISR applications requiring as part of training in which warfightterrain information,” said Ledda. “They ers are immersed in conflict scenarios can be used as well to form a layer of founand can view virtually the buildings and dational GEOINT against which other infrastructure they will encounter in data and data derived from analytics actual locations.” can be fused and layered. Incorporation incorporates technology that can calculate the elevation point for Other applications include mission of these models into automated queu- Hexagon each pixel in an image in systems that are able to generate 3-D city models ing or change detection algorithms can from 2-D images, such as this depiction of Klagenfurt, Austria. [Image courtesy planning and rehearsal, aerial surveyof Hexagon] ing, disaster relief, augmented reality improve algorithm performance, resultapplications, digital terrain model creation, mobile mapping systems, ing in a higher probability of detect and a lower false alarm rate, and a host of civilian applications. “A civil engineer might use one making the algorithms more suitable for inclusion in activity-based of these models to estimate water runoff, calculate line of sight, or intelligence applications.” track ongoing progress of earth-moving activities in bridge and dam The navigational applications of 3-D modeling are most evibuilding projects,” said Ebling. “3-D is a technology accelerator that dent in operations in urban settings. “Let’s say you are planning a users can implement to expose spatial and temporal relationships in raid on a terror compound,” said Du Plessis. “3-D models can reveal layered analytics.” vision and concealment information not readily discernible from

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GIF 13.4 | 5

COTS Software

LiDAR Role

A number of COTS software packages use computer vision The technologies that facilitate today’s 3-D-from-2-D capabiltechnology and photogrammetric techniques to automate 3-D ities have transformed the process from a heavily manual one to reconstruction from imagery, noted Joe Seppi, practice director of a highly automated one. “The technologies have come a long way national security for Woolpert, an architecture, engineering and in the last couple of years,” said Du Plessis. “It used to be that you geospatial firm that has tried out various COTS systems in its work. had to use expensive aerial cameras and then triangulate multi“There are several out there that work well with large airborne ple images. This required elaborate ground control operations and image data sets, which have various difskilled operators to collect the images. ferent business models,” he said. “Some “Now, LiDAR technology generates companies want to have customers send dense 3-D point clouds from airborne the imagery to them, and they process platforms, and it is possible to generit as a service, while others license their ate 3-D models from them almost in a software. That’s what we’re interested black-box fashion. Photo facades can in, because we need to have control over then be overlaid on them. It has evolved it to get the accuracy that we are lookfrom a manual process to one which is ing for. They have different functionalquite automated,” he continued. ities, with some outputting just a point LiDAR uses laser light pulses to cloud and others a full-textured mesh, gauge elevation by measuring the time which is traditionally what you think of BAE Systems has developed a process to generate accurate 3-D models delay between transmission of the pulse directly from imagery, such as this depiction of London before the 2012 as a 3-D model. and detection of the reflected signal.

Olympics. [Image courtesy of BAE Systems] “We’ve tested and evaluated a bunch A range finder mounted on an aircraft of systems and are using two off-the-shelf systems now. We even collects the data and provides location information on an x-y-z looked at developing our own tools to do it, because there is openaxis known as a point cloud. LiDAR provides accurate elevation source research available that gives you the insight needed to build data and can pinpoint the location and elevation of buildings, trees your own applications. But it’s a lot of work, and to do the software and roads. engineering to scale it enough to handle the size of the data sets that “Other technology developed in Germany can calculate the elewe are giving it, we realized it was more cost-effective for us to go vation point for each pixel in an image, which generates a very dense COTS,” Seppi reported. point cloud,” added Du Plessis. “All it takes is a push of a button.”

The key is to effectively combine computer vision algorithms Hexagon incorporates that technology in systems that are able and traditional photogrammetry. “If you’re not so concerned with to generate 3-D city models from 2-D images. absolute geolocation accuracy, computer vision techniques will get The processes supported by the software that facilitate the buildyou results that look great,” he said. “But to make it very accurate, ing of 3-D models have become so intuitive that updating of inforso that the 3-D model can become part of a 3-D GIS database, for mation can take place in near-real time, and predictive analytics can example, you have to incorporate photogrammetric techniques. You also be applied to the 3-D data. have to bring in accurate GPS data and preserve a very accurate tra“The fresher the data is to the decision-making, the better the jectory from your camera position. decision is going to be,” noted Du Plessis. “For example, if a con“The real takeaway is that computer vision alone will not genervoy detects a roadside device, that information can be immediately ate the geospatial data sets that we are after. It takes photogrammeincorporated in mapping applications and the transportation maps try as well,” Seppi added. are updated immediately. In the past, it may have taken hours before One challenge, however, is that the power of these new systhe data could be uploaded to systems and the maps updated. Now, tems may be getting out in front of capabilities for disseminating the information is loaded in real time on a server and the new routes them. “There aren’t that many GIS applications out there that will for the convoys are updated automatically.” efficiently render large city-scale textured meshes,” he said. “If you have a custom data set that is highly accurate, and has a lot of addiDirect From Images tional information that you want to bring in and add on, such as vector overlays, there are only a handful. The big names out there BAE Systems has developed a process to generate accurate 3-D are playing catchup in terms of being able to render efficiently these models directly from imagery, as opposed to LiDAR point clouds. large models. The underlying file types aren’t supported by a lot of The key to the systems is that the images used to generate the 3-D the standard software being used now.” must be taken at oblique angles, as opposed to directly overhead.

One key area for this technology in the future is tied to the “We developed volumetric feature collection from 2-D nonexplosive growth of UAS-derived aerial imagery. Although Federal nadir imagery,” said Steve Lossman, senior application engineer Aviation Administration restrictions on domestic UAS use have at BAE Systems. “There must be some obliquity to them. We can limited this trend in the United States, it is flourishing in Europe. measure the height of buildings on the basis of sensor metadata.

There, companies are bundling the software with their UAS systems, Users can first create surface models and then add volumetric thus enabling even non-experts to take advantage of the technology. buildings to them. One particular application would be line of sight Seppi also sees further automation leading to greater speed and effianalyses. They don’t have to be pretty. They just have to supply accuciency, especially by using cloud computing to provide the massive rate data. What would be the best position for a sniper, or to take out amounts of computational power needed. an enemy sniper?”

6 | GIF 13.4

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Geospatial Intelligence Forum

September [13.6]

October [13.7]

Nov/Dec [13.8]

Q&A: Maj. Gen. John Shanahan 25th Air Force Special Section: Wide Area Surveillance Features: Special Mission Aircraft and ISR GEOINT for Mission Planning Airborne LiDAR Sensors and 3-D Managing Big Data Closing Date: August 28

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The latest version of SOCET GXP, the company’s solution for the analysis of imagery, allows users to collect features and retain the textures of buildings in geospatial databases. The system also enables the conversion of LiDAR point clouds into actual terrain and man-made features. “These are used around airports and to identify landing areas,” said Lossman. “Users can visually analyze potential obstructions in a landing area.”

“Raytheon is committed to 3-D as a technology discriminator,” said Ebling. “We have led technology advancements in accuracy, the ability to distinguish and render very fine features, and the integration of additional algorithms to exploit multispectral data in new ways, and in three dimensions.”

Traditionally 3-D information has been derived from standard digital terrain data, stereo pairs of images and collected LiDAR data.

“While that provides adequate answers for some intelligence problem applications, these traditional sources of 3-D data have limitations,” said Ledda. “They fall short when we need access to remote or difficult-to-reach locations. There is often insufficient detail or granularity. These traditional data collects may not be sufficient for the time relevance to the problem under study. And there may be limited or no availability at multiple instances in time to support change detection or other temporal analysis. In other words, traditional 3-D just can’t get us the answers we need.”

Intersect Dimension uses Raytheon patent-pending technologies, derived from principles of physics, photogrammetry, mathematics and statistics, to automatically generate dense 3-D models. “These models are not limited to a single elevation for a given location,” said Ledda. “They have high-positional accuracy and resolution. The Intersect Dimension workflow is completely automated, end-to-end.

“The software automatically selects optimal 2-D data sets to be used as inputs to the model generation process through registration and fusion of intensity, spectral, physical and many other attributes to the points in the generated model. The implementation also leverages Raytheon’s rich heritage of software optimization and performance tuning,” Ledda added.

Raytheon invested internal research and development funds to develop Intersect Dimension and related analytics capabilities. “We recognized early on that 3-D models created from 2-D imagery provide a richer source of information without the limitations of the traditional methodologies, so Raytheon began to invest years ago in this technology,” said Ledda.

“The Raytheon Intersect Dimension model generation technology provides the capability to generate LiDAR-like, high-resolution 3-D models from multiple 2-D satellite or aerial image data sets over large geographical areas in a time- and cost-efficient manner,” she explained. “We have built 3-D models with multiple sources of remote sensing data, including current collects and historical data from archives. Data from multiple sensors and data not specifically collected for the purpose of generating 3-D models can be inputs to the model generation process.”

