Gif 10 1 final(2)

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community

February 2012 Volume 10, Issue 1

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Analysis Transformer

Caryn Wagner

Under Secretary Intelligence and Analysis DHS

LiDAR O DI2E O GIS Workflows O Real-Time Processing

Put GEOINT in the hands of those who rely on it most

Today’s warfi ghter is the most sophisticated sensor in the world.

But he can’t be expected to be a GIS expert. TerraGo® Technologies geospatial collaboration software

and GeoPDF® maps and imagery are among the most widely

adopted COTS solutions to produce, access, update and

share geospatial information with anyone, anywhere.

From virtually any mobile handheld device, warfi ghters can

access interactive, compact, portable and secure GeoPDF

maps and imagery and easily make georeferenced updates

using notes, audio, video, Web services or other information

in connected or offl ine environments.

When armed with the most up-to-date GEOINT, warfi ghters

can collaborate peer-to-peer in the fi eld or with Command to

produce more relevant, current products that enable better

decision making.

See TerraGo at Esri Federal GIS Conference booth 501 and

at its Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting at 1:30 p.m.

Thursday, Feb. 23 in room 306.

www.terragotech.com

See TerraGo at

Esri Federal GIS

Conference Booth 501

Geospatial intelliGence Forum February 2012 Volume 10 • issue 1

Features coVer / Q&a

17

Departments

2

4

14

26

27

Editor’s Perspective

Program Notes/People

Industry Raster

Homeland Vector

Calendar, Directory

inDustry interView

Antoine de ChassyPresident

Astrium GEO-Information Services North America

28

Caryn WagnerUnder Secretary

for Intelligence and Analysis Department of Homeland Security

Shedding Light with LiDARLiDAR’s true value as a military and intelligence tool comes when it is used in conjunction with data from other sources such as electro-optical, infrared and hyperspectral sensors to enhance the situational picture.By Peter Buxbaum

22

Intel UpdateA report on the status of some key intelligence-related issues and pieces of legislation currently under consideration in the nation’s capital.By George Meyers

13

Big Data-in-Motion SolutionReal-time analytical processing is an approach that can help master the growing tsunami of GEOINT data.By Alex Philp

5

Going with the FlowBy stringing together tasks and guided, interactive processes, GIS workflow has become the de facto standard framework for defining the work and the flow from initial task to actionable product.By Cheryl Gerber

10

Architecture for IntelligenceAs Pentagon officials prepare their proposal for an architecture to enable data sharing between intelligence organizations, key contractors are expecting the framework to better enable sharing.By William Murray

7

www.GiF-kmi.com

One trend that seems to be especially resonating as 2012 gets under way concerns the importance not only of information sharing for national and homeland security intelligence, but also specifi-cally the critical role of geospatial standards in undergirding and supporting that sharing.

One advocate of that view is Kshemendra Paul, program manager for the Information Sharing Environment, a federal office established by the 2004 intelligence reform law to provide analysts, operators and investigators with information related to integrated and synthesized terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and home-land security. Paul recently spoke to a U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation event on topics that included the use of geospatial stan-dards as one of the foundations to enhance information sharing, as well as the identification of geospatial methods to increase interoperability among federal, state and local operators.

“The GEOINT community is clearly ahead of many others when it comes to information sharing,” Paul told the gotgeoint.com blog. “We want to drive standards development, so our government can better share and safeguard information in a repeatable, cost-effective way.”

Information sharing and standards are also likely to be major topics of discussion at the Esri Federal GIS Conference being held in Washington, D.C., in February. It’s not precisely the same topic as above, but one scheduled presentation that caught my eye was to highlight the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) development of a suite of tools providing on-demand access to critical infrastructure geospatial databases for emergency response planning and management.

Indeed, LLNL is clearly a significant force in this area, having designed a number of capabili-ties aimed at translating complex model data into scenario specific formats for decision-makers and the general public. One example is a tool called EleCent Earth, which is part of a broader component, Element Centric, that enables users to take full advantage of data related to counter-proliferation.

Using Google Earth, EleCent Earth displays results in a geospatial format and enables users to search by area and topic of interest.

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community

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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE

Ready for what’s next. www.boozallen.com/defense

Use of the Department of Defense image does not constitute or imply endorsement.

Providing actionable intelligence.

Maintaining strategic agility.

Protecting the warfi ghter.

Ready for what’s next. Ready for what’s next. In today’s electronic warfare environments, increased situational awareness

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DigitalGlobe has announced the addition of three new senior leaders to its management team. Marcy Steinke, who joins the company as senior vice president of government relations, is a retired Air Force colonel with 25 years of experience within the DoD. She served as director of congressional legislative affairs for the chairman

and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition, Tim Hascall joins DigitalGlobe as senior vice president of opera-tions, while Grover Wray is the company’s new chief human resources officer.

NJVC, a provider of IT solutions to the DoD, has hired three new executives:

Jay Emerson, director, data center services; Van Henderson, director, busi-ness development; and Charles Barker, director, capture.

Larry G. Hill has been appointed business unit general manager in support of SAIC’s Mission Support Business Unit.

He reports to Stu Shea, president of SAIC’s Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group.

The Open Geospatial Consortium board of direc-tors has elected Jeffrey K. Harris as chairman. Harris, now a private consultant, recently

retired from Lockheed Martin, where he served as president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space and president of Lockheed Martin Special Programs. He also served as presi-dent of Space Imaging Corp., the first company to commercially provide high-resolution satellite imagery and information products.

Compiled by KMi Media Group staffPROGRAM NOTES

Compiled by KMi Media Group staffPEOPLE

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is taking a bold step toward transforming operations and accelerating the agency’s vision of putting GEOINT power in the hands of users by establishing integrated work groups (IWG), according to NGA’s director of analysis and production.

NGA has already established one IWG, which is focused on an unspecified strategic region of the world, and is looking to create at least two more, Lisa Spuria, director of the Analysis and Production Directorate, said in January at a GEOINTeraction Tuesday event spon-sored by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.

The goal of the initiative, which will soon include IWGs focused on the war on terror and on domestic operations, is to bring together people with skills from across the entire agency, focus them on a specific region or topic, and have them try to solve questions on an integrated basis, Spuria explained.

But the project is about more than just bringing skills together, she continued. “The idea is to transform the way we do business. It’s not just about transforming how we do analysis, but it’s actually bringing people with skills—developers, engineers, statisticians—in with the analysts, to try to answer the key intelligence questions as part of a team. That means you bring your different types of experi-ence to the analysis, and it’s amazing to see the enthusiasm when you bring engineers and analysts together at the grassroots level. They are beginning to make changes and develop tools and new ways of doing things quickly. We’re bringing everyone together, and there has been a lot of response.

“The goal of the IWGs is to provide GEOINT consumers with higher quality analysis on key questions,” Spuria said. “Because we’ve brought all of our expertise into one team, they’re going to take a holistic view of things. Everyone working an issue will be together on a team. Now, we have analysts spread over a number of offices working

the same related issues, from different angles or organizations. We want to bring them all together, and work together on key issues.”

The IWGs are one aspect of a growing movement toward collabo-ration and integration that is also reflected in the work environment at the agency’s new headquarters in Springfield, Va., said Spuria. Her remarks included information provided by the originally scheduled speaker, NGA Deputy Director Lloyd Rowland, who was unable to attend.

“The building has demonstrated a lot of the qualities that we wanted to build into it—collaboration, collaboration, collaboration,” Spuria said. “The face-to-face collaboration has really gone up. It’s not just an NGA benefit, but also it’s going to drive changes in how the community does business, because it is an intelligence community building. We’re starting to see a lot of interest in the community in working with us and coming into the space.”

The new environment and focus on collaboration is also posturing the agency well for the 21st-century workforce, she added. “We have brought in hundreds of new employees over the past few years who have a ton of enthusiasm and creativity. They want to serve the nation, but they also want the best environment and the best tools, and new approaches to doing business, and this environment helps build the collaborative environment that they can thrive in. We’re trying to make changes so they can thrive even more.”

Another major benefit has been in the consolidation of functions within the formerly dispersed organization. “We brought together our 24-hour operations into a single operational center. That was a big deal, because we had 24-hour operations in a variety of locations. Putting them all in one area of the building has been phenomenal. The experts from one side of the operation, such as analytics or devel-opment, can all get up and talk. It’s been really important during the recent crisis situations that we have provided support to,” she said.

Integrated Analysis Teams to Tackle NGA’s Big Issues

www.GIF-kmi.com4 | GIF 1 0 .1

Our most important mission as members of the GEOINT com-munity is to extract meaningful geographical information from data streaming in from sensors so we can deliver actionable intelligence to warfighters where and when they need it. Increasingly, “when” means “now.” To make this possible, we must process and analyze the data in real time—while it’s still moving.

Because the data is streaming in like a tsunami that threatens to inundate us, this “big data-in-motion” issue is becoming one of the most critical challenges we face. We are drowning in data, and every new imaging satellite, aircraft and UAV only adds to the GEOINT deluge.

We celebrate breakthroughs in spatial resolution and hyperspec-tral content, and we cheer faster communications links with the sen-sors. But while valuable, these enhanced capabilities also make the data sets more challenging to transmit, manage, archive, process and analyze. Gigabytes of data once seemed large, but now terabytes are common. We are dealing with peta-, exa-, and zetta-scale data prob-lems, and their speed of arrival from sensors is now measured in min-utes and seconds instead of days and weeks.

As if high-velocity, high-volume data weren’t significant enough problems on their own, the variety of data is increasing as well. The sub-meter imagery and full motion video that we traditionally associate with GEOINT are being fused with ELINT, SIGINT and MASINT data from many types of ground-based mobile and fixed-location sensors. Information-rich raster imagery feeds are now being cross-referenced with acoustic signals, biometric signatures,

building control updates and cellular traffic—none of which are the structured data that easily fits into relational databases for traditional querying.

Big data-in-motion, therefore, is a problem that is uniquely com-plicated because the incoming data is high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety—increasingly referred to as “3V” data.

Defense/intelligence is just one arena facing a tsunami of 3V data and pursuing a big data-in-motion solution. In the private sector, for example, industries such as energy, utilities and telecommunications see very similar challenges as they protect their respective critical infrastructures.

It is important to note that sensors protect more than just phys-ical assets. Cyber-infrastructure is also being monitored by sensor networks that add more data to the mix. If the past 10 years have been about identifying, mapping and assessing our nation’s critical infrastructure and associated vulnerabilities, the next decade will be spent dealing with chronic, persistent cyber-attacks on those facili-ties. This vulnerability is poorly understood and consistent with the 3V dimensions.

Fortunately, progress is being made as a result of so many pro-fessions and industries dealing with the same challenge. Real-time analytical processing (RTAP) of big data-in-motion exists today, but there is plenty of room for advancement in the technology. By neces-sity, however, RTAP development will never be “finished.” It must constantly evolve to keep pace with 3V data, which shows no sign of slowing down.

By Dr. Alex PhilP

Big Data-in-Motion SolutionreAl-time AnAlyticAl Processing cAn helP mAster the growing tsunAmi of geoint DAtA.

www.GIF-kmi.com GIF 1 0 .1 | 5

rtAP toDAy

RTAP technology applies computationally intensive algorithms, which perform traditional GEOINT processes, such as feature detection, pattern recognition and change detection to data sets. But rather than wait for the sensor data to be transmitted from their remote location and stored in a static database, the algorithms con-duct hundreds of thousands of calculations in fractions of a second as the data streams in from the sensors.

By removing the database from the equation, RTAP technology has focused on finding new ways for analytical processing to be car-ried out at vastly accelerated rates in the compute memory of the chip. There are currently several approaches to this type of solid-state processing, but most use a system-of-systems method that involves a hybrid collection of hardware, firmware and software. This hybrid approach to computer architecture typically relies heavily on paral-lel processing to perform the extensive calculations in the CPU rather than in the database.

