GEOINT Support for Homeland Security
GEOINT SUPPORT FOR HOMELAND SECURITY
Team at DHS is Part of NGA's Increasing
Focus on Collaboration with the Intelligence
and Other Government Communities.
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government resources responded to the recent severe flooding in the Midwest, one of the key assets was geospatial information provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). NGA data and imagery, which focused on populated areas, helped officials understand the extent of property damage and plan for meeting the housing and other needs of those affected.
The collaboration between NGA and FEMA, which is within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was facilitated by the NGA Support Team (NST) embedded within the department. While relatively small, the team and its counterparts are on the cutting edge in NGA’s increasing focus on collaboration with the intelligence and other government communities.
As NGA Director Vice Admiral Robert B. Murrett wrote recently, “In the face of an evolving, asymmetric threat environment, we must increase our collaboration across the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. The more we work together, the more we realize just how much value can be derived by breaking down barriers between agencies.”
The NGA team at DHS is one of 30 NSTs, with a total of some 2,000 employees, providing geospatial-related services and support to combatant commanders, military services, federal agencies and international partners around the world.
“The NST provides the NGA presence embedded with the partner,” said Greg Barac, who recently became head of the NST at Homeland Security. “It’s been our way to become an integral part of their operations, integrating the geospatial tradecraft into their activities. This also enables us to gather a deep understanding of their mission, so we can constantly do process improvements and fine-tune our own tradecraft.
“The NSTs are ambassadors of NGA, consisting of a small footprint of NGA employees embedded in our mission partner and customer locations—less than 15 percent of our overall end-strength. We enable reachback to the greater NGA. The NST structure shows how we value our mission partners and customers,” Barac said.
ACCESS FACILITATOR
NST members make clear that their role is not to provide all geospatial services to their partners, but rather to offer NGA’s expertise and advice in the area, and serve as liaison and facilitator for access to agency resources.
In the case of DHS, Barac noted, the opportunities to help were considerable in light of the short history of the department, which was created from an array of disparate federal organizations.
“They were formed with multiple components, each of which had its own solutions for IT,” he said. “Virtually none had geospatial intelligence as part of their supporting structure. So our NST has been bringing to them, since 2004, a geospatial architecture program, which has three primary components. One was to meet the DHS mission-specific requirements by leveraging what NGA had, so they wouldn’t have to reengineer what we had in a lot of areas.
“We’ve also been customizing the technology developed for NGA, but letting DHS stand up that capability and own it themselves, so it would have their own infrastructure separate from NGA or the Department of Defense. They would also leverage from the partnerships that NGA already had for data collection, to implement into this operational environment in DHS.
“Lastly, part of this program plan was to provide them with a framed architecture, using completely interoperable standards,” Barac continued. “This architecture was named the Geospatial Information Infrastructure (GII), which DHS has adopted. It provides a very structured method for collecting and sharing information and enabling geospatial data, which can be pretty intensive, with multiple layers. It provides an interoperable environment at the federal as well as state and local levels, where NGA is not directly involved.”
The next step is to develop a common operational picture (COP) as part of the Homeland Security Information Network, the department’s IT infrastructure. “The COP is built around geospatial visualization. If you think of Google Earth, it’s a lot like that, just like what’s shown on the nightly news. That’s what an open architecture provides. It provides layers of critical information support data for the country. It’s an enterprise approach across the federal components of DHS,” Barac said.
That approach is also evident at FEMA, where an NST member works full time. “What we bring to the table is the analysis that they don’t have,” the team member said. “FEMA has its own geospatial component, called the FEMA Mapping and Analysis Center. So they do have some geospatial capability in-house, but it’s not what we do as an agency all the time. We bring to bear any kind of analysis that we can do for all sorts of imagery, and it helps them with their response and recovery efforts.
“A recent example was the flooding in the Midwest,” she explained. “Whatwe do is work very closely with them, which is why I sit over at FEMA. We watch their operations and offer to help when we can. We point out when we can provide better data, and show how to manipulate that data better.
“For the flooding, I worked very closely with their coordinator. We focused on the populated areas, looking at how the people and their property were being affected. We analyzed the flood extent—to assess how many people were affected, and where was the flooding. Once they receive that analysis, FEMA then does additional analysis on top of that. We say: Here’s what we see in imagery. They do additional analysis by looking at the population and housing units affected.
“It’s a joint product between FEMA and NGA. We give them a bird’s-eye view of what’s happening, and they can use that in their response mode, or in some of their recovery programs. It’s a great example of collaboration between the intelligence community and a civil agency,” she said.
BUILDING THEIR OWN
Looking ahead, NST members embedded at DHS say that while their role may change in the future, NGA will continue to be closely involved with homeland security, just as with defense and foreign intelligence.
“Eventually DHS will have to develop their own capabilities, just as FEMA has its own capacity. But it’s part of the collaborative nature of the community, in that everyone wants to help each other. They recognize our acquisition efforts and the years we’ve spent developing at a national level, for DoD and the intelligence community, the robust GEOINT processing systems. It is easier for them to leverage what we’ve learned and implement from that, learning from our mistakes, and what works best and doesn’t work” said Barac.
“Their GII is not a duplication of NGA’s. It’s the best of many different worlds. Their architecture is new and improved, and they’ll be ahead of the curve as a result of collaborating with NGA,” he added.
“They have a Geospatial Management Office, and they’re building their own architecture,” said the NGA FEMA liaison. “What NGA is doing is helping them build their architecture. Eventually, the plan may be that we pull out. But for now, they need that support. We’re helping to give them the information that they need to do their mission, and at the same time also providing guidance. Why do they need to repeat our mistakes? This is what we recommend is the best way to go about building your architecture.
“I’m talking to FEMA now about possibly getting some of their own systems in. It’s hard to always find good analysts, and geospatial analysts are at a premium. Other agencies look to us because this is what we do all the time. If they can leverage off that expertise until they build up their own, that’s great,” she said.
Continuing NGA roles in homeland security will include purchasing commercial satellite imagery, through the agency’s volume discounts, providing access to analysis based on imagery from classified satellites, and developing standards, procedures and equipment under the overarching National System for Geospatial-Intelligence.
Another ongoing, even expanding, NGA function will be in operating the Domestic Mobile Integrated Geospatial- Intelligence System, a complete, satellite-connected GEOINT facility on wheels. The unit is frequently requested for use by other agencies, but is being held in reserve during hurricane season for immediate deployment. As a result, the agency has commissioned a second vehicle, to be based at the NGA offices in St. Louis, Mo. ♦
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