Intersect Dimension models are packaged in standard LiDAR formats, enabling compatibility with existing enterprise investments in people, training and tools. “The models can be interactively viewed, manipulated, measured and analyzed using many legacy and COTS 3-D viewers and toolkits,” said Ledda. “Models can also be converted to other formats including digital surface models, wireframes and facet models, as appropriate for the problem being addressed.”

Intersect Dimension models have been used by a wide variety of end-users, including law enforcement and first responders.

8 | GIF 13.4

“Raytheon scientists and engineers have worked shoulder to shoulder with end-users to build what they need most for their priority problems,” said Ebling. “We are participating to evolve 3-D data standards. Our engineers are enthused by our commitment and continue to bring new ideas for enhancing the technology to include non-traditional GEOINT sources.”

Visual Intelligence has created a software platform called the iOne Software Sensor Tool Kit Architecture that addresses the collection of 2-D and 3-D data. “The sensors that can be built with our architecture can collect 2-D and 3-D data for a variety of different applications including homeland security and border patrol,” said Guevara. “The sensors are multipurpose and functionally and collection scalable. Users can escalate their collection or add capabilities as they grow. They can transform their sensors over time and it is all software-based.”

Micro Devices Devices have recently been developed for smartphones to create micro devices that have 3-D awareness. “These will transform the smartphones that warfighters carry to highly intelligent devices that can accommodate a variety of different sensors,” said Guevara.

“The 3-D capabilities in these devices will aid in targeting and mapping applications. Within the next three years these kinds of devices and applications will become ubiquitous.”

Visual Intelligence plans on launching its own such micro device this fall.

Raytheon is also working to build the next generation of advanced processing, storage and retrieval architectures to manage massive volumes of imagery pixels. “On the processing side of the equation, our scientists are coming up with new algorithms that will enable new capabilities in the areas of change detection, rich content integration, and other advanced analytics,” said Ebling.

“Raytheon is investing now in advanced research and development around multisensor, multimission systems, where highly precise 3-D is the framework upon which all this rich data sits. Our engineers are working on adding the fourth dimension of moving time in 3-D space, and are producing some amazing capabilities for the most important missions we support.”

As is the case with many developments in military and intelligence technology, 3-D is commonplace to the coming generation of warfighters and scientists. As is the case with the adaptation of highfidelity imaging from gaming systems to training technologies, the younger generation expects nothing less than the kind of realistic 3-D modeling that is now coming to the fore.

“It’s astounding to be around all the brain power we find coming out of our universities and early-career engineering talent, our most forward-thinking industry colleagues, and our partners in government R&D shops,” said Ebling. “This next generation was born immersed in a 3-D online world, and they can’t imagine anything less. We are compelled to think past the pixels. 3-D is a realm of technology that will go far beyond what we can imagine, now that the foundational elements of 2-D to 3-D are in place. 3-D has become table stakes.” 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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A single-source, high-precision digital elevation model benefits defense, aviation and disaster response.

By Gertrud Riegler Whether planning an infrastructure network, conducting military missions in unknown terrain or assisting disaster crisis management, precise and reliable elevation data supports a wide range of needs and forms the foundation of any accurate geospatial product.

Many global or near global digital elevation models (DEMs) are today available, mostly derived from Earth observation satellites.

Airbus Defense and Space’s recently launched WorldDEM presents a significant increase in resolution and accuracy, providing a wide range of users with a unique and valuable information source.

An often-quoted tenet from the Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”—that knowing the ground will assure victory—is still true today. From now, military and geo-intelligence agencies and other defense users can rely on the WorldDEM and its high-quality standardized elevation dataset, which offers a seamless, homogenous height model for the Earth’s entire land surface representing approximatively 150 million square kilometers.

As the first DEM to provide truly pole-to-pole coverage, the program offers accuracy and quality surpassing that of any global satellite-based elevation model available today. Its relative vertical accuracy—2 meters in relative and better than 4 meters in absolute (in a 12 meter x 12 meter raster)—defines a new standard in global elevation modeling.

Multiple Applications WorldDEM has benefited multiple applications since its commercial launch in April 2014, including satellite image orthorectification, aviation and defense and security-related missions.

WorldDEM offers a perfect homogeneous coverage, presenting no break lines at regional or regional borders due to differing measurement procedures or data collection campaigns staggered in time. This is a very important asset, and a differentiator when compared to other DEMs, that can drastically enhance a wide range of applications, particularly if users require data globally with a very high level of detail and precision, such as mapping, defense and natural disaster and humanitarian crisis management.

Orthorectification and Mapping. Accurate DEM layers are essential for building very high-quality databases. Thanks to WorldDEM, www.GIF-kmi.com

operators of civil and military Earth observation satellites have a standardized elevation model at their disposal for high-quality image orthorectification, no matter where their acquisition area is located on the planet. Cartographic authorities around the world are now able to improve or update their standard cartographic maps thanks to this more accurate and up-to-date data source.

Defense. WorldDEM offers detailed terrain information and hydrology data for surveillance, reconnaissance and mission planning. The 3-D nature of the data provides an ideal visualization tool for military and intelligence planning and rehearsing of complex missions. The data facilitates the assessment and interpretation of landscapes with exceptional detail. It supports assessment of military engineering projects and mobility-options planning, including mapping of natural or man-made obstacles that can stop, impede or divert military movement, such as a hilltop, swamp, ditch, bridge, building or a line of barriers along a roadway, but also support cover or concealment. Secured land communications between the different ground forces present in the mission theater are also crucial when operations are ongoing, and good estimation of the line of sight is essential to getting the best possible coverage for radio transmission.

Aviation. WorldDEM can also bring a valuable contribution for civil and military aviation (manned and unmanned aircraft).

The highly precise and globally available DEMs combined with airfield information provide more accurate terrain information, thus improving collision avoidance, ground proximity warning and flight management systems. WorldDEM also supports low-altitude flight path and landing area planning for helicopters and aircrafts even in remote and difficult-to-access areas, thanks to precise slope analysis and flat areas localization.

Natural Disasters. The global availability of a dataset with full homogeneity and seamlessness enhances international cooperation and cross-border mission planning. Particularly when the rapid provision of accurate information is of utmost importance, for instance in emergency situations, the availability of a standardized, highly accurate DEM will be a major advantage. WorldDEM can support the improvement of emergency preparedness measures by GIF 13.4 | 9

supporting reliable flood modeling and sea-level-rise mapping, for example, to calculate risks and evaluate exposed areas.

In a crisis situation, rescue teams on the ground can rely on accurate elevation information for the rapid implementation of response measures, including damage assessment and planning of access and evacuation routes. Being able to assess prior to the intervention on the ground which roads are flooded or can be traveled by rescue team vehicles, or determine which areas remain dry for secure helicopter landings, are at stake.

Customer Requirements The WorldDEM has been built on the global TanDEM-X DEM as acquired by the TanDEM-X mission, which has been performed jointly with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Airbus Defense and Space holds the exclusive commercial marketing rights for the data and is responsible for the adaptation of the elevation model to the needs of commercial users worldwide. The DEM is refined according to customer requirements, such as editing of water surfaces or processing to a digital terrain model (DTM) representing bare Earth terrain.

Three WorldDEM products are available. WorldDEMcore is an unedited digital surface model (DSM) that may contain radar artifacts and voids. WorldDEM is the edited DSM with assured hydrological consistency such as the flattening of water bodies, consistent flow of rivers and editing of shoreline. WorldDEM DTM is

a terrain model representing bare Earth terrain, with vegetation and man-made objects removed.

Since the commercial launch of WorldDEM, customers have been able to tap into a global database of digital elevation data that are seamless, so they can expect to use the same type of data from one project to the next. Consistency and homogeneity are guaranteed, and the level of detail and quality of the data impress customers and users equally.

The availability of WorldDEM data is continuously expanding, with more than 100 million square kilometers already produced in one year. Just as the data acquisition by TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X was done successively, the production is also done progressively.

Thus, step by step, more WorldDEM data are becoming available.

In addition to full availability of the African and Australian continents as well as the Middle East, large areas of North and South America, Northern Europe and Asia are available. An overview of available WorldDEM data is provided in the WorldDEM database: www.geo-airbusds.com/worlddem-db. O Gertrud Riegler is WorldDEM product manager for Airbus Defense and Space.

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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Intelligence is a matter of perspective

Airbus Defense and Space has a constellation of optical and radar satellites that can cover any point on Earth at least twice a day. Whether it’s charting the safest route through the deep canyons, or navigating expertly in the dark, it is vital to have the most relevant and current information at hand. Having timely satellite imagery and geo-intelligence will bring fresh intel to your plan when it matters most.

www.geo-airbusds.com/fresh-perspective

Geospatial Data Challenge The tide of data from ever-more powerful sensors is driving adoption of enhanced computing architectures.

By Harrison Donnelly, GIF Editor

As the power of sensor technology grows, companies in imagery and related geospatial fields are having to beef up their information infrastructures to manage torrents of imagery data that dwarf the data streams that seemed so formidable only a few years ago.

