INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Intergraph
Robert Mott
Director for Military and Intelligence Solutions
Intergraph
Q: What types of products and services is Intergraph offering to military and other government customers?
A: One of the key products we offer is Image Scout, which is for advanced image exploitation and geospatial fusion. It has been adopted by organizations such as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency [NGA] for their broad area search activities and digital image exploitation workflows. That enables analysts to work in a completely digital environment with vast amounts of imagery and other complex data, and very quickly assemble all of that content into a meaningful representation, where they can easily perform analysis and make high-confidence decisions.
Another product set is our Geospatial Intelligence Production System [GIPS], which is our enterprise-scale high-end military map production suite. It’s used by international military mapping organizations as part of broad participation with NGA in their Multinational Geospatial Co-Production Program [MGCP]. GIPS allows for streamlined data capture, so that data collectors can spend less time performing mundane tasks. The tools have validity checks and error checking built-in throughout the process, to ensure that the output at the end of the cycle is of the highest quality possible.
Q: What unique benefits does Intergraph offer its customers in comparison with other companies in your field?
A: Across all of our product suites, one thing that jumps out is our strong adherence to open standards for data storage and exchange. This is becoming more and more a critical concern for military organizations as they find themselves involved in coalition activities, or partnering with other parts of the federal government, such as the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice for various activities. This allows them to have cross-organizational sharing of information, as well as up and down various levels of government. Another way of describing that is that we work in open data formats and common industry formats, and essentially there is no Intergraph file format. When using those tools for geospatial production or image exploitation, we’re working with open Oracle databases, common image formats or other vendor formats, and therefore can very easily fit our toolset into existing enterprises and systems to quickly add value and not require data conversion and other costly integration activities.
Q: What are some of the most significant programs Intergraph is currently working on with the military?
A: The program I mentioned, the MGCP, is a multinational collaborative effort to remap the world at a greater level of resolution and quality than in the past and many of these participating nations are using Intergraph technology for their map production activities. Within the intelligence community, another significant contribution is the inclusion of Image Scout as part of the Integrated Exploitation Capability [IEC] workstation. Image Scout is used in IEC for support of the broad area search workflows. Also, Intergraph now has an enterprise license agreement with NGA, so that anyone in NGA can get direct access to Intergraph technology. The complete suite of geospatial products is included, and analysts and operators can pull down licenses and quickly use that technology within their programs. So end users can quickly test the technology, find if there is a fit, and then move into the production mode.
Q: Are you currently developing new products and services relevant to military and government customers that you hope to bring to the market in the future?
A: One of the newest areas we’re working on involves the use of motion video, and within standard exploitation decision-making cycles. UAVs, for example, have been used very successfully for surveillance and other military operations, and we’re now showing how those video streams can be processed in a way to support analysis, such as change detection. The way we’re doing that is that after the video has been collected, we have state-of-the-art forensic video technology that performs stabilization and other cleanup of the video and then takes individual frames and constructs a video mosaic, which is a richer, broader rendition of that source video. We’re moving from a video format to an image format, which can then be used for image comparisons, automated change detection and other analysis. We’re now able to quickly determine details on objects and use them in connection with other types of data to help perform a better assessment of the area covered by a UAV. For example, there’s a very strong interest in using UAVs for IED detection, and this video mosaic process can be used to perform the necessary analysis of two successive passes of a UAV over an area of interest.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: We are seeing a strong trend for military and intelligence organizations to play a more critical supporting role in domestic security activities, such as border security, which is presenting a set of new challenges to our military. We have a new suite of security products that go to the heart of that emerging problem set. Intergraph draws on its strong heritage and competency in the areas of military and intelligence, public safety and emergency dispatch, such as the enhanced 911 system in use in large metropolitan regions like Washington, D.C., and critical infrastructure systems, such as utilities, communication and transportation to bring to market this new type of geospatially enabled security solution. It enhances the military’s role in that partnership and allows their data and supporting assets to be more useful in that environment. ♦
