With geospatial imagery becoming a staple of the nightly news and GEOINT increasingly recognized as an essential tool for military and intelligence analysis, these are heady days for GIS professionals. And judging from a recent interview with Keith Masback, it’s also an exciting time to be president of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF). 

Masback, who took over as full-time president earlier this year, is at the helm of the industry/academia/government organization as it prepares for its signature annual event, the GEOINT Symposium, being held this fall in Nashville, Tenn. 

“It’s a remarkably exciting time. Geospatial technology is the underpinning for everything else that goes on in situational awareness and intelligence,” Masback said. “One of our members, DigitalGlobe, last year launched a very capable satellite, and recently filed for an initial public offering. We’ve also got GeoEye, which by the time this is published should be streaming images from the recently launched GeoEye-1. 

Another one of our members, Zebra Imaging, was recently recognized as one of the top privately owned companies in the nation. “When I look around, I see the near-ubiquitous nature of Google Earth, for example,” he continued. “There’s a lot of energy here, as shown by the response to the recent hurricane in Texas. On the nightly news, you see products from NGA being shown as key to planning for the preparation and response to the hurricane.” 

Indeed, the growing prominence of geospatial intelligence is responsible in no small part for the outlines of Masback’s current position. In March he succeeded SAIC executive K. Stuart Shea, who was selected by the board of directors to serve as chief executive officer and continue in his role as the chairman of the board— both of which he continues to do in a volunteer capacity. 

A 20-year veteran of government service, Masback is a former Army infantry officer who also has a background in military intelligence, working with national systems and high-altitude reconnaissance. He came to USGIF from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, where he spent the preceding three years in operations. 

“The foundation was enjoying such success, because of the tremendous wave of interest in geospatial intelligence in government, industry and academia. This field is really growing now,” Masback noted. “So the board felt that they wanted to bring on a full-time president with a strong background in geospatial intelligence, who could continue to take the foundation forward after five years of growth.” 

Masback pointed to developments in government, industry and academia— where interest in geospatial education is exploding—to underscore the importance of the moment for the geospatial field. “There’s an expectation, whether you’re on the battlefield, are a first responder or are looking for a restaurant for dinner tonight, you’re going to have accurate, geo-referenced information that gets you where you need to be, along with imagery to provide the associated situational awareness.” 

CRITICAL INTERSECTIONS 

Looking broadly at the state of GEOINT, Masback displays both enthusiasm for the seemingly never-ending stream of technological advances, and a deep understanding of the critical intersections between public policy, technology and the business of geospatial intelligence. 

He pointed, for example, to the growing role of biometrics these days both in homeland security and in protecting forces abroad. “The intersection of biometrics and geospatial intelligence is important. It’s not just knowing whom I have encountered, but where, and being able to understand patterns over time of what they’ve done and where they’ve been,” Masback said. 

Another intersection involves the idea of multi-intelligence and ISR integration. “Everything that happens has two things associated with it that are particularly useful to an analyst—where it happened and when it happened. GEOINT provides the where. So GEOINT is the underpinning for multiintelligence integration.” 

The third intersection is a tough one, Masback said—the intersection of virtual space, cyberspace and physical space. “If you think about it, cyberspace travels over fiber, which exists in physical space. Virtual environments exist on servers, which reside in physical space. They are often routed through communications channels, which may be through satellites that exist in outer space. Mapping the intersection of virtual, cyber and physical space is going to be an important attribute of how we approach GEOINT and national security in the future.” 

Masback also emphasizes the significance of the development of new types of phenomenologies for imaging and information gathering, such as LiDAR (light detection and ranging) optical remote sensing technology. “It images with tremendous fidelity. It used to be considered pretty esoteric, but recently a British rock band recorded a music video entirely by a LiDAR camera. LiDAR is emblematic of one sort of new capability to grab data in tremendous fidelity that’s going to lead to new abilities to understand and describe activity in an area in ways we haven’t been able to do before,” he added. 

Still, that data is fully useful only when processed and analyzed, he said, pointing to the work of USGIF member McClendon Corp., an intelligence and systems engineering contractor. “They have spectral scientists with the ability to develop the analysis, tradecraft and algorithms for the exploitation of things like LiDAR, as well as hyperspectral, multispectral and other emerging technologies,” Masback said. “So it’s both the sensor side and the ability to do something with that data that’s really critical.” 

Masback also highlighted work on standards and architectures designed to facilitate the use and sharing of geospatial data. “If you describe geospatial intelligence and associated products as the underpinning for what others are doing, then you’ve got to have the standards and interfaces that will allow them to flow easily across domains. ERDAS, another one of our member companies, in concert with Penn State, used an Open Geospatial Consortium architecture in a serviceoriented architecture framework, to be able to move real-time airborne images from ISR platforms across the tactical communities. 

“When you have community acknowledged standards, and you’re able to move that into a true service-oriented architecture, you’re now not limited in what you’re able to do,” he said. 

INTEROPERABILITY DEMONSTRATION 

The key role of geospatial intelligence and its potential for the future will be on full display at the GEOINT Symposium, Masback suggested, pointing in particular to the annual interoperability demonstration at the conference, which provides a tangible example of how USGIF members’ solutions operating with common standards can aid data sharing and coordinated command during critical situations. “It’s not just that we’re talking about it here, that the government is thinking about it, or that industry is advertising it. What we bring to the table at GEOINT is an actual instantiation of this, which you can touch and see, and bring back the information that you need to do this to your organization.” 

The list of speakers at the conference also reflects the importance of GEOINT, Masback said, pointing to such presenters as the director of the National Security Agency, chief intelligence officer of the Department of Homeland Security, commander of Air Force Space Command and director of national intelligence. 

“What this shows is that the power of GEOINT is about far more than just one discipline, but provides the glue that pulls together all the discussions that we have,” he said. “If you walk into an operations center outside a national security special event, such as the political conventions, you’ll see that the gathering point is in front of the map or electronic display. That is the place that fosters the discussion that grounds you in a common reference framework, and thus enables you to understand what’s going on. So our lineup of speakers, panelists and exhibits speaks to the larger nature of what GEOINT brings to the table.” 

As for its long-term agenda, USGIF will be focusing on the areas of education, support for small business and partnering, Masback said. 

“We have an increased emphasis on supporting educational endeavors and a responsibility to educate the next group that will be coming into the GEOINT workforce for government and industry. We’re starting a young professionals’ network to tie folks who are new to our field together across industry, academia and government, and enable them to start building the kind of relationships that you often see only among the more senior people. So it’s time to help them understand how we can mentor them and help them work together.”

The foundation recently accredited the geospatial intelligence programs at three universities—George Mason, Penn State and the University of Missouri at Columbia. 

In the small business area, Masback noted that smaller firms frequently may have innovative ideas, but lack the resources to communicate and exploit them. “So we at the foundation are very interested in promoting and supporting those ideas, and make sure that government and larger members from industry are able to see them and take advantage of the ideas in a collaborative way with the smaller companies.