With one company reporting a tenfold increase in the amount of data collected by its latest high-resolution UAVbased image collection platform, both providers and users of geospatial visualization seem likely to have to upgrade their computing infrastructures to take advantage of this vital form of GEOINT. The company, MetaVR, recently completed transition of its software to native Windows 64-bit computing in response to the new flood of information, according to Scott Davidson, manager of Terrain Tools, an extension for Esri’s industry-leading ArcGIS software that enables users MetaVR VRSG real-time rendering of 2 cm per-pixel 3D terrain built with imagery collected at the Fallon Range to turn their geospatial data into real-time 3-D terrain from Training Complex by the MetaVRC data collection RC plane. A dynamic model of the MetaVRC is shown in flight within their GIS software. MetaVR’s 3-D terrain and image over the terrain. [Image courtesy of MetaVR] Rendering coverage for 5-square-kilometer terrain at 1-inch pergenerator are used in simulation training. pixel resolution was at the edge of what the existing 32-bit version The increasingly popular 64-bit architecture supports vastly of VRSG could handle at the time, although that database didn’t larger amounts of virtual and physical memory than is possible on cause problems, Davidson said. “But we recently captured 65 square 32-bit processors, thus enabling programs to store larger amounts kilometers of even higher resolution imagery, 2 cm per pixel, using of data in memory. a MetaVRC unit that was able to fly closer to the ground for longer MetaVR’s transition, which applies to all its terrain generation flights over larger areas. So instead of 28 gigabytes, we’re now dealand visualization software, was spurred at least in part by its release ing with 300 gigabytes of even higher resolution data.” in late 2013 of a new system for collecting and processing 1 inch perThe amount of data also posed problems in image generation in pixel resolution aerial imagery for geospecific real-time 3-D terrain. several ways. System memory limits were exceeded by terrain geomUsing MetaVRC, a remote-controlled aircraft for collecting imagery etry alone, while visible textures in a simulation scenario could not data, the company’s data collection and processing workflow uses be efficiently managed. “We really had to get our image generator Terrain Tools for ArcGIS to compile high-resolution imagery of an 64-bit compatible as well,” he noted. area with accurate satellite elevation data or other digital elevation At 2 cm per-pixel resolution, details such as helicopter landing models, resulting in a realistic, geospecific synthetic environment areas, bullet-ridden vehicle targets, scrub grass, and small craters rendered in MetaVR’s Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG). left from exploded ordnance are visible on the terrain when it is ren“It’s something that has been driven largely by the high resoludered in VRSG. tion imagery from the MetaVRC, which can collect a large area of Scenario Editor, which enables users to create and edit realvery high resolution imagery—much higher than we have been able time 3-D scenarios to play back in VRSG, also benefitted. “Having a to get commercially before,” Davidson explained. “In the past, we 64-bit compatible scenario creation tool allows us to work on multiused commercial imagery or public data, and the highest resolution ple databases at the same time. Before, there were very strict limits. we could realistically get was only about 30 cm, which never really Now we can throw as much content at it as we want,” Davidson said. pushed the boundaries of Terrain Tools or VRSG. But the first data“Before we did this, we had a hard limit on what we could do base that we built with the super high resolution imagery from the with rendering terrain databases built with extremely high resoMetaVRC was from data it captured in southwest Arizona—roughly lution data, but this gives us comfortable breathing room for the 5 square kilometers of imagery at about 3 cm resolution. Just the future,” he added. “Getting higher-resolution data into our dataraster data alone was 28 gigabytes of processed data that we needed bases is something that our customers were asking for. So I think to compile in our Metadesic (round-earth terrain) format. it’s going to affect all of industry.” O “That was our initial proof-of-concept database, and we couldn’t build it at full resolution with the existing version of Terrain Tools.

That required that we port all of our Terrain Tools code to the 64-bit For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives platform. There was a fair amount of work to get to that point, and for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com. we decided to do all of our applications at the same time.”

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MetaVR’s remote-controlled portable aircraft can collect 2 cm per-pixel imagery that you can use in your sensor simulation for intelligence training.

Aerial imagery collection Ground-level photography Terrain compilation 3D content modeling Scenario creation Real-time visualization at 60 Hz MetaVR visuals are used for simulating HD H.264 sensor video with accurate KLV metadata in U.S. Army UAV training simulators.

With 3D terrain built from 2 cm per-pixel resolution imagery captured by our MetaVRC remote-controlled portable aircraft, the sensor view with real-time thermal material classification simulates, with a high degree of accuracy, the actual sensor payload imagery of ISR assets.

Real-time screen captures are from MetaVR’s visualization system. The 3D virtual terrain is of geospecific target areas at Fallon Range Training Complex, Nevada, with 2 cm per-pixel imagery collected by the MetaVRC™ platform. This screen capture is unedited except as required for printing. The real-time rendering of the 3D virtual world is generated by MetaVR Virtual Reality Scene Generator™ (VRSG™). 3D model is from MetaVR’s 3D content libraries. © 2015 MetaVR, Inc. All rights reserved. MetaVR, Virtual Reality Scene Generator, VRSG, MetaVRC, the phrase “Geospecific simulation with game quality graphics,” and the MetaVR logo are trademarks of MetaVR, Inc.

www.metavr.com

INDUSTRY RASTER New Capability Streams High-Resolution Building Models AGI has previewed a new capability that streams high-resolution building models into any Cesium-based client. To provide content for this new service, it worked with CyberCity 3-D, a geospatial modeling company specializing in “smart” 3-D GIS buildings. CyberCity’s buildings enable optimal visual performance, and an open database architecture allowing for the publishing of building attributes and links. To showcase Cesium’s new streaming building capability, CyberCity 3-D is providing a small subset of its 3-D buildings as free content in Cesium, which combines them with local zoning and street vector data. This includes 130 sq. km. high-resolution building geometry with rooftops; a limited number of textured buildings created from CyberCity 3D auto-texturing software are also included. Cesium is a JavaScript library for creating 3-D globes and 2-D maps in a Web browser without a plugin.

It uses WebGL for hardware-accelerated graphics, and is cross-platform,

3-D Elevation Program Uses LiDAR Technology The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has contracted with Woolpert for the first 3-D Elevation Program (3DEP) project awarded in conjunction with a 2014 broad agency announcement (BAA). The USGS has received BAA funding proposals from multiple states in support of this 3DEP initiative, and is in the process of awarding the BAA projects throughout the country, with this 3DEP project in Mississippi being the first. The data will be collected using LiDAR. According to the USGS, the data will be used to support high-value applications, such as flood risk management, agriculture and precision farming, infrastructure and construction management, natural resource management and conservation, and geologic resource assessment and hazard mitigation.

cross-browser, and tuned for dynamic-data visualization. Cesium is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and is free for commercial and noncommercial use.

Stephanie Eftimiades; seftimiades@agi.com Kevin DeVito; kdevito@cybercity3d.com

Geospatial Video Recorder Captures High-Res Imagery The geoDVR Gen2 is Remote GeoSystems’ secondgeneration geospatial digital video recorder. The geoDVR Gen2 is an advanced plugand-play DVR for recording multiple channels of georeferenced high-definition and standard-definition full-motion video in aerial and mobile mapping environments. Unlike most DVRs, the geoDVR includes both open-format and patent-pending methods that log GPS and permanently embed the video with this important location, time and other data. This means the videos can be edited and still keep the GPS data intact for later mapping projects. Operators simply connect nearly any fixed-mount or gyrostabilized gimbal video camera to the geoDVR, and in under two minutes are ready to start recording high-def and/or standard-def geo-referenced video, audio, photos and points of interest.

Jeff Dahlke; jeff@remotegeo.com

Jill Kelley; jill.kelley@woolpert.com

High Resolution Satellite Imagery Available on Demand CartoDB and DigitalGlobe have partnered to bring satellite data to mapmakers everywhere in order to help them visually explain the events and information shaping our world. The new offering will provide users of all levels with access to the latest satellite content from DigitalGlobe, enabling journalists, publishers, bloggers and web developers to easily incorporate high-resolution imagery into their online content in a matter 14 | GIF 13.4

of minutes. Entry-level pricing for the new cloud-based offering is affordable, and the platform enables access to high-resolution imagery captured as recently as 24 hours before and archive imagery dating back to 2011.

Eva Cabanach; eva@cartodb.com Kyrsten Aspegren; digitalglobe@edelman.com www.GIF-kmi.com

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Analytic Software Added to Geospatial Data Platform DigitalGlobe and Exelis have agreed to provide a new commercial offering of cloud-based ENVI earth science analytics for the DigitalGlobe Geospatial Big Data (GBD) platform. ENVI is remote sensing analytical software used by government, academic and private industry organizations to extract meaningful information from imagery and sensor data.

The agreement will enable all imagery users and customers of Exelis and DigitalGlobe to easily combine powerful ENVI geospatial analytics with the vast DigitalGlobe image library to solve challenging environmental, natural resource and global security problems. DigitalGlobe’s cloudbased GBD offering is a platform as a service model designed to create a new ecosystem in which partners and developers can leverage their expertise and an application programming interface to create new customer solutions at a global scale.

