INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: InSequence Inc.

 

A: InSequence Inc. was founded in 1999 and has been supporting the intelligence community since its inception, primarily with life cycle engineering, software development, and systems engineering and integration. About three years ago, we started branching off into a new area for us, which has been exciting. We’ve used what we have learned over the past 10 years in supporting intelligence customers, and found what I’ll call “holes” in the way information is disseminated to endusers. So we established a new product, called GlobalView.

In essence, we identified how things are done currently and noticed some deficiencies, primarily in getting imagery out to end-users, whether they are people in the field or other organizations. In addition, the intel community has started a process for supporting other agencies during crises, such as FEMA or other elements in the Department of Homeland Security. We realized there was a real deficiency in getting information from classified systems to people who didn’t have access to those systems, such as FEMA or state or local government officials. That’s when we came up with GlobalView, which allows an intelligence organization to select and disseminate the geospatial data they would like to share out with other organizations. They can host it completely at our facility, or we can link directly to a host environment in their facility if they have it.

It allows us to disseminate information directly to end-users over the Web, taking more of a “Google Maps” approach. The previous method was to disseminate full-resolution imagery on disks or hard drives, which the agencies would have to ship to the users. We came up with a better way, which allows users to get to full-resolution data on the Web, and only download the pieces they need. So if I’m really concerned only about a flood in a specific area, I can go directly there, see what data the intelligence organization has for that area, and download it directly if I want to do something with it internally. We can take tens of terabytes of data, host it online and put it in Open Geospatial Consortium-compliant services, so you don’t even need to use our browser if your own browser is OGC compliant.

Q: What unique benefits does your company offer customers?

A: We’re small and incredibly agile. With the whole GlobalView development, we were able to go from inception to deployment in months. It’s in operation now, the customer is giving us feedback on a regular basis, and we’re able to put changes in rapidly. Everyone says it about themselves, but I really believe that we have some of the best engineers you’ll find, with a strong and talented team that is dedicated to getting the best information out to the end-users. That’s what we’re all about—making sure end-users can get the information they really want. The driving factor behind what we’re doing goes back to Hurricane Katrina, which was the catalyst. The intelligence community possessed lots of valuable, unclassified data, but had no way to get it to FEMA or anyone on the ground who was providing support amid the flooding in New Orleans. When you have terabytes of data, it’s a daunting task to let users know it’s out there, and to actually get it to them. GlobalView provides this service.

Q: What are some other examples of the benefits experienced by your customers?

A: Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a disaster to really improve our means of sharing data. During Hurricane Ike last year, there was one thing that seemed simple but turned out to be more difficult procedurally than anyone had thought. After the hurricane went through Galveston, Texas, the Civil Air Patrol flew a plane up and down the coast taking still photos, showing the devastation on the island. The problem was what to do with the pictures. We went to the CAP Website, where there was a long list of photos, but with no frame of reference as to the location of the images. We requested the photos, geo-referenced them, overlaid them over pre-event imagery, and showed exactly where the pictures were. This was open to the public, so anyone could find the areas they were interested in and look directly at all the CAP photos. There were all kinds of uses for that.

Q: What areas are you working on for the future in meeting customer needs?

A: We’re continuing to expand on the GlobalView product line, and are in the process now of rolling out a related product called Insight, which is the civil side of GlobalView, primarily for the state, county and municipal levels. It gives them the same type of sharing ability, and helps meet their more pressing need to get data to the public. Municipalities and counties all have geospatial information to share, and are trying to develop a capability internally. Instead, we’re offering an alternative service to provide visualization and dissemination at this level of government. It’s being very well received as a cost-effective method to support public needs. ✯

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