By not waiting for this data to stream into and come to a stop in the database, RTAP makes it possible for analyses to be faster than ever before, enabling information to reach decision-makers in min-utes or seconds. Just as importantly, it eliminates the vast amounts of power and bandwidth that would otherwise be consumed in the transmission and storage of raw data.

A good example of how RTAP is used now can be found in the sur-veillance arena. Acoustic sensors have been buried along the perime-ters of sensitive facilities to detect the approach of potential threats by continuously collecting sounds from the environment. A processing engine located nearby instantly analyzes the acoustic signals as they stream in from hundreds of sensors in the network. Embedded algo-rithms categorize the noises as mechanical, biological or anomalous to determine if they warrant further observation.

If a noise commonly associated with a possible threat, such as a vehicle motor, is detected in a location where it shouldn’t be, the pro-cessing system performs several functions simultaneously. It pin-points the location coordinates of the noise on the sensor network and sends an alert in the form of an email or alarm to designated person-nel who can formulate an appropriate response.

Simultaneously, the processing engine uses the primary sensor information to trigger activation of a secondary sensor, such as a sur-veillance camera, to train on the sound location and provide real-time video to the security command center. This provides verification and validation. As a result, we have detection, classification, localization, tracking, correlation, verification, validation and communication all occurring in network real time.

The key to the instantaneous aspect of this application is that RTAP ignores the unimportant torrent of background noise and sep-arates out the critical pieces of data. The processing engine focuses upon the anomalous sounds, identifies them to some level, and deliv-ers actionable information in the form of an email text alert or video feed directly to the human decision-maker in a matter of seconds. No other resources—human or automated—are wasted sifting through the terabytes of mundane acoustic signals from the sensor network.

AnAlysis on the PlAtform

RTAP research is focused on improving several aspects of the technology. Specifically, the goal is to accelerate and expand the abil-ity to perform algorithmic calculations within the compute memory.

One of the techniques being developed to accomplish this involves moving the processing and analysis physically closer to, or embedded within, the sensors themselves.

An example of how the geospatial industry is heading in this direction comes in the latest generation of digital imaging sensors that fly aboard observation satellites, aircraft and UAVs. Twenty years ago, raw data was transmitted from the satellite or delivered on a hard drive from the aerial platform to a ground facility for processing and analysis. Today, much of the pre-processing occurs on the satel-lite or aircraft, so that imagery is delivered to the ground station for enhancement, interpretation, fusion, change detection and a dozen other analyses.

With RTAP, we want to perform all of the processing and analysis on the platform, and possibly within the electro-optical fabric of the sensor. What would this mean? Imagine a classic GEOINT scenario involving an imaging sensor aboard a space or airborne platform. As the sensor is collecting image data, multiple algorithms are instan-taneously sorting through the data searching for a pattern, feature or change in ground conditions that matches a predefined mission objective. And as with the real-life acoustic example above, the future RTAP may involve multi-sensor communication in which one type of sensor detects a feature of interest and a second sensor identifies it.

Once the target has been detected and possibly identified, the RTAP attaches three-dimensional coordinates to it and sends a com-munication in the form of an image chip, email or other alert directly to the warfighter positioned to act upon it. This happens within sec-onds of the initial target observation by the primary sensor. The com-munication carries only the information needed by the warfighter to make an informed decision.

The concept of embedding processing and analysis engines into GEOINT, MASINT and SIGINT sensors will be possible only if major advancements continue to be made in the hybrid computer technolo-gies referenced earlier. New architectures in hardware, firmware and software are part of the equation for RTAP success, and high perfor-mance computing and cloud databases will play important roles. But the most important need right now is a fundamental shift in the way algorithms are developed.

As computer technology evolves to become faster and more scal-able to push the boundaries of computationally intensive algorithms, processing will continue to move away from serial to parallel archi-tecture. Parallel processing appears to be the only solution to scale beyond the limits of existing systems. This means that algorithms must be written for parallel execution—a sea-level change for most code developers in GEOINT and other big data industries.

The advancements described here are by no means insurmount-able. Based on the existing rate of progress and new technologies coming online, RTAP has reached an inflection point that may soon put it in front of the big data-in-motion tsunami, revolutionizing the delivery of actionable intelligence to warfighters in support of the GEOINT mission. O

Dr. Alex Philp is the founder and chief executive offi-cer of TerraEchos, which develops solutions for big data-in-motion challenges for monitoring and security applications. [email protected].

For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at [email protected] or search our online archives

for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.


As Pentagon officials prepare their proposal for an architecture to enable data sharing between intelligence organizations, key con-tractors are expecting the framework to better enable sharing and exploitation of geospatial and other data—even though policy and cultural issues in the intelligence community stand as obstacles.

The Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise (DI2E) is the next iteration of the Distributed Common Ground/Surface System Integration Backbone. Contractors hope that it will effectively lay the framework for how vendors could create applications that would work using standard operating systems, secure infrastruc-ture and web services environments through a man-date for non-proprietary systems.

The proposals could help with what Bob Noonan, senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, calls the “exploitation dissemination problem.” Intelligence analysts spend about 80 percent of their time gath-ering data for reports to their supervisors, he esti-mates, and only 20 percent analyzing the data.

While recognizing the limits of technology in the face of cultural hurdles and policy differences, Noonan said he remains guardedly optimistic. “With DI2E, I hope they would be able to spend 20 percent gathering information and 80 percent analyzing it.”

Kevin P. Meiners, deputy undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, heads up the DI2E effort at the Pentagon. He said recently that the DI2E request for proposals should be released by April.

too much shAring?

But while the drive to improve intelligence information sharing is a major factor in development of DI2E proposals, some intelli-gence analysts and industry observers also point to two high-profile incidents in the past two years that have underscored the contrast-ing need to closely guard intelligence information.

“There was too much information shared about the Osama bin Laden take-down,” said Mark Bigham, vice president of business development for Raytheon Intelligence & Information Systems and a former Air Force intelligence analyst, pointing to reports about the methods used by the U.S. military used to track down and kill bin Laden in May 2011. Wide publicity about the methods used could make it more difficult to use the same methods in the future, he warned.

“There are reasons that we protect that data,” Bigham said, not-ing that, in a given instance, intelligence analysts need to ask them-selves, “How much do you want to share?”

There is also the case of U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, arrested in Iraq in May 2010 and charged with trans-mitting more than 250,000 secret documents, which for many has

offered a second cautionary tale about the sharing of “too much information” in the U.S. intelligence community.

The arrest of Manning and allegations about his sharing of classified information has “set back sharing between intelligence communities more than anything in the last 10 years,” Bigham said. Particularly with operational information, “the fewer people who know about it, the better. Sharing exactly what operation you’re planning to do as a result of connecting the dots,” is not a good idea, he said.

Even taking into consideration Manning’s arrest and its reverberations in the intelligence commu-nity, however, Bigham said that information sharing has improved greatly since 2001. He called informa-tion sharing a “two-sided coin.”

Manning doesn’t actually represent anything new from an insider threat perspective, said Noonan, pointing to CIA traitor Aldrich Ames, a KGB double agent, and John Walker, a former Navy chief warrant officer who also spied for the Soviet Union, as exam-ples of those who conveyed secret information to adversaries via more traditional methods.

According to Noonan, the fear of insider threats causes some intelligence analysts to take this stand-

point toward geospatial data: “I’ll let you know what you need and when you need it.”

One good scenario when intelligence analysts should share data is when they feel that others might have other missing elements that could help them solve a more complex problem, according to Bigham. In July 2001, two months before the 9/11 attacks, FBI agents in Arizona warned FBI headquarters officials to be vigilant for Middle Eastern students training in U.S. flight schools, urging their headquarters counterparts to discuss these issues with other U.S. intelligence officials.

In that particular case, Bigham pointed out, al-Qaida had ben-efited from surprise and the fact that there was no precedent for an attack using commercial airliners. “In the case of such cataclysmic

By williAm murrAy

gif corresPonDent

Bob Noonan

Mark Bigham

PentAgon officiAls DeveloP A frAmework to Better enABle shAring AnD exPloitAtion

of geosPAtiAl AnD other DAtA.


events, if no one has done something like that before, we wouldn’t have known the pattern to look out for,” for improved situational awareness and context, he said.

oPen formAts

One key ingredient to the success of DI2E, according to Rob Mott, vice president of the Military Intelligence Solutions Group at Intergraph, is the requirement to develop data using open file for-mats so that end-users and agencies won’t have to purchase soft-ware developed by a particular vendor. “It should not be proprietary,” he said.

Such a requirement “levels the playing field,” according to Mott, because it enables smaller companies and academic research organizations to compete with larger companies. This competi-tion benefits the intelligence community through greater tech-nological innovation, lower prices and quicker speed of service, he said.

Mott is excited about the potential of DI2E since it will enable intelligence analysts to subscribe to web services with UAV data about a particular area of terrain that is dynamic for hourly, daily, weekly or other regular updates.

Regarding the sharing of information, “We’re not where we should be,” Noonan said. “It’s beyond a technology issue. It was a problem when I arrived in the military, when I was in command, and when I retired. It’s still a problem today.”

What has changed in recent years is the booming volume of geospatial data collected by drones and UAVs, which has added to the challenge of properly analyzing and sharing it.

“Everyone knows it’s an issue,” Noonan said of cultural obsta-cles, which can only be effectively overcome through policy over-hauls to encourage data sharing in the intelligence community.

Despite the problems, Noonan praised the work of the National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He also pointed to Army Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, assis-tant director of national intelligence after serving as a military intelligence leader in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as a thought leader on exploiting and disseminating intelligence data.

Noonan made clear that he doesn’t want to see individual intel-ligence communities set up their own information clouds.

What would be accomplished by moving from server farms to multiple clouds, he asked, since individual clouds will act as a hurdle for sharing information. “I would submit that multiple clouds don’t make things better,” because they mean that intel-ligence analysts will continue to spend about 80 percent of their time gathering information and only about 20 percent analyzing it, he said.

From DI2E, Noonan would like to see standard operating sys-tems, web security and web services prescribed, along with the ability to plug individual applications into the DI2E, much as one could plug a computer or DVD player into a home entertainment system.

A retired lieutenant general who commanded the Army Intelligence and Security Command before joining Booz Allen, Noonan is impressed with the data that intelligence analysts can access through the NIPRNet and SIPRNet. He recalls serving in Afghanistan and using geospatial technology to overlay four maps—one U.S.-produced, two Russian-made and one British-produced—of an Afghan airfield that American troops were about to overtake, since U.S. forces couldn’t exclusively rely on NGA maps. The maps helped U.S. troops to detect where landmines could be laid to better ensure the safety of the landing party.

“There needs to be leadership from the top down,” that dic-tates changes in policy and culture within the intelligence com-munity, according to Mott. “This isn’t just a good idea,” he said of sharing data using open file formats that are readable and adjust-able. “It’s a requirement.”

The “Apple store” model for creating applications and allowing users to subscribe to them and download them within a cloud is a useful one to consider for DI2E, in part because it accommodates both mobile and desktop users and has been a successful commer-cial model, Mott said. The limit to the Apple store model, however, is that it requires users to operate a device provided by a single com-pany. It is a proprietary model that would have limited applications in an environment such as the Department of Defense.

“There are a lot of lessons learned from the commercial cloud community about what could work in a secure DoD intelligence community,” Bigham said.

weB services

Intelligence analysts have the need to overlay different geo-spatial data sources to build a comprehensive view of a particu-lar area of interest, according to Mott. In some cases, intelligence analysts might then be building their own applications to enable

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them to exploit multiple geospatial data sources, such as UAVs, commercial satellites, government satellites, infrared and signals intelligence.