Nathan Pinder; nathan.pinder@exelisinc.com Kyrsten Aspegren; digitalglobe@edelman.com

Open Source Geospatial Software Adds New Capabilities OpenGeo Suite 4.6 is the latest version of Boundless’ open source geospatial software stack, powering Web, mobile and desktop maps and applications across organizations large and small. New capabilities and enhancements in Version 4.6 include: enhanced OpenGeo Suite Composer, which allows anyone to build and style maps by making it easier to add data to GeoServer, style layers and publish to the Web; improved reliability, handling and security when executing geospatial analysis; multiple updates to rendering and tile design capabilities; and numerous updates and bug fixes to all components to improve stability and reliability across the entire software stack.

Sean Brady; sbrady@boundlessgeo.com

Innovative Program Supports NGA App Store

Engility Holdings and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have announced an innovative government program to solicit, screen and acquire geospatial applications from commercial developers. With the Innovative GEOINT App Provider Program (IGAPP), NGA has developed a platform that captures the creativity of commercial application developers and bridges the gap between government contracting procedures and nontraditional businesses. NGA awarded a four-year, $25 million contract to TASC, an Engility company, to manage and operate IGAPP, which facilitates the delivery of the application creations

to the NGA GEOINT App Store (apps. nga.mil). The App Store is NGA’s online storefront that provides downloadable applications for mobile, Web and desktop devices. IGAPP serves as a trusted broker between commercial vendors and government agencies who are interested in acquiring applications. In this capacity, IGAPP screens, registers and approves vendors and provides the infrastructure and support to test and offer innovative mapping apps using data from NGA and other organizations that will then be available through the GEOINT App Store.

Diane Clark; diane.clark@tasc.com

Polar Satellite to Provide Severe Storm Warnings Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. has integrated four of the five complex instruments that will fly onboard the nation’s next polarorbiting weather satellite and is moving toward environmental testing by early 2016 with on-time delivery scheduled for late 2016, followed by launch scheduled for no later than the second quarter of 2017.

Polar weather satellites contribute 85 percent of the data that go into numerical weather prediction models. NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System will be responsible for delivering the primary contribution from the afternoon orbit. Launch of the instrument-loaded orbiter will continue accurate/reliable weather forecasting and provide severe storm warnings that protect lives and property across our nation.

Roz Brown; rbrown@ball.com

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Analytic Innovator

Q& A

Facilitating Effectiveness and Enabling Intelligence Integration

Cathy Johnston Director for Analysis Defense Intelligence Agency Cathy Johnston was appointed director for analysis, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in October 2012. She leads DIA’s allsource analytic effort, and also serves as the functional manager for all source analysis across the Defense Intelligence Enterprise, including DIA, the services and the combatant commands.

Previously, Johnston served as national intelligence managerEast Asia in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where she oversaw and led the intelligence community’s efforts on East Asia. Prior to assuming her position at ODNI, she served as the Asia mission manager in CIA’s Directorate for Science and Technology.

She began her analytic career at DIA as a China/East Asia analyst, and was a DIA analyst for 15 years. She oversaw a wide range of issues, including force modernization, strategic issues, WMD and multi-national proliferation activities, and later served as the senior defense expert for China/East Asia and was the Asia substantive expert for the agency. She was the focal point for regional analytic support during operations in Afghanistan in 2001, and served on crisis support teams during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Johnston earned her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in East Asian Studies and her master’s degree from the University of Michigan in Chinese Studies. She was born in Taiwan and lived in the region for 13 years. She speaks Mandarin Chinese and French, and is certified as a chemical weapons convention inspector.

Johnston was interviewed by GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly.

Q: DIA has taken a prominent role in promoting innovation and new ways of interacting with industry partners. How do you see this aiding DIA’s analysis capabilities?

A: DIA’s partnership with industry is critical to aligning the agency’s analytic capabilities to the new information environment. At one point in time, government had a near-monopoly on innovation, but the age of open information has empowered industry, smaller organizations, universities and in some cases individuals to discover and implement technologies that completely change how to conduct daily business. As an agency, we embrace collaboration and partnerships because the old saying is true: “Two heads are better than one.” We stand on the shoulders of giants—both internal and external across government, academia and industry—who have made investments and demonstrated success. These partnerships allow us to know what “good” looks like sooner; we do not have to start from scratch. www.GIF-kmi.com

One example of interaction with industry is our Needipedia website. Needipedia, located at our www.dia.mil homepage, is a website that communicates our agency’s needs, whether functional, analytic or technological, to a larger community of innovators in the form of specific “lists.” Solution providers use these lists of needs to respond to specific agency requirements and priorities. With a dedicated forum to communicate our internal needs and solicit external solutions, we increase the likelihood of perfectly matching service providers to agency needs; we have created a conduit for innovation. This is just one example of DIA’s interaction with industry; we view private-sector partnerships as strategic enablers to our ability to improve analytic efficiency and effectiveness going forward.

Q: How would you describe the big-data challenge facing DIA analysis, and what steps are you taking to manage it?

A: The “problem” of big data, or the vast amount of raw information generated across society, is a problem facing every industry and every government in every part of the world. However, this problem is also an opportunity or call to action for DIA analysis. Hidden in this immense volume of data are new information, facts, relationships, indicators and points that either could not be practically discovered in the past or simply did not exist before. We have an opportunity to discover those key pieces of GIF 13.4 | 17

information, possibly prevent strategic surprise or transform all operational aspects of the organization. In order to make these discoveries, we are working to equip our analytic enterprise with the tools, skills and personnel we need to harvest these transformative insights.

We have a multifaceted approach to position our agency to harness the power of big data and profoundly enhance our effectiveness to accomplish the mission. Industry is far more advanced in innovating on big-data methodologies, so we are partnering with industry to leverage their expertise. We are also implementing agency training programs and building a cadre of data scientists through active recruitment of academically trained or industry-tested data scientists via internships, entrylevel jobs and other employment opportunities. The Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise (IC ITE) initiative is a huge player in the tools or IT solution. The enterprise will have an underpinning infrastructure that can store and process massive amounts of structured and unstructured data across functional and organizational lines.

Q: What is the Nerd Brigade, and how is it addressing your information challenges?

A: The Nerd Brigade started as a joint analytic modernization effort sponsored by DIA’s Directorate for Analysis and Innovation Office. I would like to point out that we view “nerd” as a term of endearment; we are proud of our nerds and I fly the Nerd Brigade flag in my office for all to see. The objective of the Nerd Brigade is to practice true agile software development by having software engineers co-located with analysts and domain experts as they jointly create new technology to enhance analytic efficiency and apply data science methods. The key concept is “agile software development.” This conceptual development framework is counter to traditional software development processes in that the goal is to introduce new low-cost, high-impact software development into the intelligence community by physically co-locating innovators with domain experts to shorten the feedback-cycle in software development.

Traditionally, technologists and analysts are separated. Agile development shortens the feedback cycle and creates a closeknit working relationship, ensuring that the finished product is immediately responsive to the analyst’s needs. This development life cycle can deliver mission-enhancing tools without expending considerable resources. As an example of impact, the Nerd Brigade’s first effort has reduced the research phase of one analytic mission by 63 percent in terms of time. That is immediate impact in the information challenge realm. Our Nerd Brigade uses industry best practices to “buy back” time, giving our analysts more time to focus on higher orders of analysis. Our biggest impediment remains operationalizing. We have been very successful at innovating, but have a real challenge taking our pilot to operational capability.

Q: Video has been called the “biggest big data.” How can technology help manage the huge volumes of information from UAVs and other platforms?

A: DIA is a national leader in exploitation of video through our National Media Exploitation Center. Even in the Directorate for 18 | GIF 13.4

Analysis, many parts of our all-source analytic work flow exploit and enrich video formats, including full-motion video. While automated sense-making of the content of video continues to be a challenge, metadata on video allows us to use some big data methodologies on video. Again, this is an area where we are tapping into industry innovations.

Q: What can DIA do to better follow and make effective use of social media?

A: Social media is one of the many non-traditional sources DIA is exploring and developing new and promising methodologies to exploit. We are interested in the experiences of industry and how industry is getting value from social media. But remember, the mission of DIA is to provide understanding of foreign military forces and their operating environments to provide decision advantage to prevent and win future conflicts. We are interested in social media when analysis of social media can further that mission, always keeping in mind the rights to privacy of ordinary citizens.

Q: You also co-chair the IC-ITE Mission Users Group. How would you assess progress on this initiative from the perspective of users?

A: The IC ITE Mission Users Group (MUG) remains focused on developing and demonstrating real value of IC ITE for our mission and encouraging adoption. The MUG is designed to be the voice of mission and create a demand signal for the IC ITE infrastructure, ensuring it can facilitate mission effectiveness and create enabling conditions for intelligence integration. The MUG has established several initiatives to allow for mission user participation, providing them with input in the process. For instance, the MUG has established mission threads focused on real-world integration challenges to identify data, tools and future mission workflows to enable adoption that include mission-user participation.

