Written by / Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
GIF 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 (February)
Geospatial Community Responds to Haitian Disaster
Along with other parts of the military and government, as well as the geospatial industry, U.S. GEOINT agencies have responded vigorously to the Haitian earthquake disaster.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for example, supported the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Southern Command and Department of Homeland Security with analysis, unclassified commercial satellite imagery and geospatial intelligence products of areas devastated by the recent earthquake.
Commercial imagery providers DigitalGlobe and GeoEye have supplied commercial satellite imagery of post-earthquake Haiti to NGA.
“We’re looking at infrastructure and force protection and producing products for the command,” said Tom Mann, director, NGA Support Team to USSOUTHCOM. “We are prepared to send analysts into the region to provide support on-site.”
NGA will also be providing public access to some of its geospatial intelligence products as they become available via NGA’s crisis response portal, NGA-Earth, www.ngaearth.org.
The NGA-Earth site has been updated as new geospatial intelligence products have become available. In addition to the information hosted at this location, the site provides links to other federal agency sites and is an access point to leverage other NGA geospatial expertise and products.
Originally established in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the NGA-Earth site uses the Internet to provide the public a single, easy-touse entry point for locating timely, relevant, unclassified geospatial information in the event of a natural disaster or crisis. The site is also a means to communicate critical information to first responders, as well as to allow the public the ability to broadly assess property damage without having to physically return.
In addition to the images, NGA will also be providing geospatial intelligence products to supported agencies. The products will include graphics of major infrastructure such as the locations of airports, hospitals, police and fire stations, emergency operations centers, hazardous material locations, roads and schools. The products will also include damage assessments. These types of products greatly assist first responders and those coordinating and planning relief efforts. These graphics provide a common operating picture that helps enable local, state and federal government elements to work effectively together since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
The Army Geospatial Center’s Hydrologic and Environmental Analysis branch, meanwhile, compiled earthquake, water and geology maps, as well as a number of other data sets, and made them available via the AGC’s public and internal public key infrastructure Web sites.
Haiti hydrogeologic maps, military capability studies, water assessments and additional resources are available to Department of Defense, federal agencies, and organizations that utilize Common Access Cards at https:// cac.agc.army.mil/countries/Haiti.cfm. Public access to the site is available at http://www.agc. army.mil/Haiti/index.html.
“The initial water resource data provided for the effort to date includes point-specific water resource data on the existing water facilities, surface and ground water resources, the Haiti Water Resources Assessment (WRA), a country scale surface and ground water strategic planning study, and hydrogeologic maps,” said Tom Spillman, Hydrologic and Environmental Analysis branch chief. “Coordination within the DoD water resources community has been, and continues to be, ongoing to facilitate data sharing and leverage assets. Our Hydrologic Analysis Team (HAT) is currently reviewing and updating geospatial data within the Water Resources Database (WRDB) to meet anticipated requirements.”
The AGC’s HAT has mapped the existing water facility, surface, and ground water resources of Haiti in response to previous requirements. Numerous water well sites have been analyzed, and military well logs have been collected and posted within the WRDB in support of previous DoD support missions. Industry’s contribution was also noteworthy. In addition to U.S.-based imagery providers GeoEye and DigitalGlobe, companies such as SPOT Image and RapidEye have made geospatial data and images of the situation available.
Another industry method of support, among many, was provided by volunteers from CubeWerx and The Carbon Project, who organized free mapping data from OpenStreetMap, the United Nations and other sources into an open information network for the island nation. The Haiti Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is a public resource that may be updated by anyone and used in Google Earth, OpenStreetMap editors, the Gaia SDI Platform and other applications to support relief and rebuilding.
The Haiti SDI is based on international standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the OGC Web Map Service and OGC Web Feature Services Interface Standards. ♦