Open web services within DI2E will enable the intelligence community to require proper authentication of users and create a secure environment for the exploitation and dissemination of such geospatial data, Mott said.

Bigham foresees an 18-24 month contract for the DI2E frame-work architecture. Contractors are closely monitoring whether the Di2E request for proposals will bar winning contractors from later creating applications and integrating them into DI2E.

Noonan agreed, speculating that by the end of an eight- to 10-year period using clouds to share information securely could give way to some entirely different technology. “The framework has to have some agility,” to accommodate changes in technology and practice, he said.

“Moore’s Law is now considered an anachronism,” he said, arguing that technology change and innovation are now outstrip-ping that well-known prediction of the rate of technology growth.

To be successful, the DI2E framework architecture will suc-cessfully address “edge users,” and satellite communication termi-nal users who can’t “easily touch the network,” Bigham said. “DI2E absolutely has to be secure at multiple levels,” and it should have the ability to certify where classified data is within clouds. It will be easy to search DI2E for information, he predicted.

Bigham compared DI2E to a city planner, who provides guide-lines for home builders and other developers to design their plans to fit within the municipality’s infrastructure and regulations.

Another potential major player in this field is IBM Federal, which last year debuted its Defense Operations Platform (DOP), a reusable, and interoperable software platform that company officials hope will meet the emerging DI2E standards.

“I don’t think you’ll see one plat-form selected,” since that wouldn’t likely be in DoD’s best interests, said Andras Szakal, vice president and chief technology officer with IBM

Federal. “I think you’ll see multiple companies develop their own stacks, including open source options.”

Szakal estimated that IBM has a two-year jump on its competi-tion, however, arguing that IBM is the first to market with its DOP offering.

DOP reportedly has interested Defense Information Systems Agency, Marine Corps and intelligence agency officials because it provides a platform for a service-operating environment that would give DoD agencies that need to rapidly deploy a reliable, secure operating platform with virtualization capabilities.

Szakal estimated that it could take some organizations a year to deploy routing, messaging, protocols and up to 50 other applica-tions that make up DOP. O

Co-sponsored by



Andras Szakal


By stringing together tasks and guided, interactive processes, GIS workflow has become the de facto standard framework for defining the work and the flow—how the work is routed—from initial task to completed process and actionable product.

The streamlined sim-plicity of workflow has har-nessed complex geospatial data and systems in recent years, rendering GIS produc-tion more effective. One of the biggest benefits is inte-gration. Military and intel-ligence are often working in separate acquisition, deliv-ery and contracting offices, but workflow can serve to unite them.

“Geospatial data pro-duction leverages work-flow, as it lends itself well to repeatable workflow pro-cesses with production-line capacity for

the most efficient execution,” said Greg Pleiss, Esri solutions man-ager, Professional Services division.

GIS workflow auto-mates common geo-pro-cessing activities, ensures standardization and con-sistency across operations, and manages geographi-cally dispersed workforces. The software is growing more capable and flexible, with user-configurable tools to accommodate everyone, from those who define the workflow to those who exe-cute tasks in standard ways. Step-by-step workflows now walk users through previ-ously complex image analy-sis tasks.

Esri’s ArcGIS Workflow Manager serves to structure the work and flow in stan-dard, repeatable GIS tasks

as business processes across an enterprise.

As users execute each step in a work-flow, the Workflow Manager launches dis-parate applications, configured as part of the workflow behind the single interface.

“Software adds execution behind the process using dialogue boxes, like: ‘Is this imagery ready to use?’ If the user’s response is ‘No,’ and additional processing needs to take place, then the system takes the user back to re-task image collection. If it’s ‘Yes,’ then feature extraction would be the next step in that workflow,” Pleiss said.

ArcGIS workflow users can configure a question step or a series of choices. Each selection leads the user down a different path toward software to launch for the next task.

guiDeD softwAre

Many geospatial imaging companies today offer guided software to increase GIS workflow productivity. In its ENVI image processing and analysis software, for exam-ple, Exelis Visual Information Solutions (formerly ITT VIS) provides discrete, task-oriented workflows that usher users through

gis workflow Defines the PAth of geosPAtiAl DAtA ProDuction from initiAl tAsk to ActionABle ProDuct.

Peter McIntosh

Greg Pleiss

Going With the FlowBy cheryl gerBer

gif corresPonDent


step-by-step processes to create specific end products.

“We create interactive software pro-cesses to increase productivity through increased integration and automation,” said Peter McIntosh, solutions engineer, Exelis VIS Geographic Intelligence Systems Group.

One example is the process of develop-ing a map workflow to create a helicopter landing zone (HLZ) for troops in theater. The HLZ map is then populated or pub-lished in the GIS for actionable intelligence.

GIS workflow expanded into cloud computing in 2010, when Esri’s ArcGIS Server 10 became available on the Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2). In 2011, PCI Geomatics released its GeoImaging Accelerator (GXL) large volume image pro-duction system on Amazon’s EC2 to sup-port high resolution content production for the ESRI ArcGIS online platform. GXL uses high performance computing to optimize the speed of distributed automated work-flows for industrial-strength production.

As part of its image preprocessing tech-nology stack, PCI Geomatics also offers GeoImaging tools for ArcGIS, which sup-ports more than 20 different satellite sen-sors, and Geomatica, a stand-alone desktop image classification package with the abil-ity to build in automated workflow.

When mobile enhancements were added to GIS workflow on the cloud in 2011, the ArcGIS Server ArcPad Extension began to offer the latest release of ArcPad (10.0.2) to abet the process of field mapping, data collection and updates from the field to the cloud.

Most GIS workflow takes place at the tool and task or process level rather than the systems level, although GIS and non-GIS workflows unite at the systems level for decision support. Software tools supporting tasks often start with capturing imagery in such processes as creating an HLZ.

“A surveillance analyst seeking a pro-cess to identify an HLZ to publish to a broader audience first captures the imag-ery from satellite or sensors, and then starts the orthorectification workflow for accurate geospatial parameters. Next, the feature extraction workflow defines and classifies helicopters into vector-based, fea-ture-classed information,” said McIntosh.

“To determine the quantity and qual-ity of movement, the analyst enters and runs the change detection workflow to see what features have changed and how they

have changed,” he said. “At the end of each workflow we provide the option to publish the result of the work product into the GIS.”

steP-By-steP Process

For example, the ENVI orthorecti-fication workflow, integrated with Esri’s ArcGIS, provides a step-by-step process to remove geometric distortions introduced during image capture. The workflow pro-duces a map with planimetric geometry and orthorectified imagery that is regis-tered to a ground coordinate system with consistent scale throughout the image. Planimetric or flat plane geometry approx-imates the round surface of the earth by projecting it onto a flat plane.

To increase the accuracy and simplicity of the orthorectification workflow, Exelis added a method called rational polynomial coefficients, which allows a wider variety of sensors to be processed.

The software is designed to be easy to use. Users select the input image they want to orthorectify from various types of com-mercial or multi-spectral sensors, Internet Explorer or ArcGIS, then drag and drop the selected images into ENVI. They can con-fine image processing to specific areas of interest to reduce processing time. Next, they select the output parameters such as pixel size or file name and path. A preview feature allows users to check orthorectifica-tion results without having to process the entire dataset.

ENVI uses both feature extraction and classification workflow. However, feature extraction is object-based image analy-sis rather than pixel-based classification workflow. “The object-based approach is supplanting the traditional pixel-based approach since it puts out GIS-ready fea-ture classes as vectors, not rasters or pixels, with a rich set of attributes,” said McIntosh. “Vector has properties associated with it so you can colorize.”

While raster images are based on pixels and grids of pixels creating bitmaps, vec-tor images use mathematical relationships between points and the paths connect-ing them to describe an image. Therefore, vector graphics are composed of paths. Bitmaps require higher resolution and a spatial anti-aliasing technique to create a smooth appearance while vector-based graphics appear smooth at any size or resolution since they are mathematically described. Spatial anti-aliasing minimizes

distortion artifacts when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution.

Change detection in geospatial imagery is another example of a previously tedious, though vital, analysis task that is greatly simplified by workflow. First, GIS workflow users select the images they want to ana-lyze, such as two images of the same scene taken from different satellite sensors. Next, they might select a before and after com-parison of two images of the same loca-tion, based on whether the data is raw, already processed or classified. They can choose a thematic change method to detect changes in specific features over time, such as buildings, roads or natural land cover to highlight changes that have occurred in categories.

Change thresholding allows users to set parameters to identify the mag-nitude and type of changes that have occurred. Data cleanup refines results to make features appear more visually realis-tic. Finally, users can preview, export and choose how to use the results, whether in a PowerPoint presentation, a geoda-tabase or directly into an ArcGIS file to create a map.

weB cAPABility

GIS workflow is expanding continually beyond pixels and desktops into the realm of vectors and servers. One of the most notable improvements to Esri’s ArcGIS Workflow Manager is the development of web capability. “We’ve increased focus on the development of the server side, by build-ing out web capability through the use of REST interfaces,” said Pleiss.

Representational state transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distrib-uted hypermedia systems such as the web. It is considered an alternative to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) interface, an existing standard developed by Microsoft for exchanging XML-based messaging on the web.

SOAP was designed to integrate with other standards but is exclusively XML-based, whereas REST information exchanges can be in any of more than 350 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension types. SOAP exchanges messages between SOAP nodes, whereas REST both captures information from resources and updates resources with information.

Esri has made use of the flexibil-ity inherent in the REST architecture.


“SOAP exchanges verbose XML responses back and forth across the web. It’s work intensive, whereas REST architectural style reduces every resource on the web to a URL. It’s a lighter weight, simpler way to do web services communications,” said Pleiss.

ArcGIS Workflow Manager uses Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards for GIS data integration and the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for standards-based workflow. BPEL is a stan-dard executable language set forth by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).

BPEL is for specifying actions in busi-ness processes with web services. BPEL processes export and import information by using web service interfaces exclusively. OASIS is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards.

Another ArcGIS Workflow Manager development is the addition of spatial notifi-cations, most notably for change detection. Notifications are more organizationally sig-nificant than they might seem initially. They serve to share vital information in a timely fashion across departments and can streamline project management.

“We provide a plug-and-play frame-work that allows the configuration of noti-fications when certain changes happen to geospatial data,” Pleiss said. “You can plug in your chosen notification type, such as email.”

“A lighthouse is a nautical, aeronautical and topographic image, so all three would subscribe to notifications of any change in the lighthouse,” Pleiss said.

Spatial auto-notifications and alerts are rule based. If there were a change in the lighthouse, for example, then subscribers who had chosen to receive notifications that way would receive an email indicating the nature of the change.

The flexibility of the notification func-tion reflects Esri’s continued build-out of service-oriented architecture capability in GIS workflow. “It allows the plug-in of your own notification engine, which can trig-ger a new business process in another part of an organization,” Pleiss continued. “This lays the groundwork for cross-business unit collaboration in a proactive and automated fashion. And it enables the seamless inte-gration of GIS and non-GIS users and busi-ness processes.”

Esri has been building GIS workflow capability to integrate business processes

and bring non-GIS users into the GIS environment. “In the last two years we have undertaken a program to implement workflows that brings in the contracting officers who are the liaison between the agency and the contracted company for a seamless transfer of geospatial data,” said Pleiss.

Esri is in the process of rolling out GIS workflow at the executive and manage-ment level for actionable intelligence in the decision-making process. “It provides a window of visibility for up-to-the-min-ute, live workflow status without having to be a heavy GIS user. It allows executives to prioritize resources, tasks and activi-ties,” he said.

new technologies

GIS workflow increasingly has incor-porated new technologies into the process. For instance, PCI Geomatics recently com-pleted beta development of its synthetic aperture radar (SAR) GeoImaging tools for analysis of SAR images in ArcGIS.