Q: How are you working with other agencies to better integrate geospatial intelligence into DIA analysis?

A: DIA’s partnership with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is enduring. Because DIA’s mission is to provide foundational intelligence on foreign militaries and operations environment intelligence for our forces, DIA and NGA leverage each other’s data, tools and methodologies frequently. NGA’s investment in human geography and DIA’s focus on socio-cultural analysis is an example. In the IC-ITE transition period, the entire IC relies on NGA to provision geospatial services to us all. NGA has refined its effort to address the full-spectrum of images, content, policy and tradecraft associated with delivering GEOINT. The MUG established a cross-agency working group on geospatial issues; we call these groups joint leadership networks (JVLNs).

Various JVLNs operate on a task-oriented and time-limited construct to identify key IT capabilities that are common across agencies and missions to develop focused plans to migrate toward common, integrated solutions. The Geospatial JVLN determined the need to move to common services and supported ODNI’s memorandum that established NGA as the service provider of common concern for geospatial intelligence. Implementation of www.GIF-kmi.com

a multi-phased strategy that ensures all GEOINT needs are met from a community perspective is continuing.

Q: What are some of the chief obstacles you see in introducing new technology into DIA analysis?

A: Introducing new technology is always a challenge in analysis.

To provide warfighters and policymakers with timely and accurate assessments, we have established rigorous tradecraft and procedures. So for analysts, new technology isn’t just about learning new ways of doing tasks; it’s about ensuring that the new technologies still meet the old standard, too. But we have to start making hard decisions on legacy data and legacy systems. If another agency has a “best of breed” tool that provides similar functionality, we need to start making trades and allowing other agencies to provide certain tools/applications of common concern.

We will need to start turning off legacy data stores and legacy systems because we simply cannot afford to transition them all to the cloud. We are working as a community to determine the most effective and affordable approaches. Some of the obstacles to adopting new technology are completing the accreditation process and ensuring we don’t break critical legacy warfighting connections. For instance, the Modernized Intelligence Database is a pretty outdated database model. It is tied to other databases, weapons systems and processes, however, and we need to ensure we do not break those linkages as we move forward.

Q: How would you describe your mission as DIA’s director for analysis?

A: Being the director for analysis is a dynamic and rewarding position that has several key roles and missions. First and foremost, my job is to train and develop the expertise of the DIA analytic workforce and deliver relevant and timely all-source defense intelligence to decision-makers and warfighters. I’m proud of the work we do at DIA. We have a very important mission and some of the brightest talent in the organization.

As the functional manager of the defense intelligence allsource program, my job is to align analytic efforts and resources to manage defense intelligence analytic requirements, assess the ability of defense all-source analytic activities to meet requirements and advise the under secretary of defense for intelligence and director of national intelligence on analytic risk and resource allocation.

But one of my most critical missions is as the co-chair of the IC ITE MUG. Because DIA has the unique mission of serving both the policymaker and the warfighter, it is leading the change and IC ITE adoption for mission within DoD. The MUG comprises senior “mission voices” in the intelligence community who are actively engaged to ensure IC ITE delivers for mission. The MUG holds weekly meetings to address how to exploit new capabilities and to steer future developments that empower the mission community. We prioritize what data and applications should transition to the new enterprise, and develop and oversee IC ITE adoption plans and timelines.

Q: DIA also has a program called IntelTrak which monitors what your intelligence customers want from your agency. What are you learning from their responses? www.GIF-kmi.com

A: IntelTrak delivers even more of what the defense intelligence enterprise needs to make wiser production decisions: real-time business analytics that show the reach and effectiveness of our intelligence production. In January 2013, we launched IntelTrak, a business analytics tool that did two important things: helped analysts tailor their products based on consumer use and made collaboration easier by connecting analysts to their counterparts throughout the defense intelligence community.

From a strategic perspective, IntelTrak has given organizational leaders insight we need to adjust production so that we better anticipate our consumers’ needs and improve defense intelligence enterprise collaboration.

So far, we’ve learned what the IC consumers are interested in and how long they are remain interested in these hot topics. We were also able to identify and address gaps in our product delivery. If a product’s intended audience isn’t well-represented in our usage, we can proactively market that product. Finally, we’ve been able to better serve our executive consumers by proactively responding to trends in their usage.

Q: What is involved in carrying out your additional role as functional manager for all-source analysis for the defense intelligence enterprise?

A: My all-source analytic management, advocacy and policy implementation roles apply not only to DIA Directorate for Analysis, but also include 16 other all-defense, all-source analysis and production centers operating throughout the world, including the combatant commands and service intelligence centers.

I use the Defense Intelligence Analysis Program (DIAP) to execute this mission. Through the DIAP, I collect quarterly data on analytic level of effort, facilitate collective enterprise resource management decisions at DIAP Board of Governors meetings and publish DIAP Quarterly Health Reports that highlight current areas of analytic focus and risk.

Q: How has your extensive career in the intelligence community shaped your current approach to your job?

A: I believe first and foremost I am an IC officer. I’ve been fortunate enough to gain perspectives from working at DIA, CIA and ODNI and recognize that collaboration is the true currency of the realm. One agency’s priorities are inextricably linked to another’s, all in the service of the same national goals, and my approach is to leverage those shared goals to find efficiencies and build consensus. There will be times when DIA needs to stop doing tasks and start leveraging other members of the IC. This approach has meant that some “scared cows” are threatened because other members of the IC are better able to deliver those tools, methodologies, analysis and capabilities. I also believe that the best analysts are ones who have had out-of-body experiences and walked in the shoes of our collection brethren. My time spent in the Directorate for Science and Technology working on technical collection made me a much better analyst, and I strongly encourage that type of cross-fertilization. My guild is still analysis, but I am much more active in stressing collection systems to close the truly important gaps. O GIF 13.4 | 19

Technology from the retail and security industries

helps solve the problem of too much video and eyes.

By Harrison Donnelly, GIF Editor

“A lot of information is captured in these videos, and With strong roots in diverse fields such as physical security, today there are not enough people to go through it all, so they retail marketing and transportation, video analytics technology are largely unexploited. The government has devoted a lot of holds out promise for military and intelligence ISR programs resources to making sure they can store and transmit videos, struggling to cope with enormous amounts of video data. but they haven’t really started to get into the analysis of the vidA broad term for a variety of imagery techniques, includeos. But we can do that,” Santucci added. ing motion detection and facial recognition, video analytics The factor that distinguishes video analytics from other seeks to solve the problem of a virtually unlimited amount of video capabilities, advocates say, is the ability to glean informavisual information and a limited number of human eyes by autotion out of the video, rather than just recording matically indexing, characterizing and drawing and storing the video and counting on the user to conclusions from images, and then alerting an find the information. operator about its possible significance.

“The objective of video analytics is to drive The driving force behind video analytics is actionable intelligence out of the video itself, simply the volume of video data from surveillance and automate that to the extent possible,” said cameras, UAVs and other platforms, which is far Larry Bowe, president and CEO of PureTech more than can feasibly be observed, and so taxSystems, a provider of geospatial video maning to carefully scrutinize for hours that errors agement software. “The idea is to automate the or oversights can easily occur. For hard-pressed detection and tracking, and then present that operators, video analytics hold out the promise in a way to users that they can make decisions of automatic screening for potentially significant Larry Bowe in real time, and also aid in investigation after events, thus enabling them to focus on the most the fact.” important times and locations.

“There is too much now that we are giving to “We don’t want to cut out the human, but the analyst. It’s got to be metadata, video ingest we can make his or her job a lot easier by, for and much more complex analytics that can look at example, making sure that they are focused on all this stuff in milliseconds and make a decision reviewing things that are truly significant,” said and say that this is what you need to look at. The Joe Santucci, president and CEO of piXlogic, an underlying analytic system needs to present to image and video search company. “The software the operator what they need to see. The operator can add an extra set of eyes. It indiscriminately shouldn’t be figuring out what they need to see; examines everything in the video, even if not it should be right in front of them,” said Frank strictly relevant to the mission at hand, since it McCarthy, director, solutions development video could be important in some mission or to another Frank McCarthy surveillance for EMC. analyst and would otherwise have been missed.

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“There is a crossroads of non-military technolThe recent surge in interest in video analytics ogy and military needs. The kinds of things that represents the revival of a field that drew attention are being done for retail, automotive and other purabout a decade ago, but subsided when its technologiposes can provide a huge number of use cases in the cal challenges became apparent. Since then, however, military space,” said Mike Flannagan, vice president software algorithms have become far more sophisand general manager of Cisco’s Data and Analytics ticated, and cameras and computer hardware more Business Group. “There is so much potential to do powerful, enabling much more robust capabilities. good things using these advanced analytics and “There was a recognition of a need, especially after machine learning techniques. But those technol9/11, because it’s so impractical for people to watch ogies also come with the responsibility to respect cameras constantly,” Bowe said. “But there was a lot people’s privacy and concern over intrusiveness. So of overhype in the market in terms of the capabilities.

