Geospatial Goes
Mainstream GIS TECHNOLOGY IS BECOMING INTEGRATED INTO MANY ASPECTS OF DOD OPERATIONS.
GIS technology is moving more and more into the mainstream of Department of Defense operations, which will also be integrated more closely with the work of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), according to participants at a recent panel on the Defense Installation Spatial Data Infrastructure (DISDI).
A workshop at the ESRI Federal Users Conference in Washington, D.C., in early 2007 focused on the progress of DISDI, an initiative under the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment (I&E) designed to develop a comprehensive approach to using geospatial information in managing defense facilities.
As part of those efforts, I&E is working on an agreement with NGA to include installation situational awareness as part of its joint efforts with the rest of DoD, according to Air Force Colonel Hal Tinsley, DISDI executive manager and special assistant for geospatial information policy.
“NGA has been focused on the warfighting domain, but now we’ll be developing partnerships on installations and environment,” said Tinsley. “Then the services can develop their own partnerships as well.”
Along with Tinsley, several other DISDI officials addressed the status and goals of the program for the coming year, as it works with the warfighting, intelligence and business sectors of DoD to integrate spatial data model developments and architecture enhancements. They covered the areas of:
* Mission Assurance. Dave LaBranche, who oversees mission assurance and serves as environment, safety and occupational liaison for DISDI, identified a number of projects designed to make greater use of spatial information within functional areas and strengthen alignment with the DoD’s Business Enterprise Architecture.
For example, LaBranche pointed to pilot projects under way in the areas of real property inventory and environmental needs. A mapping project covering 70 installations has been launched, with officials looking toward using GIS to settle long-term property boundary issues within the department. In addition, a pilot environmental liability mapping project is identifying potentially problematic locations for the military, and hazardous materials and explosive safety missions are also being studied.
A data-sharing project is also coordinating requests from the military services for data on topics such as critical infrastructure and installation boundaries, establishing 22 data sharing exchanges over the past three years.
* Data Architecture. Costi Tudan, DISDI data architect, emphasized the importance of integrating DISDI data with the departmentwide Global Information Grid (GIG). To fit into the DoD’s network-centric data strategy, he said, installation geospatial data must be visible, accessible and understandable. In areas such as data collection, data management, data analysis and joint analysis, he said, the goal must be to structure data to ease access.
* Standards. John Kochanowski, DISDI standards coordinator, addressed issues facing his office, with goals in the areas of geospatial data standards and content strategies, metadata strategies and quality assurance planning. He noted that joint efforts were underway with NGA to develop a forum for aligning the geospatial data structure with others used by the military, and called for establishing a technical panel to help bridge the gap between business and warfighting domains.
Another workshop at the ESRI conference brought listeners up to date on the military services’ implementations of enterprise GIS for facility management: the Army Installation Geospatial Information and Services program; GEOFidelis, the Marine Corps installation GIS program, which includes a recently established Web portal; and the Air Force GeoBase program. ♦