Users can create application-specific workflows since the SAR tools are inte-grated in ArcGIS. “The current most com-mon application workflow for SAR imagery is mar-itime domain awareness, which detects ships on the ocean for the Navy and Coast Guard,” said Kevin Jones, director of marketing and product management, PCI Geomatics.

SAR is a form of radar that uses relative motion between an antenna and its target to provide distinc-tive, long-term coherent signal variations, which are used to obtain finer spatial res-olution than is possible with conventional beam scanning. SAR is implemented by mounting a single beam-forming antenna on a moving platform such as an aircraft or a spacecraft. The target image is repeat-edly illuminated with pulses of radio waves at different antenna positions. The echo waveforms are then rendered coherent, stored and processed for an image of the target region.

“SAR satellite sensors cut through all weather, day or night. You can collect images regardless of clouds or darkness based on back scatter or sound bouncing,” said Jones.

“To realize the potential of SAR imag-ery, we want to translate it from the tech-nical realm to the application level so end-users can use this technology to solve business problems,” he said. “PCI has inte-grated 40 SAR-specific algorithms into its GeoImaging tools.”

The new SAR tools for ArcGIS include coherent change detection, classification of multi-polarized imagery and advanced utilities to filter and analyze imagery. The tools support commercially available data from numerous satellites.

Despite the simplicity of workflow, the huge volume of geospatial data behind it can still clog installed systems. “GIS work-flow on the cloud has [input/output] issues at multiple levels. Loading these large vol-umes of geospatial data uses huge band-width on the cloud, so we had to optimize our code to reduce the number of read/write operations to optimize I/O operations in cloud processing,” noted Jones.

“Sometimes the cheapest and fastest way to get large volumes of images loaded onto the cloud is still to FedEx it to the data center,” he added.

I/O issues are a key hurdle in cloud-based geospatial data processing, from

the initial transfer of earth observation imagery data to the actual processing of con-tent. “But at the same time, there is improved scalabil-ity on the cloud and it saves on hardware purchases and maintenance,” Jones said.

Workflows will continue to evolve to solve the prob-lems users are facing. “We keep defining more work-flows to address specific

problems. Down the road, we’ll have work-flows that say: ‘Go find IEDs in a specific location.’ We are moving toward mak-ing it one-click, easy flow analysis,” said McIntosh.

“The workflows will become increas-ingly simplified as the algorithms underneath them become increasingly sophisticated,” he said. O

Kevin Jones

For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at [email protected]

or search our online archives for related stories at www.mmt-kmi.com.


BuDget issues

By now, everyone has heard the news about the budget. The good news is the intelligence community fared much better than everyone else. There seems to be a good understanding that intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is important—even in times of peace.

With the drawdown of “people”, there will be much more interest in automatic platforms and systems to replace these assets. One thing is certain: People have become used to having information and intelligence and they are not going to stop anytime soon.

white house cyBer PlAn

White House Cyber Coordinator Howard Schimdt has introduced a new strategy for cybersecurity research and development. The

purpose of his plan is to better coordinate efforts to neutralize cyber-attacks through:

• Inducing change to get

to the root causes of existing cybersecurity deficiencies, with the goal of disrupting the status quo

• Developing scientific foundations to minimize future cybersecurity problems by developing the science of security

• Maximizing research impact by catalyzing coordination, collaboration and integration of research activities across federal agencies

• Accelerating transition to practice, where research on how to improve

cybersecurity makes its way to the commercial sector though transition programs.

if you think nothing is getting Done

Since January 3, 2011, the Senate has introduced 1,914 bills, while the House has intro-duced 3,508 bills. A total of 80 bills were signed into law in

2011. The 112th Congress started January 3, 2011, and ends January 3, 2013. We are halfway through the 112th Congress, and it has already introduced a total of 5,422 bills. O

George Meyers is a senior vice president with Cassidy and Associates.

Bill # Sponsor Committee Description

H.R. 3674 rep. dan Lungren (r-Calif.)

House Science Space and technology

Amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make certain improvements in the laws relating to cybersecurity and for other purposes. referred to subcommittee on January 12, 2012.

S. 413Sen. Joseph Lieberman (i-Conn.)

Senate Homeland Security

Amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and other laws to enhance the security and resiliency of the cyber- and communications infrastructure of the United States. Hearing held in Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

H.R. 47 rep. darrell issa (r-Calif.)

House intelligenceProvide a civil penalty for certain misrepresentations made to Congress and for other purposes. in Permanent Select Committee on intelligence.

H.R. 67 rep. Mike rogers (r-Mich.)

House Judiciary; House intelligence

Extend expiring provisions of the USA PAtriot improvement and reauthorization Act of 2005 and intelligence reform and terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 until February 29, 2012. in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, terrorism and Homeland Security.

H.R. 109 rep. John Conyers Jr. (d-Mich.)

House ConstitutionEstablish a national commission on presidential war powers and civil liberties. referred to House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.

H.R. 174rep. Bennie thompson (d-Miss.)

House oversight and Government reform

Enhance homeland security, including domestic preparedness and collective response to terrorism, by amending the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish the Cybersecurity Compliance division. in the House oversight and Government reform Subcommittee on technology, information Policy, intergovernmental relations, and Procurement reform.

H.R. 514rep. James Sensen-brenner (r-Wis.)

House Homeland SecurityExtend expiring provisions of the USA PAtriot improvement and reauthorization Act of 2005 and intelligence reform and terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 relating to access to business records, individual terrorists as agents of foreign powers, and roving wiretaps until december 8, 2011. Became Public Law 112-3.

H.R. 703 rep. Peter King (r-N.Y.)

House JudiciaryAmend section 798 of title 18, U. S. Code, to provide penalties for disclosure of classified information related to certain intelligence activities of the United States and for other purposes. in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, terrorism and Homeland Security.

H.R. 2096 rep. Michael McCaul (r-texas)

House Science, Space, & technology

Advance cybersecurity research, development and technical standards and for other purposes.

S. 1469 Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (d-N.Y.)

Senate Foreign relationsrequire reporting on the capacity of foreign countries to combat cybercrime, to develop action plans to improve the capacity of certain countries to combat cybercrime and for other purposes.

S. 1152 Sen. robert Menendez (d-N.J.)

Senate Commerce, Science & transportation

Advance cybersecurity research, development and technical standards and for other purposes.

S. 1159 Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (d-N.Y.)

Senate Armed Services require a study on the recruitment, retention and development of cyberspace experts.

S. 8 Sen. Harry reid (d-Nev.)

Senate Foreign relationsBuild a comprehensive strategy to confront the nuclear threat from iran and North Korea; enhance U.S. tools for pursuing key national security interests; and avert and respond to catastrophic cyber-incidents.

S. 372 Sen. Benjamin Cardin (d-Md.)

Senate Commerce, Science, & transportation

reduce the ability of terrorists, spies, criminals and other malicious actors to compromise, disrupt, damage and destroy computer networks, critical infrastructure and key resources, and for other purposes.

By george meyers

George Meyers

Intel Update


Because GEOINT viewing requires the greatest possible visual detail and utmost visual accuracy, the CalMAN Geospatial video calibration solution from SpectraCal ensures that each PC monitor is precisely calibrated to the standards required by geospatial intelligence agen-cies. Prominent among the standards is an Electro-Optical Transfer Function, which makes sure each gradient step between black and white has an equal probability of detection (EPD). The EPD curve used in geospatial intelligence requires extremely rigorous settings, which the software calculates, tests, sets and verifies. In addition to the EPD gamma curve, CalMAN Geospatial accurately calibrates RGB balance. This allows support of color as well as monochrome monitors. Built around a highly customiz-able workflow architecture, the software uses a built-in

pattern generator and monitor control client derived from SpectraCal’s CalPC product and an auto calibration engine based on years of work in high definition video.

Joshua Quain;[email protected]

Video Calibration Solution Offers GEOINT Visual Accuracy

Situational Awareness Video Unit Receives Multiple FeedsHarris Corp. is broadening the capabilities of

its RF-7800T Situational Awareness Video Receiver (SAVR) to address the growing requirements for secure wireless digital ISR video at the tactical edge. Harris has integrated the Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Digital Data Link (SUAS-DDL) waveform with the RF-7800T video receiver. With SUAS-DDL, the RF-7800T is now able to receive Advanced Encryption Standard video feeds from

multiple small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) simultaneously. SUAS-DDL, a Department of Defense-standard waveform, provides enhanced interoperability between small UAS in the air and video receivers and control stations on the ground. The characteristics of the waveform allow multiple UAS to transmit video on the same frequency. This enables warfighters to monitor ISR video streams covering a wider geographic

area, leading to enhanced command and control and operational decision-making. The multiband RF-7800T SAVR delivers real-time video feeds from cameras on aircraft or UAS platforms to ground forces. Designed for the dismounted warfighter as well as for fixed and vehicular applications, the small, lightweight RF-7800T enables feeds to be viewed outside the TOC and while personnel are on the move.

New GPS Payload Prototype

Successfully Powered Up

ITT Exelis has passed a key Air Force Global Positioning System III program milestone: The company has successfully integrated and performed the initial power-up of the GPS III Non-Flight Satellite Testbed (GNST) Navigation Payload Element (NPE), or full-size payload prototype. The successful power-up of the GNST NPE system shows that the digital communications, telemetry and RF interfaces are working properly. It also assures that the system can be config-ured and operated correctly.

Scheduled for first launch in 2014, the next generation of GPS III satel-lites will deliver significant improve-ments compared with current GPS space vehicles. The new satellites, with capabilities yielding superior system security, accuracy and reliability, will improve position, navigation, and timing services for warfighters and civil users worldwide. The GPS III team is led by the Global Positioning Systems Directorate at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor, together with teammates ITT Exelis, General Dynamics, Infinity Systems Engineering, Honeywell, ATK and other subcontractors.

Irene [email protected]

Enhancements Aid Transformation of Data to Use and Share

Safe Software, a provider of spatial data transforma-tion technology, has released a new version of its flagship product, FME 2012. The release of FME Desktop and FME Server introduces new tools for over-coming data challenges so that data can be used and shared precisely where, when and how it is needed. FME 2012 offers new capabilities in response to market needs that are unmatched by any other tech-

nology. Now supporting over 275 formats, FME 2012’s enhance-ments provide faster, simpler ways to transform data to use and share. They include new support for 16 new formats, as well as, for point cloud/LiDAR data, the ability to transform billions of points in one workflow, and enhanced abilities to extract the precise subset of a point cloud dataset that is needed. It also offers new and enhanced transformation capabilities

designed to make it even easier to read, write, and prepare XML data—both the geometries and the geospatial components—without requiring knowledge of scripting languages. In addi-tion, enhancements for 3-D data include making 3-D clipping z-aware, making it easier to work with 3-D local coordinate systems and enhance surface modeling.

Lakhvir Brar;[email protected]


INDUSTRY RASTER

A new source of high resolution satellite imagery is now oper-ating, as the Pléiades 1A satellite has begun returning images from orbit. The precision of the 50 cm Pléiades products is clearly revealed in an image of Washington D.C. (right). Marketed by Astrium Services, Pléiades products will be available for all users from March 2012. Users will then be able to take full advantage of the agility and reactivity of Pléiades 1A with its five acquisition scenarios, three daily tasking plans and acquisition capacity of 450 images per day.