Mike Flannagan it’s important for those using these technologies, The market was attempting to meet demand, but the whether in retail or defense, to find a balance between using the technology wasn’t quite there. Some companies threw a lot of money technology for good things without being unnecessarily intrusive.” at it, but they weren’t able to deliver on their promises. ”Some of that was due to the software algorithms that were needed, but also because of the lack of commercial hardware that Geospatial Awareness was affordable and able to run sophisticated algorithms. If you need a huge computer to run the algorithms, it’s not very practical. But as PureTech recently released the latest version of its PureActiv computers have advanced, we’re seeing more power at a lower price, geospatial video management and video analytics software, which enables running more powerful algorithms,” he added. which provides new detection capability through the addition of As a result, backers of video analytics see a major opportunity to advanced video analytics, map-based user features, advances in convert technology developed to track shoppers through a store, for metadata collection and playback and a wide range of security example, to support military and intelligence missions. But they also sensor integrations. warn, as is true with a lot of such consumer-focused technology, that The company’s focus on geospatial information sets it apart the benefits of these programs need to be balanced with uneasiness from others in the field, Bowe said, as does its ability to analyze over privacy and civil liberties. long-range video over water or land. “We focus on a high probability

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GIF 13.4 | 21

of detection with a low false alarm rate, which is key to success. The Automatic Metadata geospatial understanding aids in that tremendously, and gives us a significant advantage,” he noted.

PiXlogic’s software is able to automatically process a still or “We tie the pixels in the image space to the terrain so we know video image without knowing anything about what the image conwhere the pixels are hitting the surface of the earth. That way, we tains, said Santucci, whose company has received funding from can give a range to the target detected and give an indication to In-Q-Tel and works with the intelligence community. the end-user of where that target is so that they can plan an inter“Our system can segment the contents of the images in a way cept. The base of what we’re doing is analyzing the content of the that makes logical sense. If you imagine an image of someone sitvideo and deciding what rules have been violated that are of conting at a desk, the software will identify all the areas where we have cern,” Bowe explained. enough contrast difference to be able to pull out the outlines of the PureTech concentrates on three classes of applications: shipthings in the scene. It can segment out your shirt, hair, face, coffee ping ports, international borders and perimeter protection, cup or painting in the background,” he said. including military bases. While the issues involved in perimeter The software creates descriptions on the fly, characterizing the protection are similar to those in retail surveillance, for example, location of the item and other properties. “We are generating a lot of the challenges are greater when studying long-distance video of metadata automatically, and as it does that, the software is also reaports and borders. soning about what it sees in the image,” he said. “If it understands “For one thing, the accuracy of pointing is different at 100 that it is seeing something that belongs to a set of items, it will autometers than at five miles. Also, you have to have cameras able to matically tag the item. If the sky is in a photo, it will identify the sky reach out far. The capabilities and cost of a standard surveillance and tag it with a keyword. camera don’t compare with those of a camera doing border patrol,” “We call these things ‘notions’ because they are broad categoBowe said. “You also have challenges in the imaging processing, ries,” Santucci continued. “A car, for example, can be in many difincluding being able to stabilize the image at long range and deal ferent shapes and colors. But we can understand the idea of what a with the atmospheric interference. Your analytics have to be capacar is, and recognize and tag it. It can also recognize specific items ble of consuming that information and making meaning out of it. of interest to the user, such as a particular make, model and year.”

“With more computing horsepower comes more capability, so The result is a very rich set of metadata, he said. The software can accuracy and capability to identify target types will continue to also recognize faces in general as well as specific individuals, and even grow,” he continued. “Now, you can identify a person, for example. text in different languages. The metadata can then be exploited—for But down the road, we will be able to distinguish between two difexample, by searching through a large amount of video. ferent people and be able to track one in particular.”

“Another value point is that people are storing lots of material, Another company that emphasizes the role of geospatial data some of which is not so interesting. You could use the software to is Agent Vi, an Israel-based video analytics provider. Its technology decide which parts of the total video are really important and interworks on stationary surveillance cameras, which can esting, saving them and getting rid of the other stuff, detect the exact location of any point within their thus reducing storage costs,” Santucci said. field of view.

“The core of what we do is to take the video Machine Learning stream and extract meaningful metadata in a fully automated way. It is a description of every frame in For Flannagan of Cisco, which offers a product a video stream telling us the list of objects in that suite called Video Surveillance Manager, some of the field of view, and different types of attributes for each greatest value of video analytics comes when it is used object. The size, shape, speed, position and direcin combination with machine learning technology. tion of movement are extracted automatically in real “There are different ways that people can use time,” explained Zvika Ashani, the company’s chief video and analytics on the video frames,” he noted.

Zvika Ashani technology officer.

“Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, “The second stage is to analyze the metadata, such as rulesthere may be a variety of different things that you would do. There based real-time analysis, which is intended to detect events,” he are some basic functions, such as the number of objects movsaid. “For each camera, a user would configure for one or more ing through a frame and whether something is present or not rules, such as to provide an alert when a person approaches a fence, present, such as a high-value item on a retail shelf, for example, a vehicle parks in a no-loading zone or a crowd starts to form. We or the presence of a person in a place where no one is supposed have rules that the user can configure. We then analyze the data in to be. real time, and if we discover that any object has violated a rule, we “Those are what I would consider basic video analytics, which can send out an event to the user.” is using movement through a frame of video. But there are also The system also provides forensic search capabilities, Ashani more advanced analytics that are being done with video that involve said. “We can take the metadata, store it in a database, and enable things like anomaly detection. That’s not just video analytics, but an investigator to perform queries—rather than the normal also combining it with machine learning,” Flannagan said. method of reviewing days of video from multiple cameras. The To illustrate the potential benefits, Flannagan used the examuser can specify all video clips with a large white van, for example of video surveillance cameras on a freeway, where video analytple. Within seconds, we can scan the metadata and find any objects ics can answer questions such as average speed or breakdown time. that meet that criterion. When used for investigation, it’s a great But what it can’t do is tell you whether these factors are normal, or time-saving tool.” unusual enough to merit closer attention.

22 | GIF 13.4

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“With machine learning, I can tell you when, and over time, how fast traffic should be moving at this time of day, and how fast is it actually moving. From that, I can tell you if we are seeing an abnormal traffic pattern,” he said.

“The ability to detect anomalies is where video analytics starts becoming really interesting in public safety,” Flannagan noted. “Is someone normally in this space at this time of day? How many people do we normally count standing in front of a bank in the middle of the night? How many people do we normally see with huge backpacks at the finish line of a race? Those things might enable you to detect something anomalous.”

Analytics Infrastructure As a leading data storage and virtualization company, EMC’s focus is on the infrastructure needed to support video analytics.

McCarthy noted, for example, that he company’s “edge to core” architecture can help systems manage information from large arrays of sensors. “What we’re seeing is that as those sensors become more complex and capable of doing more at the edge sites, including cameras, then it’s important for the edge sites to have some local storage as well as pre-processing capability, so that you can massage the data at its source, put it in a format that is less network-intensive, and get it back to a central location.

“You’re using the edge sites to prepackage the data so that it’s more efficient when you get to the core,” he said. “The sizing of the infrastructure, whether a hypervisor for virtualization or a regular server or computer, is really important because you have to maintain the existing production workload, as well as handle all that preprocessing that is going on in real time or near-real time.

“When it gets back to the core, we have a highly scalable, flexible platform that offers hyper consolidation with our converged infrastructure offerings, as well as scale out storage capability.

Embedded technologies that lend themselves to analytic processing help you move to the next thing. They meet today’s requirements, but they also allow you to build and add on,” McCarthy said.

EMC is also working to get other providers in the surveillance space to become more descriptive in their data sets from a metadata perspective.

“Some camera providers today can do what they call video content descriptions, where as the camera is looking at a field of view, they can run analytics in it,” he said. “Some of the higher-end cameras can run the analytics in real time, and most of them work pretty well. Some are even getting into demographics. They can be pretty comprehensive, looking at size and color, and describe what’s going on in the field of view.

“But what we’re asking is that instead of putting that out as video snapshots, they create a metadata stream that is much easier to handle as a data set. Then we can take that and massage the data so we can input it into an analytic engine. It will be important for companies like us in the future to have a platform that can run the applications that support the normalization of the data that is coming in, whether video or metadata,” McCarthy predicted.

“There are some standards out there today in the video surveillance industry, but they are pretty loose, and there is nothing about metadata creation and context,” he added. “That’s something we hope we will see in the future, and our company is pushing for those kinds of standards. That will help us simplify the whole www.GIF-kmi.com

equation of video and metadata analytics in the video surveillance environment.”

Advanced Algorithms Another major player in this field is Raytheon, which has combined analytics from specialized tools usable only by select image scientists into a suite of analytics called Intersect, which is designed to be fully accessible to a much wider set of analysts.

