GEOINT Symposium 2007
(Editor’s Note: Following is a sampling of news from to the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s GEOINT Symposium 2007, held in San Antonio, Texas, in October. Some announcements made by companies at the show are also included in the Industry Raster section on pages 14-15.)
Video Management Engine Speeds Intelligence Analysis
Fame v. 1.0 from Harris is a full-motion video asset management engine that speeds the process of analyzing a wide range of intelligence information. Fame integrates video analytics, video and audio coding and processing/storage capabilities into a single digital asset management platform and provides the infrastructure for changing the way video is ingested and cataloged. The engine enables intelligence analysts to dynamically control access devices in the network to optimize network performance. For example, analysts can dynamically schedule live video feeds based on time, quality, format, network and route.
The system also allows operators to optimize network transport of live or file-based distribution so that feeds can be routed to destinations based on a time schedule. Fame also incorporates the Harris mCapture compressed media stream recorder to provide a simple, secure and reliable means of capturing MPEG-2 encoded data, audio or video content. As a live broadcast is converted to an IP stream, the recorder can simultaneously play out the file to other locations in near-real time. At the end of the broadcast, the complete file, or any segment, is made available for transfer over the rest of the system to any user on the network.
View From Down Range
At a panel entitled “The View From Down Range,” Army Colonel Bill Harmon, chief, Forward Support Team to CENTCOM, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), offered these observations:
“Last week, I went to Iraq with NGA Director Vice Admiral Murrett, and we saw units all the way from the tactical to the strategic level. It was really amazing to see what our young Americans are doing with the information they have. You walk into the tactical operations center, and on the table you see fullcolor unclassified commercial imagery, with half-meter resolution. That’s what they’re using to plan their missions and prosecute the targets that they have to go after. At the strategic level, what you see is a merging of information. If you can merge this information on a geospatial backdrop, and if that information is pinned down to the earth, and you’re able to show location trends over time, that helps tell the story for the decision maker, because the way we process information these days is visually. The most effective products across the board were those that merged information—SIGINT, HUMINT, advanced geo-spatial intelligence and MASINT. In the fusion centers, different analysts are sitting side by side. What would make that better would be if the information was shared, so that we could process the information even faster.
“In our agency, we’re sending out experts to help in Iraq and Afghanistan to help with the reachback capability into our organizations and help tell the story to the leaders out there. One NGA analyst, who just came back from six months in Baghdad, had the opportunity to sit every Sunday morning with General Petraeus, who would have a roundtable of intelligence analysts.
“After the President’s speech in January, we increased our presence in theater 100 percent, most of which was done with civilians. On any given day, we probably have more than 200 people forward, in six countries in the AOR. We’re in 30 separate locations, with teams as small as one or two, making this come to life for our mission partners. We deliver our standard products—maps, charts and elevation data, which you need to move around. What makes the data come to life is the layers you can lay on top of that, to deliver actionable intelligence.
“We have smart young analysts out there. Any station you go to, there are at least six chat windows open, talking to analysts around the world to find out how has the most current information. You bring that information together and put it into a common operating picture. For people who’ve been in the intelligence community for a while, that’s a little scary, because it’s not stovepiped any more. You have analysts creating networks within a network, to defeat another network.”
Other participants in the panel, one of eight held during the symposium, were William J. Farr, chief, geospatial information and services, deputy chief of staff, Army Special Operations Command; Army Brigadier General Jeffrey C. Horne, deputy director, mission support operations, National Reconnaissance Office; Colonel Keith A. Lawless, assistant chief of staff, Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.
Cross-Domain Transfer Delivers Actionable GIS
Owl Computing Technologies released the High-Capacity File Transfer System (HFTS), an optimized cross-domain transfer system that delivers actionable GIS intelligence in real-time. Owl’s high-capacity system can securely move massive GIS files, in any format, at the rate of 2.488 Gigabits per second (Gbps). This accelerated rate offers faster transfer for NGA, taking current cross-domain GIS intelligence sharing from minutes to seconds.
“We’re proud to offer this robust file transfer upgrade in support of the NGA’s growing GIS information movement requirements,” said Ron Mraz, president and chief technology officer of Owl Computing Technologies. “At 2.488 Gbps, HFTS answers the NGA’s unique demand for high-capacity, fast GIS delivery. When I started Owl Computing Technologies in 1998, eight floppy disks per minute was the typical requirement for cross-domain transfer speed. In 2001, 1.5 CD ROMs per minute was the acceptable rate. Today, our optimized solution sustains a 25 CD ROM per minute transfer speed, to reshape how the NGA receives and shares critical GIS intelligence with its communities of interest.”
In addition to fast cross-domain transfer, Owl’s one-way systems are widely used across intelligence and defense agencies. The company has approved-to-operate status within the IC and DoD, and is part of the Unified Cross Domain Management Office list of best practices.
System Aids Retrieval of Location-Based Information
National Geographic Maps and MetaCarta announced CartaLens, a geospatial digital asset management solution for georeferencing, managing, retrieving and delivering digital assets. The system is able to search and retrieve location-based information from both structured content and a broad base of digital content such as photos, video, audio and documents, enabling users to fuse digital assets with maps and metadata in a collaborative and interactive viewing environment.
CartaLens makes it possible for organizations and decision makers to efficiently create a focused set of geospatially relevant information from the vast volumes of available information in their libraries, files and across the Web. The solution is designed for organizations that have extensive and distributed repositories of mixed content as it creates new opportunities for revenue by repurposing assets in new ways and delivers information when and where it is needed as assets become locationally aware.
CartaLens enables users to drag and drop assets on to a map that automatically geo-tags the asset for a future geographic search. Its flexible and intuitive interface enables users to identify, locate and access location-aware information by using a map, media thumbnails, or by querying the asset’s metadata. By accessing the CartaLens results dynamically in Google Earth, users can collaborate with their team of subject-matter experts in real-time and mix this critical intelligence with other available sources in a 3-D environment.
CartaLens enables users to focus the “Lens” on maps, media, metadata and all-source textual information.
GEOINT Achievements Honored
USGIF award winners honored at GEOINT included:
• The Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center team, which received the Intelligence Achievement Award (Government Division). The group was honored for contributing to the understanding of adversary military capabilities by developing and deploying a GEOINT-enabled Foreign Missile Test Range Analysis architecture. The ability to store, manage, query and view vast amounts of geospatial intelligence data in seconds was hailed as a significant achievement.
• A team from the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command’s Command Control Systems Directorate, which received the Intelligence Achievement Award (Military Division). The group undertook an ambitious program to create a user-defined operational picture called Situational Awareness Geospatial Enterprise (SAGE). Its goal is to make GIS a commodity within the command by instituting an enterprise GIS capability that everyone can use and configure to their own precise needs. SAGE was fielded for the 2007 hurricane season. (See story on page 6.)
• Matt O’Connell, chief executive officer of GeoEye, who received the Intelligence Achievement Award (Industry Division). Since the merger of Space Imaging and Orbimage created GeoEye, the newly formed company has overcome many of its predecessors’ obstacles and has since grown into one of the largest remote sensing companies in the world, having more than 370 employees at four key locations in the United States, along with one of the foremost providers of geospatial imagery. O’Connell joined Orbimage in 2001, the year the company had a failed satellite launch and went into bankruptcy. Through his expertise he brought Orbimage back to life and led the new company to win a coveted $500 million NGA NextView contract to build the next-generation GeoEye-1 satellite.
• Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. received the USGIF 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award. Clapper previously served as National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency director from September 2001 to June 2006. He retired as a lieutenant general from the Air Force in 1995, after a 32-year career that included serving as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. ♦