Jessi Dick;[email protected]

GeoEye has selected Cleversafe, a provider of limitless data storage, to meet its requirements for a highly reliable and secure active archive to support their business mission and to maintain their image archive. In order to collect, process and analyze massive amounts of geospatial data, GeoEye required a scalable and flexible storage architecture that could accommodate the world’s highest resolution satellite imagery, GeoEye-1. Moreover, GeoEye demanded that satellite images be available with zero downtime and 99.999 percent reliability, while keeping costs under control. Cleversafe’s Dispersed Storage Network active archive solution provides GeoEye with over 99.9999999999999

percent of annual data reliability and system uptime. The need to store critical digital content and imaging at the petabyte level and beyond can no longer be accomplished with traditional storage solutions. With complex requirements for both security and governance and the need for content preservation and data integrity, it’s more critical than ever that companies look at solutions that deliver built-in encryption, multiple levels of integrity checks and high levels of reliability.

Russ Kennedy;[email protected]

In cooperation with National Geographic, Esri has released the National Geographic World Map. Esri and National Geographic collaborated to produce a distinc-tive basemap that reflects National Geographic’s cartographic design, typographic style and map policies. Designed to be aesthetically pleasing, the National Geographic World Map is for users who want to display minimal data on a vibrant, highly detailed background. The map is currently available at ArcGIS Online in the basemap gallery.

The new basemap combines a century-old cartographic tradition with the power of GIS technology to produce a distinctive Internet-based map service serving GIS, consumer, education and mobile users. This new map will be added to Esri’s collection of existing basemap services designed for different uses and needs. All of Esri basemaps are freely accessible for internal- and external-facing sites.

Storage Architecture Supports High Resolution Satellite Imagery

Metadata Capture Tool Aids Access to Geospatial Content

The Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) has implemented an automated Metadata Capture and Publishing Tool jointly developed with TerraGo Technologies to make it easier to catalog, search, retrieve, distribute and archive its TerraGo GeoPDF formatted maps, imagery and derived products. The Mapping and Charting Establishment (MCE) is the DND organization responsible for providing geospatial information to the Canadian forces. During the past four years, MCE has implemented a geospatial information management solution that is centered on meta-data. By tagging its geospatial holdings, MCE is able to quickly search and retrieve its content in a timely manner. The collected metadata are also leveraged to enable content management, distribution and archival. The TerraGo-automated Metadata Capture and Publishing Tool was devel-

oped to capture metadata based on the ISO 19115 geospatial metadata standard and the Adobe XMP metadata format. It uses easy-to-complete forms to capture specified metadata elements that provide critical information about individual geo-refer-enced maps, derived products and images. With form-captured metadata, data managers can more precisely categorize geospatial information thereby enabling rapid searching and retrieval of desired content. Previously, the MCE would manually key in metadata into its GeoPDF maps, imagery and derived products. This process was often cumber-some and prone to the introduction of human error. The new tool offers a single interface with a simple metadata pull-down feature that also cuts down on variance of metadata entries.

Renee Wagner;[email protected]

New Satellite Returns High Resolution Imagery

New World Map Combines

GIS with Cartographic

Tradition


Compiled by KMi Media Group staff

Caryn A. Wagner was confirmed on February 11, 2010 as the under secretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS.

Wagner served as an instructor in intelligence community management for the Intelligence and Security Academy from October 2008 to October 2009. She retired in 2008 from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), where she served as budget director and cyber security coordinator. Prior to that, she served in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as an assistant deputy director of national intelli-gence for management and the first chief financial officer for the National Intelligence Program. She accepted this position after serving as the executive director for intelligence community affairs, where she was responsible for the Community Management Staff, which provided strategic planning, policy formulation, resource planning, program assessment and budget oversight for the IC.

Wagner’s previous position was that of the senior Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) representative to Europe. She served as liaison for the DIA director to U.S. European Command and to NATO from April 2003 to April 2004. From October 2000 to April 2003, Wagner served as DIA deputy director for analysis and production.

From 1996 to 2000, Wagner headed the director, Military Intelligence (DMI) staff, where she conducted military intelligence community planning and was responsible for development and management of the General Defense Intelligence Program.

Other previous positions included serving as staff director of the HPSCI Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence and as an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. Wagner also served as an Army signals intelligence and electronic warfare officer.

Wagner received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and his-tory from the College of William and Mary, and a Master of Science degree in systems management from the University of Southern California.

Wagner was interviewed by GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly.

Q: You last spoke with GIF early in your tenure at DHS. How would you characterize your experience over the past two years?

A: I honestly feel that, with a great deal of hard work from a lot of people, we have really transformed the Office of Intelligence and Analysis [I&A] into something that people who were in the office in the past, if they were to come back, would not recognize. I had some things laid out for me when I came into this job—things I knew I had to fix, and things that Congress, the Homeland Security Institute and others had identified as being problems. My leadership

team and I took those on, and I think we have made huge progress in management challenges, in terms of the basic business processes of the office. We’ve fixed our hiring process and budget process, all of our billets are filled, and we’ve spent all of our money. We have a functioning program-build process, and we have put in place pro-cedures for identifying the need for policies, and writing, publishing and enforcing them. They are the basic things that organizations need, which we didn’t have.

The other thing we’ve done is to focus hard on what our mis-sions are in I&A. Who are our customers, what do we do, and how do we do it better? What’s our value proposition, and what do we add? We have made a lot of progress in focusing our anal-ysis, improving the quality of our analysis and working with the Director of National Intelligence [DNI] Office of Analytic Standards and Integrity. We’ve also done a lot of work on the collection and reporting side. We’re working with our partners in the department to standardize the process for reporting information out of the department to the intelligence community and other partners, in a way that it is timely, actionable and useful. We’re also working with partners to build a consolidated architecture for collection, process-ing and dissemination.

We’ve made huge strides in our information-sharing with state and local governments, which is one of the unique reasons we exist. All of these things come to bear, because we’re providing them bet-ter products, we have a better information sharing architecture

Caryn Wagner Under Secretary for

Intelligence and Analysis Department of Homeland Security


Analysis TransformerProviding Timely, Actionable and Useful Security Information

Q&AQ&A

with them, and we’ve upgraded the systems that we’re using to get the information to them. We’ve also developed new product lines in response to their feedback. Overall, we still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel pretty good that we have made substantial, measureable progress across the board.

One frustration, though, is the articles about us that keep sounding the same themes about I&A. It’s frustrating to see that when I know how much we’ve changed. What’s interesting is that the people who are being quoted in the articles are people who left I&A years ago, certainly before I came onboard. If they’re talking to anyone inside the organization, they’re talking to people who, for whatever reason, still have an axe to grind that is rooted in the past, and not in anything that we’re doing now. I read those articles, and I don’t recognize the picture that they’re painting. I understand that perceptions frequently take a while to catch to up reality, and I’m confident that that will happen eventually. In the meantime, we’ll do what we can to counter that. But if you ask the intelligence community, and the people whose opinions I care about, who are looking at us and gauging our progress, they will tell you that I&A is a much better and more respected place than it was. There’s still room to grow, but we’re doing well.

Q: How would you define the concept of “domestic intelligence”?

A: Domestic intelligence is a problematic term, because it’s loaded for some people. It harkens back to the days when people were doing things they should not have been doing. So we’re trying now to focus the discussion on “homeland security intelligence,” rather than “domestic intelligence,” because that’s what we do here in the department. When people use the domestic intelligence term, they’re generally using that to capture what we, FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency [DEA] and everyone in the homeland does. There is some utility in trying to define it, but I&A’s input into that is homeland security intelligence, and we’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out what that really means. We’re moving toward a definition in which homeland security intelligence is more than intelligence, but also information that is useful to federal, state, local, tribal and private sector partners, because it will help them identify or mitigate threats to the homeland. We go beyond the tra-ditional sources of foreign intelligence to put together things that are helpful to our customers. It’s about the full range of threats—not just terrorism, because homeland security is bigger than just counter-terrorism. It also captures the fact that we have a huge number of customers, many of whom are also our partners, in the sense that we work with them to share information and put together products that can be of use to our mutual customers and constituencies.

We have made a lot of progress in defining what homeland security intelligence is. One of the interesting things is that it’s not just about the homeland, because one of the unique things about the department and I&A is that we have responsibilities for what we call the “approaches” to the homeland. Some people call it the “transit zone” between overseas and domestic or between foreign and homeland. Our job is to protect the borders—both virtual and actual. Every point of departure overseas is a virtual border to the U.S. Even if you’re getting on a plane in Dubai, that’s the border to the U.S. We also have the physical borders as well as the cyber bor-ders, where we’re trying to protect the “dot gov” domain, which is our responsibility in the department, but also working with

private industry to protect the broader cyber-infrastructure of the nation. Thinking through what our responsibilities are in home-land security intelligence, it extends into the transit zone, where we’re trying to prevent bad people and things from coming from overseas. That’s one of the department’s unique value-adds. One of the things that we have to figure out in I&A is how best to sup-port that, and more importantly how do we get the DNI and the extended intelligence community to help us support the needs of the people who are protecting the virtual and real borders of the nation.

Q: Please give readers an overview of the DHS intelligence enterprise, as well as what you think can be done to improve it.

A: The enterprise is made up of the intelligence elements of our operating components. I lead the enterprise, in a collaborative way, through the Homeland Security Intelligence Council [HSIC]. We’ve made a lot of progress over the past couple of years. One of the big things has been to build up trust that it is about looking for synergy and ways that we can mutually support one another and leverage different parts of the department to do a better job for the depart-ment’s overall mission. It isn’t about telling the components what to do, taking their money, or any of the other things you might be concerned with if you were in a component. With the trust that we’ve developed, we’re now starting to do some interesting and constructive things. As an enterprise, we are reworking our intel-ligence information report process and trying to standardize the timelines, formats and processes for reviewing and releasing them. One of the main things that we provide from the department to the larger intelligence community and our federal partners is infor-mation to which we have unique access. We have unique access to information in a variety of areas, including the cyber domain, the border domain, encounter data in the immigration domain and the travel domain. One of our main challenges is how to share report-able information in response to intelligence needs and require-ments in a way that it can be used and received and is standardized across the enterprise. That’s going reasonably well.

We also are trying to make sure that we team together. There are a lot of natural partnerships, for example between Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] and Customs and Border Protection [CBP] on the border, but we have to do the best job we can to bring in all the potential partners to appropriately share information that helps us with our distributed border mission. We’ve created the Border Intelligence Fusion Section within the El Paso Intelligence Center [EPIC]. We provided the SES billet to head it, but there are people from all the operating components in it, as well as people from DEA, FBI and NORTHCOM. It’s all about how we do a bet-ter job of pulling in the information and pushing out stuff that’s actionable and useful for interdictors and investigators along the border. That’s one of the things that we started in the HSIC and then promulgated outwards. The operating components are very different in their individual missions, so finding areas of common-ality that it makes sense to approach in a common way is not easy. But we’re finding more and more opportunities where we can rein-force each other.

Q: Some in Congress and elsewhere have recently voiced criticism of your office, saying that it has done little to improve intelligence data. What is your response?


A: We tend to get good marks from the Homeland Security com-mittees, but we have more of a challenge with the Intelligence authorizers. One of the reasons for that is because we’re so differ-ent in our mission space that if you’re going to evaluate us with the same standards used to evaluate CIA or DIA products, we’re not necessarily going to measure up. We’re trying to accomplish dif-ferent things and do them in a different way. If you’re expecting us to put out a lot of products that look very similar to other IC prod-ucts, you’re not necessarily going to see that because it’s not our job. If other people are writing on a topic and doing it well, we’re not going to try to duplicate what they’re doing. We’re just going to leverage that and make sure the information gets to our custom-ers. What we’re trying to do is to advocate that our needs be met. If they’re not, we’ll fill the gaps ourselves, although that’s the excep-tion rather than the rule, and make sure that we’re taking what is of interest to our customers and getting it to them, while maybe add-ing that bit of extra information that makes it useful.