Elements of the suite include Intersect Reveal, which automates basic full-motion video (FMV) analytic functions and fuses the resulting data using a multi-INT context accumulation engine.

Reveal automates the registration, tracking, classification and indexing of video, delivering increased content with fewer analyst work hours. In parallel, advanced analytic algorithms rapidly sift through massive amounts of data to provide important context about the source video.

In addition, Intersect Dimension automates the creation of highresolution 3-D imagery from low-cost commercial 2-D imagery, and has recently been upgraded to support 3-D video as well as still images. High-resolution 3-D then forms a geo-precise foundation upon which additional content can be added.

The capabilities increase video analyst productivity by automating common tasks. “While some analytics may not replace the human eye, they can certainly replace valuable hours the video analyst spends on mundane tasks. Oftentimes, they must manually correlate video to other data sources by looking at the time and location of the video, then searching dozens of other databases to find information associated with that time and place,” a company spokesman explained.

A key technology underlying these capabilities is precision geolocation. Raytheon worked from early in development to enable precise relative geolocation and registration of frame data. Once the data are well-registered, software extracts 3-D information from multiple images or video frames, producing 3-D data sets that can serve as a foundational layer for fusion of data from other collectors, as well as a value-added data layer enabling volumetric and line-ofsight analysis.

Unique algorithms in the system correlate video to other data sources. A feature called Intersect Relay, for example, produces location information icons directly on moving video, like a pushpin on a map.

The spokesman cited two examples of advantages provided by the system, including addressing geopositioning errors common to FMV data. For that, Raytheon developed the Video Image Photogrammetric Registration algorithm, which corrects FMV geolocations in order to make the data useful for targeting and multiINT fusion.

“Second, we have increased the productivity of multi-INT analysts through the use of Intersect Reveal,” the spokesman added.

“Reveal uses a complex ensemble of analytics, including moving vehicle track extraction, signal-to-track correlation, relevance analytics, which determine the most relevant information related to a video, and visual analytics, to improve analyst productivity—both time to decision and decision quality.” O For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.

GIF 13.4 | 23

Sophisticated radar units are being downsized to fit in more affordable and plentiful UAVs.

By Henry Canaday, GIF Correspondent

Sandia did not build the circuits for MiniSAR, but obtained cirThe ability of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to see through night cuits and technologies developed by other companies and integrated or clouds, spot minute changes on the ground and even detect and these. “There were many vendors,” Burns recalled. “We used the lattrack targets has made it an important sensor capability. But the techest processing widgets. The gaming industry spends much more than nology’s significant size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements have Sandia on processors, so we used them.” mostly restricted its use to large and expensive vehicles.

That is changing, however, as small and nano SARs with SWaP in very limited ranges are making this tool suitable for small UAVs. Change Detection Coverage, use cases and economy of operation will all improve as sophisticated SAR is downsized to fit in more affordable and potenLike all SAR tools, MiniSAR can see things that electro-optical tially plentiful aircraft. This has happened already in a limited way in (EO) imaging cannot see, and see them under conditions that EO will U.S. military operations, and is getting under way in a wide variety of not work under. It uses Sandia-developed coherent change detection other fields as well.

(CCD) techniques, which Burns described as the key to SAR’s power.

A key development in this trend came with the transfer “Optical has no phase information, so it cannot see changes. You have last year by Sandia National Laboratories of its Copperhead systo look at phases to do CCD. That is want makes SAR unique.” tem for detecting IEDs to the Army.

CCD has been used to spot Earth The Copperhead system includes Sandia’s moved to install IEDs, and the MiniSAR MiniSAR device, plus software and tools CCD can notice where a lawnmower has to exploit its capabilities. mown grass and determine whether the Sandia had been reluctant to release blades of grass have rebounded to their information on MiniSAR, but decided to go original position. public after the Secretary of Energy gave No other system does change detection an award to the invention, explained Bryan to spot IEDs as well as MiniSAR, Burns Burns, a Sandia senior engineer. argued. “We have proven it to the military The latest MiniSAR weighs about 65 and many nay-sayers and validated change pounds, a bit more or less depending on The Copperhead MiniSAR detects disturbances in the earth, for example detection in a harsh environment. One’s those made when IEDs are buried. It can find them day or night and in the aircraft it is installed on. MiniSAR can many weather conditions, including fog and dust storms. [Photo courtesy mind can run wild on all the other things work on both manned and unmanned of Sandia National Laboratories] it can do.” aircraft. The smallest UAV it has ridden is the Tiger Shark with a All MiniSAR processing is done on board the UAV or manned 17-foot wingspan. “It can go on anything that can carry 65 pounds,” aircraft, then compressed and transmitted for display to a trained Burns said. interpreter on the ground, and this interpreter spots the changes.

“The military is very satisfied and wants to continue using it,” he Operators can be trained in five weeks to interpret MiniSAR images. noted, while declining to provide specific information on effectiveness The images might look like simple frame pictures to untrained and deployments. “It’s been a success every place it had been used.” observers. It is MiniSAR’s microwave transmitter that emits a pulse so Sandia engineers developed three increasingly sophisticated modthat the return echo can be processed to make the rich SAR image. els of MiniSAR, and since first use in 2009 has made major upgrades “You must transmit to get the echo to have CCD,” Burns said. “And in microwave hardware and the processing software. “We want it to fly there is lots of processing.” higher and faster,” Burns explained. “The Tiger Shark is slow, and we MiniSAR typically operates at 10,000 feet but can go higher and wanted to put it on something higher and faster than that.” faster. “It’s not difficult, and is done routinely. But you don’t want to go Hardware has been upgraded, and processing algorithms too low in case people throw rocks at you,” Burns observed. enhanced. Processing capacity has increased as computer technology The toughest challenge in developing MiniSAR, Burns recalled, has improved. At present, there are several variants of MiniSAR, and was simply getting other people to understand its potential value.

Burns predicted more in the future.

He started thinking about the tool in 2004 and then spent a long 24 | GIF 13.4

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time convincing others. “It was hard for them to believe that CCD could see grass move with careful interpretation. To convince people with money was the biggest uphill battle. They told me it was impossible. Persuading them was much harder than coming up with the algorithms.”

MiniSAR started out at just 30 pounds, and Burns has ideas about how to get it well below the current says that, if he had to reduce the current weight. “It just costs money to make it smaller, lighter and use less power, but I know exactly how to do it. We did the miniaturization in a very short time to meet requirements.”

Rival small SARs have not really measured up to the Sandia technology’s performance,” he suggested. “They do not do as good a job on change detection. It’s way more than the radar. You must be very careful with the entire system, the aircraft, the engine, the autopilot and the program behind it that drives it all. You can’t just get a great radar; there are lots of other things. It’s system-level design.”

Some miniaturization efforts have fallen short by not considering small SAR from this full-system perspective, Burns continued. “They don’t repeat passes well, the autopilot is not very good, they fly too low and they are not good at getting a low-noise level. There are a hundred things you can do wrong and it will not work.”

Warfighter Assets All these hurdles have not stopped others from trying. In 2006 IMSAR and Insitu completed a prototype of a one-pound SAR device

called NanoSAR. It was intended to operate on almost all UAVs, including Insitu’s light ScanEagle.

“The motivation to pursue NanoSAR is small UAVs,” stressed Adam Robinson, vice president of IMSAR. “With big manned aircraft there is no motivation for low power and light weight.”

The necessity for small UAVs lies in part because larger UAVs such as RQ-4 Global Hawk fly high and are controlled as theater assets, so warfighters on the ground must navigate complicated paths to obtain their data. Small UAVs like the Army’s RQ-7 Shadow and the Navy’s Scan Eagle are tactical, subject to direct control by low-echelon operators. UAVs that weigh less than 500 pounds need equipment like NanoSAR, according to Robinson.

IMSAR’s assumption is that, just as all fighter aircraft have radar, light UAVs should have it, too. NanoSAR can provide small UAVs with images, CCD capabilities and a moving target indicator (MTI) that can detect movement and track multiple moving objects continuously.

Both SAR and MTI capabilities can be packaged all in one 6.5pound unit or put in separate devices, depending on the mission. Both radar-based capabilities see through clouds and at night and cover a wide area. “Cameras have a narrow field, like a soda straw,” Robinson says. “If you zoom out, you lose detail.”

NanoSAR’s radar technology covers wide areas and its MTI can cue cameras to identify tracked moving objects more precisely, which is very helpful. “Radar is good at detecting widely, but it can’t tell whether a truck is black or white or what the license number is,” Robinson pointed out.

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GIF 13.4 | 25

NanoSAR’s best use is not replacing other sensors but in integrating or fusing with them to give a more complete picture of events.

That is one reason why NanoSAR has such low SWaP requirements: so it can be mounted on the same platform as EO and IR devices.

IMSAR worked first on military applications of NanoSAR, but now that initial development has been paid for, NanoSAR can be offered at lower price points, and IMSAR is getting into commercial uses. NanoSAR is fully operational and is flying on UAVs in the United States and abroad, for both military and non-military customers. It has been tested in Japan looking for landslides in steep terrain.