We have to put out a lot at the For Official Use Only [FOUO] level, because our law enforcement customers in general are oper-ating at that level. What you can put in an FOUO product is fre-quently not a lot. If you read those and say you could have gotten that from cable news, or that it isn’t really intelligence, you’re miss-ing the point. This is the best we can give them, based on our nego-tiations with the intelligence community on what can be released at what level. And it is useful for them, because it’s validating what they might have already heard. We’re trying to give them the most

we can, and then take it to the next step by saying here’s what you can do about it—the preventative measures and counter-mea-sures and the indicators you can look for. It’s a different art form, and one that we are working constantly to refine and perfect. But if you grade it on the same scale as a CIA assessment, it’s just not the same. We’ve been trying to make that case, and I think over time we will make progress. We’re serving different customers, and our products look a little different. But we have been evaluated by the DNI’s Office of Analytic Standards and Integrity, and they have documented a steady improvement in the quality of our products.

Q: What have you learned over the past two years about the role of geospatial intelligence in your work?

A: One thing I’ve learned is that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is being extremely forward-leaning and innovative in tailor-ing geospatial products and services to their customers. They focus a lot of attention on the department, which we appreciate. They’re helping us to think about new ways of using the kinds of products and services they provide. In the analytic realm, we are somewhat constrained in the use of imagery. But we’re trying to explore new ways of showing the geospatial characteristics of some of our data and intelligence, and of figuring out when that’s meaningful and useful and when it isn’t. The department overall uses geospatial products and services in a wide variety of ways and we have great support from NGA in doing that. There’s a geospatial foundation

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to the common operating picture that we’re building across the department. The Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] uses it extensively in both preparation for disasters and disaster recovery. My office helps pull together the available remote sens-ing capabilities to bring them to the services of FEMA in the wake of a disaster. We’ve been trying to incorporate more geospatial ele-ments into the analysis that we’re doing at the Border Intelligence Fusion Section in EPIC. We’re very interested in some of the new apps that NGA Director Letitia Long has been talking about, such as being able to put information on mobile devices, because they could have a lot of utility for our state and local customers as well as the department. We get great support, and we’re trying to incor-porate more and more geospatial technologies and services into our products.

Q: How can intelligence agencies make use of the new social media while protecting citizen rights?

A: This issue came up in the context of conversations I was having with the DNI on what kinds of things we need to think about as a community that have applicability to both the foreign and home-land security intelligence communities. It’s obvious that this is a huge growth area, and it can be of intelligence or counterintelli-gence value. But it has to be done very carefully, because everything we do includes making sure that we’re protecting privacy, civil rights and civil liberties. Another reason this has to be done care-fully is that it’s a new thing—a huge stream of data of uncertain provenance and reliability. It’s like the classic cartoon—“On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” It’s hard to know how much weight to put on things. How many Tweets do you need before you know that something is happening? Do you have to confirm it with information from another source? These are the kind of tradecraft questions that the intelligence community is wrestling with now, both in the foreign and the homeland context. We just want to par-ticipate in defining that.

For my own purposes, I have the authority within I&A to do open-source collection domestically, which the rest of the intelli-gence community, except for the FBI, does not have. But we have very strict rules on how we do that—it has to be linked to a spe-cific authority, mission and requirement. So we’re not out there trolling through people’s Tweets. But we have the ability to look at those things. The question is, though, what do they actually mean, and how do we incorporate them into a product, along with other sources, in a way that is rigorous and valid.

Q: What is your organizational and technological strategy for improving border security?

A: Border security is a departmental mission. My actual mission is to provide intelligence and information support to that. We do that in three basic ways. First, we provide the strategic, analytic context for border security, in close partnership with other elements of the department and our interagency partners. We’re looking at things like whether it is getting better or worse, what different kinds of things are we seeing and what are the trends? There’s a lot of talk, for example, about spillover violence—can we even define that, and establish enough of a baseline to know when we’re starting to see things that are outside the norm? It’s also doing looking at top-ics like this: What if things really have changed and we just don’t

realize it yet? What if we’ve entered a new paradigm in terms of vio-lence on the north side of the border? What would that look like, and how could we tell? It’s just to help people think things through and inform the information that we collect, and prove or disprove our hypotheses.

The second piece is that we have a lot of people operating along the border, with different missions and authorities to do border security, law enforcement, and investigations and interdictions. How do we support all those people by sharing the most informa-tion we can in ways that are most useful and actionable? What we’re trying to do, in cooperation with DEA and EPIC, is to pull as much information together as we can, to get greater insight into what’s happening on the border, and to push that information out—a lead to an ICE investigator, for example, or a notice to CBP to look out for a red pickup truck crossing at a certain time and place. It’s to enrich everyone’s ability to do their job.

The third piece is working mostly with CPB to create an archi-tecture within the department for tasking, collecting, processing and disseminating sensor data related to the border. All the com-ponents have different processes and systems, but we’d like to be able to share that information, and ideally to tip one to the other. They all developed on their own, and now we’re trying to link them together in a way that will support the entire department and enable the components to be mutually reinforcing. Ideally, we want to be able to share data with our other partners, including the Mexicans, in a way that is compatible.

Q: What results have you seen from the extensive network of state and local fusion centers, and what have you learned from them about sharing information with other levels of government?

A: There are 72 fusion centers, and right now we have 75 I&A intel-ligence officers deployed at the centers, as well as nine regional directors. What we are seeing is that they are all unique, since they are state and city owned. Some do terrorism, while others do “all threats, all hazards.” Some are big and some aren’t. They grow at their own pace, but we’ve seen steady improvement. Many of them now are at the point where they are able to take information we have provided them, combine it with information that they already have or receive from local law enforcement, and put out their own products. Some of them are quite good. Another important thing is that it’s not just that we push stuff to them and they send it back to us, but that they send it out to all the other fusion centers. They are becoming a truly national network—mutually reinforcing each other, sharing best practices and information. A lot of times, they have more granularity of data in their local area on a partic-ular issue or problem. In several instances, we have highlighted their products in the secretary of homeland security’s daily brief-ing book, because they have been doing a good job. We spend a lot of time training them in areas such as writing products, analytic tradecraft and ensuring that privacy and civil rights/liberties con-cerns are understood and implemented. We’re starting to see the fruits of that. We’ve been working with the FBI to make sure we’re all being mutually reinforcing, and the FBI is currently consider-ing whether to put some of their own intel officers in the fusion centers that have become mature enough to improve that link-age. The other thing we’re wrestling with now is what we call the “fusion center performance plan.” How do we assess and measure the progress against the key disciplines that we’ve established as


their goals—being able to receive information and analyze, share and disseminate it.

Q: What can industry do to enhance its contribution to domestic intelligence?

A: We have a lot of the same issues and challenges facing other members of the intelligence community in dealing with huge volumes of information, and figuring out ways to share with a geographically dispersed group of customers. We have a lot of chal-lenges in the department in terms of enabling our systems and data repositories to talk to each other, but those are issues for any large agency. As I mentioned, NGA has been very forward-leaning in bringing their industrial base to bear on our issues as well. The interesting thing from our perspective is to turn that on its head and ask what we can do for industry, because the private sector is one of our five customer sets. We have built up over the years good relationships with the elements of industry that are involved in the critical infrastructure sectors. But we have a broader respon-sibility to industry, and working with our partners in infrastruc-ture protection, we have started to do much more engagement with people like shopping mall owners, sporting consortiums and stadiums, which could potentially be targets of attacks, to help them think through their prevention, identification and mitiga-tion efforts. We’re always looking for ways to be of more service to key elements of the private sector that aren’t necessarily under the

18 critical infrastructure sectors. There are a lot of them out there, and we know we’re not reaching all of them, but we’re working on it.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

A: Coming up on my second anniversary in this job, I still hear comments sometimes about whether we really needed the DHS. The longer I’m here, the more I realize that we did. Most of the components existed before, and were doing their jobs. But as we become better and better as a department where people work together, and where information in one place can support opera-tions in another; we’re getting more bang for the buck from the jobs the components do every day. It’s very rewarding to see that. I grew up as a military brat, and every Thanksgiving we would give a toast to all the military people who were serving away from their families. But now I’ve made my family add a toast to all the first responders, police officers and emergency workers who are doing that every day. They have an immediate impact on people’s quality of life, safety and security, but a lot of people don’t realize it. That’s a message that I’m pushing on the Hill. I’m a veteran, I love our military services, and I don’t want to see their budgets cut. But we need to start thinking about how the homeland security piece is as—or even more—important to the day-to-day well-being of peo-ple as the national security apparatus, and we should assign to it the same level of importance in our minds. O

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More than anything else, one key circumstance has con-tributed to the growth in the collection, analysis and exploi-tation of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data in recent years: U.S. forces have found themselves fighting in theaters in which they owned the skies, allowing the aerial overflights that collect LiDAR data in Afghanistan and Iraq to proceed undeterred.

From there, it was just a matter of time before military and industry imaginations took over, thinking up and developing new and better ways to collect, extract, analyze, exploit and apply LiDAR data.

LiDAR, a technology that has been around since the mid-1990s, uses 1.064 nanometer wavelength laser light pulses to gauge distances by measuring the time delay between transmis-sion of the pulse and detection of the reflected signal. A range finder mounted in an aircraft swings back and forth collect-ing data on up to 150,000 points per second, providing resolu-tions of one point per meter on the ground and one point per 15 centimeters vertically. The data returned by the LiDAR sen-sor provides location data on an x-y-z axis, referred to as a point cloud.

LiDAR has an advantage over some other geospatial technol-ogies in that it provides accurate elevation data. LiDAR outstrips the capabilities of other sensors with its ability to pinpoint the location and elevation of surface elements such as buildings, trees

and roads. Under the right circumstances, it can also detect hid-den objects, for example by penetrating forest or jungle canopies.

But LiDAR’s true value as a military and intelligence tool, say the experts, comes when it is used in conjunction with data from other sources such as electro-optical, infrared and hyperspectral sensors to enhance the picture used by analysts, planners and commanders. The same kind of fused data is also being used in simulations incorporated into training systems.

“Changes have come to LiDAR in recent years,” said Matt Morris, director of product development at Overwatch Systems. “There are more providers out there building sensors. The costs to collect the data have come down dramatically. But the biggest development is that the Department of Defense and the intelli-gence community are using LiDAR in their daily workflow. When the defense and intelligence folks make something a priority, the effect is seen across the whole market space.”

U.S. forces in Afghanistan use the BuckEye system, which combines airborne LiDAR technology with digital color cam-era imagery to provide pictures to commanders and planners on the lay of the land. LiDAR elevation data supports improved bat-tlefield visualization, line-of-sight analysis and urban warfare planning.

Fusing data from multiple sources increases the probability that features can be automatically extracted from the raw data and that an accurate situational picture will result. Automated feature

sensor technology’s true vAlue As A militAry AnD intelligence tool comes when it is useD in conjunction with DAtA from other sources.

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extraction is a capability that allows software to recognize certain spe-cific objects represented in LiDAR point clouds. Programming the soft-ware to be on the lookout for topographical features such as hills or man-made objects such as buildings, vehicles or power transmission lines allows those features to be separately and distinctly portrayed in the LiDAR image.

“The total is greater than the sum of its parts,” said Matt Bethel, manager of systems engineering at Merrick GeoSpatial Solutions. “The more data than can be put together increases the probability that a spe-cific target is what you are looking for and decreases the uncertainty of that decision.”

“LiDAR data is becoming more critical and important for developing accurate and current visual databases used for training pilots, troops and tank commanders,” added Pratish Shah, director of mar-keting at Quantum3D. “Manned or unmanned air and ground vehicles take LiDAR scans of a given area, which represents the most current visual information of that region. Integrating that current information improves realism of virtual training systems. Current data can also be used to extend training to mission rehearsal, giving pilots and ground troops access to the most current visual data to train for specific missions.”

storAge AnD DisseminAtion

The large volumes of data generated by LiDAR sen-sors represent a potential disadvantage to the use of that data. Storing LiDAR point clouds is more com-plex than storing and rendering image files because the addition of a third dimension renders the task more computationally intense.

“Point clouds are actually nothing but a pile of x-y-z data,” said Oodi Menaker, marketing product manager at Israel-based Tiltan Systems Engineering. “The main challenge is to extract point cloud data, which you can then work with to describe the ground, buildings, power lines, trees, power poles and many other geo-graphical features.”

Dissemination of these huge data files also presents a problem. “Once you collect massive amounts of data, how do you disseminate it on existing networks to a lot of concurrent users?” said Rudi Ernst, president of Pixia. “If you can’t access the data, what is the point of collecting it?”

The development of multi-sensor data fusion suggests the collec-tion of raw data with multi-sensor packages. “Merrick specializes in multi-sensor collection and analysis,” said Bethel.

Merrick provides LiDAR capabilities to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, operating the aircraft and sensors that collect the data and develop products based on customer needs.

Sensor and analysis requirements differ based on mission and geography, according to Bethel. “A customer in Latin America was interested in identifying semi-submersible submarines that are used to move cocaine,” he said. “LiDAR is very useful in that effort, but you also need thermal and hyperspectral sensors to see whether you have a positive identification or a false hit.”

In Afghanistan, LiDAR is often used to help identify sites where IEDs may have been buried. “When a LiDAR sensor has passed over the same area multiple times, the data can be used for detecting changes in terrain,” Bethel explained. “An area where the ground has been dis-turbed may indicate the location of an IED. But it also pays to include

a hyperspectral sensor which can detect the chemical signature of the explosive.”

Merrick utilizes software to visualize LiDAR point cloud data to develop products for customer con-sumption. The company’s Merrick Advanced Remote Sensing product is a Windows application used to visualize, manage, process and analyze LiDAR point cloud data. “Once the LiDAR data is processed it takes many steps to get to what the client is looking for,” said Bethel.

multi-int focus

Northrop Grumman focuses less on geospatial intelligence in isolation and more on multi-INT in response to customer demands, said Sean Love, a com-pany business development manager. “The real focus going forward is on taking geospatial data and pushing it to other intelligence types and ingesting other intel-ligence into geospatial,” he said.

The company facilitates the fusion of different data types through translators supported by a service-ori-ented architecture. Northrop Grumman has expanded its existing geospatial portfolio to include geospatial data acquisition, collection and processing of LiDAR, full motion video and persistent surveillance data, pho-togrammetric services, geographic information sys-tems and analysis.

“All this is transparent to the user,” said Love. “The user doesn’t care what the application looks like. He just wants to be getting the right kinds of information. That is why we focus on getting actionable intelligence to analysts and warfighters.”

The company’s offerings support functions such as intelligence gathering and mission planning, rout-ing and logistics, execution monitoring, physical asset tracking, exploration of what-if scenarios, data exploi-

tation and analysis, highly integrated databases and sensor networks, and secure command and control systems.

“In 2011 and in 2012, we are in the process of automating these processes and making them a lot faster,” said Love. “We have con-densed the process of transforming LiDAR point clouds to a topo-graphical map from days or weeks to minutes. We are now focused on the first part of the process—organizing point clouds from raw LiDAR data.”

The challenge in the processing of raw LiDAR data is in the math, said Love. “It’s all about the algorithms and getting smarter about it,” he added. “It is doing the error correction and consolidation, especially if you are doing multiple collects. It takes a long time to crunch that information. It involves taking raw data and shaping it into something the user can do something with.”

Northrop Grumman’s efforts at automation are aimed at tak-ing users largely out of the preprocessing routine and data correc-tion process. “We can now load all of the data on a server and let the

Rudi Ernst

Sean Love

Matt Morris


software crunch it,” said Love. “The user doesn’t have to sit there swapping out disks. Earlier processes had users on the lookout for data anomalies. Now the computer spots these mistakes and corrects them automatically.”

3-D visuAlizAtion

Quick Terrain Modeler, a 3-D point cloud and terrain visualization software package from Applied Imagery, was designed for use with LiDAR, but is flexible enough to accommodate other 3-D data sources, said Chris Parker, the company president. “Quick Terrain Modeler works with large 3-D data sets. It doesn’t matter whether it is LiDAR, synthetic aperture radar, or sonar. LiDAR happens to be the major 3-D source right now, and a majority of our users use Quick Terrain Modeler to work with LiDAR.”

A recent update to Quick Terrain Modeler, released last summer, provides greater speed and improved workflows. The tool’s workflow is called FLAP, for find, load, analyze and produce.

“Speed gains are achieved through optimization of analysis pro-cesses and by pushing more functions out to the graphics card,” said Parker. “Our latest release has a completely redesigned and intuitive interface, including a tool to keep the workspace orga-nized and a mini-map to provide context when zoomed in, tilted or rotated. These gains translate to faster exploitation, production,

briefing preparation, planning cycles and decision-making, and a shorter learning curve.”

Quick Terrain Modeler analyzes LiDAR point clouds and represents them as pixels to provide a dig-ital elevation model (DEM). Users have the choice of working with a DEM or directly with the point cloud data.

Many users rely on processed LiDAR data to develop PowerPoint presentations. Quick Terrain Modeler enables that automatically. “Everyone up and down the chain in DoD needs to create PowerPoints,” said Parker. “When the complex analysis is com-

plete, users will want to export that and share the information with others.”

Tiltan has developed a software program called TLiD, which “enables users to make sense out of the point clouds,” Menaker explained.

“We have automated the process of transferring point clouds to geographical features,” he added. “The latest improvements in the ability to depict precise features from LiDAR point-cloud data involve advances in the software algorithms used to process this informa-tion.” Tiltan has sold the exclusive rights to TLiD to ITT Exelis.

TLiD provides automatic extraction of features such as houses, trees and power lines; automatic full scene 3-D reconstruction; and output in a variety of file formats. It is integrated with a 3-D viewer.

“TLiD has the ability to develop and run complex urban scenes that include thousands of buildings and vegetation along with hun-dreds of moving objects,” said Menaker. “This is essential for MOUT [military operations on urban terrain] scenarios, including close air support and UAV operations.”

Disaster relief is another application of the analysis and visual-ization provided by TLiD, according to Menaker. “By comparing the pictures pre- and post-disaster, users can assess the status of bridges and rural roads.”

Overwatch has developed a tool called LiDAR Analyst, which was built as an extension to GIS products such as Esri’s ArcGIS. “It was ahead of the curve when it was first released in 2006,” said Morris. “Now it is picking up steam as LiDAR data is becoming more readily available.

“ArcGIS is one of the standard tools in the geospatial market-place,” Morris added. “LiDAR Analyst dovetails directly into the ArcGIS workflow. Because we use standard formats, the output can be consumed by other applications such as Google Earth.”

Overwatch recently improved its tools for LiDAR visualization to include automated feature extraction. The company is also working to expand its cataloging products to include the ability to search for LiDAR files.

LiDAR Fusion is Quantum3D’s most recent software application. “LiDAR Fusion is a visualization tool to help the geospatial intelli-gence community visualize point cloud data and automatically iden-tify key objects such as buildings, vehicles and people,” said Shah. “For visual simulation applications, LiDAR Fusion can be used to extract information from a LiDAR scan and place that information into the virtual database used for training pilots, ground troops and tank commanders.”

Quantum3D uses LiDAR data in simulation and training appli-cations to develop current and realistic visual databases for training military pilots. The visual data automatically extracted from point clouds can be imported into an OpenFlight database and can be used

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on any simulation platform, including Quantum3D’s Mantis Real-Time Scene Management software platform and Independence IDX real-time image generator platforms.

“Using current LiDAR data, for example, vegetation information is automatically extracted and placed into our flight simulation data-base,” said Shah. “Accurate placement of trees adds a level of realism as military pilots train. Pilots who regularly fly into military bases comment about tree placement in the virtual environment being very representative of the real environment.”

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LiDAR point clouds are dense with data, and this raises the ques-tion of how this is to be transferring across busy networks. “We are focusing on the data access piece,” said Pixia’s Ernst. “Dissemination is our core mantra.”

Pixia focuses on storing data in a way that allows for quick ran-dom access. “Pixia handles scalability on the server side,” said Ernst. “To have massive random access, the ultimate goal is to make a spin-ning disk perform like solid state memory. Our software boosts disk performance so that to accommodate hundreds and thousands of concurrent users.”

Pixia allows data to be accessed at the object, rather than the file, level. That way, users are able to access the snippets of data that they need rather than having to wade through an entire LiDAR point cloud file.

For Bethel, LiDAR’s future will see even greater data density. The frequency of the laser pulses on sensors will increase, allowing for both greater detail in small areas as well as capturing wider swathes of territory.

As multi-sensor data collection becomes more commonplace, Bethel expects that sensor packages will become miniaturized as well as modularized. “Right now it takes a lot of experience, knowl-edge, time and effort to combine sensors into one aircraft,” he said. “Future sensors will be more compact, more simplified and more rugged to better integrate them into unmanned aerial vehicles.”

“We see an increase in LiDAR use across both geoint and visual simulation community,” said Shah. “As LiDAR scanners are used repeatedly in unmanned air and ground vehicle environments, we see real-time LiDAR processing becoming more prominent. Getting LiDAR data from scan into a visual database faster and near real-time will continue to enhance the benefits of virtual training for mission rehearsal.”

For all of the developments associated with LiDAR, enhancement to collection and application of the data will only continue into the future. “We see LiDAR as a big growth opportunity for our business,” said Morris. “People are just scratching the surface with what they can get from LiDAR.” O

June 5-8Ground Warfighter Geospatial Intelligence Conference (formerly AGIC)

TASC Heritage Conference Center, Chantilly, VA

June 8USGIF Invitational1757 Golf Club, Dulles, VA

June 7USGIF Technology DayHyatt Regency Reston, Reston, VA

June 5GEOINTeraction TuesdaySpringfield, VA

June 4USGIF Workshop SeriesHyatt Regency Reston, Reston, VA

June 6NGA Tech Showcase East (TS//SI/TK)

NGA Campus East, Springfield, VA

2 0 1 2 G E O I N T C O M M U N I T Y W E E K

Held annually in the Northern Virginia area, GEOINT Community Week brings together members from the geospatial-user community, including defense, intelligence and homeland security, for a week of networking, classified briefings, technology exhibits and learning workshops.




In the next 12 months, 11 Marine Corps bases will be involved in a process designed to greatly improve their on-base emergency response systems. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) Atlantic has partnered with GeoComm, a public safety GIS, software and consulting company, to assist in the deploy-ment of modern emergency response capabilities. GeoComm will deliver National Emergency Number Association-compliant street and building address data and will develop E9-1-1 databases for each applicable CONUS Marine installation. This effort includes utilizing all existing installation data and coordinating all efforts to complete

digital GIS centerline mapping and address point placement along with master street address guide and automatic location identifica-tion database development to improve emergency call management capabilities. The goal of this project will be to provide the address data and process improvements necessary to ensure reliable, high quality support of public safety agencies in providing computer-aided dispatch, emergency response and related services. The addressing information developed is intended to be multi-purposed and will also support address geocoding, vehicle routing, mailing lists, address validation and incident location geo-verification.