NanoSAR’s CCD capabilities can detect very small changes.

“Using CCD, we can detect millimeters of change,” Robinson said.

These detected changes could be very subtle. For example, EO and IR cannot tell whether a road has been traversed unless they spot a moving vehicle. With CCD, NanoSAR can come along later and spot the rearrangement of gravel that indicates a vehicle has driven down the road.

NanoSAR works at any altitude, Robinson said, and SAR techniques have been used on space-based satellites. Some detail is lost with higher altitudes, since radar is like a flashlight that disperses its beams with distance.

For imaging purposes, NanoSAR cannot go too slow. “You like to move at a fair clip,” Robinson notes. But MTI functions can be used in either moving or stationary vehicles.

A 2.5-pound NanoSAR first flew in 2008 on a Scan Eagle, and a one-pounder has flown on a RQ-20 Puma. The basic technology ranges in size from one to 10 or 14 pounds. Configuration depends on application and altitude. For example, a higher altitude might require “a bigger flashlight” to get required resolution, Robinson says.

Although NanoSAR’s development was driven by small UAVs, it can also operate on manned aircraft. This approach may be more practical for a while inside the United States because the Federal Aviation Administration still restricts UAVs so tightly in the national airspace and because early commercial UAVs are still fairly expensive. “Eventually, UAVs will be offered at lower price points,” Robinson predicted.

For commercial purposes, NanoSAR can now create 3-D elevation maps through interferometry, which could be used for flood mapping, mining and other purposes. LiDAR and photogrammetry can also make these 3-D maps, although Robinson characterized LiDAR as too expensive and photogrammetry as not as accurate as interferometry. IMSAR expects its first 3-D customer in a couple of months.

The company is also looking into emergency uses such as fire control. Radar can see through smoke clouds, and CCD can see where the fire line is and how fast it is moving. “The fire edge is obvious,” Robinson noted. “We can protect vehicles by moving them and save lives.”

NanoSAR is currently mapping ice ridges in the Arctic for an oil company. “Optical sensors see only white,” Robinson said, while NanoSAR sees rapidly changing cracks, fissures and pressure ridges.

IMSAR develops its own processing algorithms, but can use third-party software. Processing can be done entirely onboard or partly on the ground, depending on equipment. All data are transmitted in standardized formats so anyone familiar with SAR can consume it.

Most processed images are easy to interpret even without training, Robinson said. “They’re quasi-optical. CCD is similar; you can teach it in a few minutes.”

26 | GIF 13.4

There would be no point in putting NanoSAR on larger orbiting satellites, but it might be useful on a CubeSat, where every ounce matters. The technology is not yet qualified for space, but could be.

“NanoSAR for nano satellites is not mature, but we think it’s realistic,” Robinson said. A satellite-based NanoSAR could not spot rearranged gravel, but might help with land planning, ice covers and forestry.

For the future, IMSAR sees significant maritime applications.

IMSAR makes the image-processing software for NanoSAR but not software for controlling UAVs. To image a particular location, it plots the required waypoints and transmits these automatically to the UAV operator. Then, NanoSAR can detect its position and turn its radar on or off as needed.

IMSAR has the smallest SAR of any revealed to the public, Robinson said, adding that the company takes pride in delivering on hard requirements in a time span that competitors cannot match.

Penetrating the Weather In Europe, the synthetic aperture radar for all weather penetrating (SARape) project is developing miniaturized SAR for small UAVs. SARape is being pursued by organizations from four countries, including Germany’s Fraunhofer IAF research institute.

SARape is still a demonstrator at present, according to Michael Caris, team leader for Millimeter Wave Radar in Fraunhofer’s department of millimeter wave radar and high-frequency sensors.

The demonstrator model puts out 100 milliwatts of power.

SARape provides resolution of up to 15 centimeters in both range and cross-range directions, independent of target distance. “Two receive channels enable interferometric and polarimetric measurements,” Caris indicated.

Digital transmission enabled by SARape’s onboard preprocessing yields sufficient bandwidth for synchronous transmission of all data, including inertial measurement unit (IMU) navigation data.

“This enables a quick-look capability by using a real-time SAR processor on the ground,” Caris said.

SARape measures 4x8x14 inches and weighs about 33 pounds, including its IMU and preprocessor. It requires about 40 watts of power at 28 volts.

The unit could be used on any manned or unmanned aircraft that provides sufficient space, payload-carrying capacity and power.

It is designed to fly at about 70 to 110 miles per hour at altitudes of 1,000 to more than 3,000 feet.

Caris noted that, as with all SAR, SARape will operate in all weather, image through sandstorms or dust clouds and does not require daylight. The device will provide real-time, quick-look capabilities and its millimeter waves will be sensitive enough for smallscale structures.

Caris said he expects SARape to be used for surveillance, search and rescue, border control, disaster recovery and monitoring and environmental monitoring. In the future, Fraunhofer engineers hope to reduce SARape’s weight and size and increase its output power so it can operate at higher altitudes. 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

GIF RESOURCE CENTER

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Calendar

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GIF 13.4 | 27

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW

Geospatial Intelligence Forum

Stuart Blundell General Manager Visual Information Systems Harris Q: Please tell readers about the ENVI Analytics Symposium scheduled for later this summer.

A: About a year ago, we started thinking about the work we were doing in the cloud for image analytics, and how we were developing a new market with partners such as DigitalGlobe and Airbus Defense and Space. One conclusion we came to was that we needed to bring together the thought leaders in data science, remote sensing and GIS to have a conversation.

That conversation is about how we can deliver a new generation of information products from geospatial data that is not delivering pixels, classified images or a data layer. Rather, it is an information product that is fit for purpose and can be consumed in any manner that our customers would like to consume it, whether in a report, map or some other way to visualize the output.

As we started to dig into what we would call the ENVI Analytics Symposium, we saw that, within analytics and geospatial analytics in particular, there wasn’t a definition of geospatial analytics that everyone could agree on. When we thought more about it, we came to the conclusion that geospatial analytics is the discovery and communication of geospatial patterns in data. It’s different from GIS, remote sensing and data science. That thinking led us to put together this symposium, and we’ve had an overwhelming response from the community to participate.

Q: What do you have planned for the agenda?

A: The symposium will be held August 24-25 in Boulder, Colo., which has always been an area of innovation, both in an artistic and an engineering/technology perspective. We have developed the agenda around four basic tracks: algorithms and analytics; big geospatial data; remote-sensing phenomenology; and applied research.

I reached out to Vice Admiral Robert 28 | GIF 13.4

Murrett (Ret.), a former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, when I was in London at the DGI conference earlier this year. I invited the admiral, who is now at Syracuse University, to be part of this event. He accepted, and that formed some of my thinking around the use of geospatial analytics for global security issues. I also reached out to colleagues at DigitalGlobe to talk to them about the work they are doing on the Geospatial Big Data platform, and they are a sponsor of what we are doing. They will be participating, as will Airbus Defense and Space, a leading provider of geospatial data around the world, and Esri. They are sponsors at the “platinum” level, supporting the talks and technology demonstrations that we will have.

After more than 20 years in the geospatial side of remote sensing and feature extraction, I was able to reach out to a wide range of contacts, such as Dr. John Irvine of Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and Dr. Fred Kruse of the Naval Postgraduate School. It’s a real “who’s who” of thought leaders in data science, remote sensing and GIS. Q: Who do you see attending this event, and why should readers consider doing so?

A: We’re limiting attendance to 150, and right now we have 100 slots filled representing 46 different organizations from eight different countries. We wanted to address people who are thought leaders in the business and have a conversation. As

we develop a new market for information products, we’re trying to reach beyond traditional remote sensing and geospatial markets to people in other fields, such as financial services, insurance, energy, and food and water security issues— beyond just water scarcity to the longterm impacts of water and its distribution, such as trans-border issues. We’re looking at both large and small solutions with geospatial analytics, and we think that ENVI is the right platform to have these discussions around.

Q: What do you see coming out the conference, and how do you see Harris moving forward in this area in the future?

A: We’re working with the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) and the U.S. Geospatial intelligence Foundation (USGIF) to help us develop a community lexicon on geospatial analytics. We’ll have a conversation about that at the upcoming GEOINT Symposium. We also expect to develop out of this a set of information graphics that can help consumers who aren’t scientists and engineers understand the value of persistent Earth observations.

We can help them manage a wide range of investments in land and industry and look at topics such as infrastructure for energy and natural resource management in timber, mining or oil and gas. Although remote sensing has helped these industries in the past by selling imagery products in the form of pixels, we’re going to change that paradigm by asking what kinds of information products are needed to improve business and minimize risk.

We hope that a wide range of publications with leading nonprofit organizations such as ASPRS and USGIF will come out of the conference. We want to make the community feel comfortable that they are participating in something that is much larger than any one application or company, but is really involving the whole GEOINT community. O www.GIF-kmi.com

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