Application Unites Data in Web-Based

Visualizations

Blue Water Area Resilient, an appli-cation built on IDV Solutions’ Visual Fusion software and used by public safety and security agencies along the U.S.-Canada border, has been accepted into a national data-sharing initiative. Integration with the Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS) program will allow agencies using the application to automati-cally share information in response to disasters, including terrorist events. The UICDS integration is part of the upcoming third phase of Virtual City, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pilot project based in St. Clair County, Mich. Under the Virtual City project, IDV Solutions, with St. Clair County and other U.S. and Canadian partners, developed an application to unite data from local, regional and federal public safety agencies in a common operating picture. The application relies on IDV’s Visual Fusion, software that can unite data from virtually any source in inter-active, web-based visualizations. Visual Fusion unites agencies’ data with feeds available from web sources and displays the data on an interactive map and timeline. This visualization provides a visual command center view that can be viewed through a web browser or an iPad app.

Software Offers Advanced Volumetric Data Visualization

Makai Ocean Engineering has released a new demonstration version of its geospa-tial visualization software, Makai Voyager. The new release, available at http://voyager.makai.com, demonstrates Makai Voyager’s advanced volumetric data visualization and analysis capabilities.

Makai Voyager provides users with an easy-to-access, cross-platform software package to process, analyze, fuse and display vast amounts of scientific and GIS data being collected and simulated in the earth, ocean and atmosphere. The 1.1 update offers many

new features, including volume rendering of large 4-D data models; display of dynamic data on the ocean surface; customizable graphs of scientific data; and faster streaming and improved WMS support. The download-able demo contains many of the scientific visualization capabilities of the Makai Voyager software platform. The full version of Makai Voyager will contain a wide variety of data import and fusion tools to import and process GIS and scientific data and provide users with access to add-on modules for specific tasks such as LiDAR analysis.

Compiled by KMi Media Group staffHOMELAND VECTOR

TrueVector Technologies has introduced a web-based, interactive drawing solution for emergency responder web mapping software intended for use by federal, state and local governments, and other emergency responder organizations. The first deploy-ment of the technology is by Defense Group Inc., which will market this drawing solution as part of its CoBRA WEB Mapping within the CoBRA Crisis Management and Emergency Response business unit. CoBRA WEB mapping will allow users to quickly develop situational awareness by viewing all essential information on a map, down to street level detail. It provides a common operating picture, where emer-gency personnel can log in and collaborate on a single universal map, which can be viewed and updated in real time to reflect changing events on the ground. Users of the map can draw and mark up incident information from anywhere, saving time, minimizing

property losses and protecting the safety of personnel and the general public. The system has been designed to easily track assets and resources as data is auto-matically fed into a map from the incident site as well as reachback assets and command centers.

Map Drawing Solution Aids Emergency Responders

GIS Data to Improve On-Base Emergency Response


February 22-24, 2012Esri Federal User ConferenceWashington, D.C.www.esri.com

March 19-23, 2012ASPRS Annual ConferenceSacramento, Calif.www.asprs.org

April 16-19, 2012National Space SymposiumColorado Springs, Colo.www.nationalspacesymposium.org

June 4-8, 2012GEOINT Community WeekWashington, D.C. areawww.usgif.org

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aDVertisers inDexAmerican Military University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19www.amuonline.com/geospatialBAE Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .C4www.baesystems.com/gxpBooz Allen Hamilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3www.boozallen.com/defenseEMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21www.emc.com/federalFugro Earthdata Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16www.fugrofederal.comIntelligence Sharing Summit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24www.intelligencesharingsummit.com

Military Antennas West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8www.militaryantennasevent.comNational Association of Broadcasters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .INSERTwww.nabshow.com/milgovNational Space Symposium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9www.nationalspacesymposium.org/gi1TerraGo Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .C2www.terragotech.com/products/overviewUSGIF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25www.usgif.org

Compiled by KMi Media Group staffGIF CALENDAR & DIRECTORY

Volume 10, Issue 2 March 2012

NEXT ISSUE

Michael G. Vickers Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence

Cover and In-Depth Interview with:

Features:Video SearchingAs analysts struggle to contend with rapidly growing volumes of full motion video data, defense researchers and industry are working to develop effective search technologies for such video imagery.

Human TerrainAnalysis of the human terrain and socio-cultural dynamics is playing a growing role in GEoiNtand other intelligence analysis.

Hyperspectral ImagingHyperspectral imaging and processing, which can collect imagery at a sub-pixel level not visible to the human eye, is a growing area in remote sensing.

Web AppsWhile industry pushes to develop new apps for mobile GEoiNt, the National reconnaissance office and the National Geospatial-intelligence Agency have also gotten in the game, developing mobile applications that allow smart phones and other personal devices to access and download imagery.

Insertion Order Deadline: February 24, 2012 | Ad Materials Deadline: March 2, 2012


Antoine de ChassyPresident

Astrium GEO-Information Services North America

Q: You just had the successful launch of the Pléiades satellite, can you tell us a little about the program and the capabilities of the new satellite?

A: Pléiades 1, which launched in December 2011, is the first of a two-satellite constella-tion. It will be followed later this year by its twin, Pléiades 2. Together, they will operate in a phased orbit, allowing for daily revisit to any place on the globe. With Pléiades, we will provide orthorectified, 50-centi-meter resolution products as a standard. Our clients will have multiple products to choose from, including black and white, color, ortho or raw data, all for the same price. Stereo and tri-stereo products are also available and will be used to cre-ate high precision digital elevation mod-els. With an imaging capacity of 2 million square kilometers per day, with two satel-lites, five acquisition scenarios and three daily tasking plans, the Pléiades system is built to deliver precise geospatial informa-tion in record time.

Q: Will there be any other satellite launches in the near future?

A: As a complement to the Pléiades constel-lation, we are launching SPOT 6 later this year, followed shortly thereafter by SPOT 7. These satellites will provide world class 1.5 meter resolution imagery and maintain the 60-kilometer swath that the current SPOT satellites are known for. By integrat-ing the two constellations, we will be the only commercial provider with the capabil-ity to bring our customers intraday satel-lite imagery revisits anywhere on the globe, every day of the week.

Q: Don’t you have access to radar imagery as well?

A: We operate two synthetic aperture radar satellites, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, that allow for day and night collection regardless of weather and clouds. With this suite of earth observation satellites, we have an unprecedented capability, which will allow us to provide near real-time

geo-information and provide decision sup-port to the GEOINT community better than any other single provider in the industry.

Q: How soon do you anticipate having Pléiades imagery available to customers?

A: Just three days after the launch, we started receiving and releasing great images for everyone to view. Images of Washington, D.C., Dubai, Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., and others can be found on our website. The images are truly fantastic and the satellite is working well. We expect commercial operations and the first task-ing orders to be taken at the beginning of March. With an expected accuracy of 4.5 meters CE 90, we will be able to deliver the first high quality 50 cm imagery products with a 20 km swath. This will enable the GEOINT community to observe and inter-pret larger areas of interest in a single sat-ellite pass and provide a greater level of decision support.

Q: How will you differentiate yourselves from the existing high-resolution imagery providers?

A: The real differentiator will be in our ability to deliver. There is a demand in the market for high resolution data that is not being met. We will meet this demand with a strong dedication to both commercial and government users alike. Commercial users will no longer have to wait in line for

new acquisitions. At the same time, we will have plenty of capacity to meet the needs of defense users, and provide each sector with the quality of products and service deliv-ery they have come to expect from Astrium Services for more than 25 years.

Q: How will your offer differ to meet the demand for services?

A: The fundamental difference will be the range of services available for our custom-ers. Everything from the satellite to the ground operations to the ordering system has been designed with maximum respon-siveness in mind. For instance, a lot of work has gone into designing image production systems. The fully automatic orthorecti-fication process is capable of generating a 20 km by 20 km color image in less than 30 minutes and a single-pass mosaic of 60 km by 60 km in two to three hours. On the user side, everything from ordering to data delivery has been made as flexible and easy as possible. New acquisitions, catalog data, subscription offers, online monitoring ser-vices and more mean that imagery is just a click away and ready to use.

Q: With programs such as the EnhancedView program facing possible serious budget cuts, how do you see the future of commercial satellite imagery for defense and other government agencies?

A: There is no doubt that the intelligence community and our industry will be signif-icantly impacted by these cuts. However, we are not just delivering pixels anymore. There are clear opportunities out there in fields such as data on demand and moni-toring delivered through cloud comput-ing and online services. Multi-intelligence analysis and processing [UAV data with EO and SAR imagery] and bundled offers, such as GEOINT plus secured communi-cation plus information security solutions, are needed as well. We have existing and proven capacity to build these offers, so there is still a strong future for commercial satellite imagery for defense and govern-ment agencies. O

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW Geospatial Intelligence Forum


Geospatial Intelligence ForumGIF 2012 Editorial CalendarKMI

This editorial calendar is a guide. Content is subject to change. Please verify advertising closing dates with your account executive.

*BONUS DISTRIBUTION

ISSUE COVER Q&A SPECIAL SECTION FEATURESTRADE ShOwS

CLOSING DATE

FEB(10.1)

Caryn WagnerUnder Secretary for Intelligence and AnalysisDHS

NGA Support Teams

LiDAR

Information Sharing

GIS Workflows

Esri Federal GIS Conference*

(2-22)

AUSA Winter* (2-22)

2/3

MAR(10.2)

Michael G. VickersUnder Secretary of Defense for Intelligence

IARPA profile with Dr. Lisa Porter Interview

Human Terrain

Full Motion Video

DCGS

Web Apps

ISIC* (3-26)

DoDIIS* (4-1)

3/2

APR(10.3)

Bruce CarlsonDirectorNational Reconnaissance Office

Top Remote Sensing Companies

Multi-Agency Who’s Who: Remote Sensing

EnhancedView

Commercial SAR

Big Data

Space Symposium* (4-16)

SPIE* (4-23)

3/30

MAY /JUN(10.4)

Keith BarberDirector, National System for Geospatial-IntelligenceExpeditionary Architecture Integrated Program Office

Army GEOINT Roundtable

Special Operations

Emerging Technologies

GEOINT Community Week* (6-4)

5/22

JUL/AUG(10.5)

Robert CardilloDeputy Director for Intelligence IntegrationODNI

Marine Corps Intelligence Command Profile with

BGen Stewart Interview

Homeland Security

Bathymetric LiDAR

Multi-INT

Esri Users Conference* (7-23)

Modern Day Marine* (9-25)

7/6

SEP(10.6)

BG Stephen G. FogartyCommanderINSCOM

2012 Top Intelligence and Geospatial Companies

Aerial Imaging

Tactical GEOINT

Training

Mission Planning

AUSA* (10-22)

8/24

Special GEOINT 2012 Symposium Issue

OCT(10.7)

Letitia A. LongDirectorNGA

CENTCOM GEOINT Profile

Special Operations

Industry Showcase

M&S

Analytic Software

GEOINT 2012* (10-8)

9/21

DEC (10.8)

Vice Adm. Kendall CardDirector of Naval Intelligence

Special Report: Full Motion Video

Maritime

Visualization

Feature Extraction

Industry Outlook

TBD 12/7

To advertise, contact Scott Parker | 301. 670.5700 | [email protected] | www.gif-kmi.com

CLIENT BAE Systems GXP

DESCRIPTION GXP Xplorer 2011

PUBLICATION Geospatial Intelligence Forum

ISSUE April 2011

CONTACT Rachel Snyder, (858) 675-2850, [email protected]

ART DIRECTOR Laetitia Santore, (858) 592-5383, [email protected]

BLEED .125” / 8.625’” x 11.125”

TRIM Full page / 8.375” x 10.875”

SAFETY .125” / 8.125” x 10.625”

FORMAT PDF/X1a

COLOR CMYK

baesystemsgxp_gif_april11.indd 1 4/6/2011 11:51:21 AM

Documents

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