GEOINT: The Last
Tactical Mile
by Joe
Francica, Editor-in-Chief
 It's
all about the "last tactical mile" or LTM. The GEOINT
conference, sponsored by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) and heavily supported by the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is a gathering
of primarily military brass, defense contractors, and
intelligence-gathering agencies with the common purpose of
understanding and using geospatial information. That said, a very
prominent theme of this year's conference was LTM, or how geospatial
"knowledge" is communicated to the warfighter, i.e. the soldiers in
combat.
The LTM theme was repeated often, from the exhibits on the floor to the
plenary sessions. Faced with a changed enemy, stealthier and more
dispersed, geospatial information forms the base of knowledge that
comprises both military tactics and covert intelligence gathering. From
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the much maligned FBCB2
(don't worry, it's just a CRT display inside of Humvees), getting
information to the "boots on the street" has taken center stage in the
quest for real-time geospatial intelligence. The problem facing all of
the stakeholders mentioned above is not gathering too little data, but
filtering and disseminating these data that have been acquired by
airborne, satellite and ground-based sensors. Those sensors may be the
soldiers themselves, which is an acknowledgment that the military
understands just how essential it is to equip their forward-based
assets with information technology that sends feedback to the brigade
commander.
Another common theme was need to eliminate "stove pipes" or what have
also been called "islands of automation," where data comes in but is
never shared or disseminated at the right time to the right people. The
conference speakers represented many who were members of joint
technology task forces, or interagency and inter-service teams that
were looking at how to eliminate the duplication of these "silos" and
act to develop teams with a common mission. ... Read
more
GEOINT on the Front Lines: A
Soldier's Story
by Joe
Francica, Editor-in-Chief
In the battle for tactical advantages, geospatial data is
on the front lines. It provides not only exceptional reconnaissance
but, where possible, daily location intelligence about enemy
combatants. Field personnel are being trained as analysts and GIS
specialists to develop spatial databases and map products to deliver
actionable intelligence to soldiers in the Iraq war.
Just three weeks removed from the battlefield in Mosul, Iraq, Chief
Warrant Office 2nd Class, Jason Feser said that the data he was
presenting at the GEOINT Conference in San Antonio were already out of
date. The Chief was with the 72nd Striker Brigade and was the commander
in charge of dispersing maps, imagery and other geospatial intelligence
to platoon leaders. He assured the audience the data he was showing
were unclassified and confirmed that his replacement was sure to have
the most current field intelligence.
That intelligence includes 19 layers of both GEOINT, mostly high
resolution remotely sensed data of Mosul, and HUMINT (human-gathered
intelligence). Using a DigitalGlobe viewer, ArcGIS Server and the
MySQL database, the Chief's primary job was to gather information from
a variety of sources and integrate it with his existing geospatial
database. He captured disparate data from a variety of Excel
spreadsheets including the chaplain's list of clerics associated with
each local mosque, tribal information collected by the CIA, schools,
and neighborhood politicians. This was of utmost importance to platoon
leaders who would receive daily strike packages and needed to know
which neighborhood leaders could be contacted when entering the area.
In turn, any newly acquired, local information would be brought back to
Feser and entered with other data. ... Read
more
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The Deadline for the
E911 Mandate Approaches ... Where Do Things Stand?
by David H.
Williams, CEO, E911-LBS Consulting
 A great
deal has happened since US wireless carriers finally started
getting their act together about Wireless E911 a couple of years
ago. Most notably the big six carriers (AT&T Wireless, Cingular,
Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon) are now the big four, with the
acquisition of Nextel by Sprint and AT&T Wireless by Cingular.
While all these carriers had various waivers in their implementation
deadlines, granted by the FCC at various points since the original 1996
Wireless 911 Mandate, they all shared a common endpoint - have your
infrastructure ready to deliver wireless user location information to
Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) by the end of 2005.
For carriers using GPS chips to help determine a user's location, this
meant that 95% of all handsets in use needed to have been upgraded to
GPS-capable models by December 31st, 2005. For carriers using a
network-based location solution, the end of 2005 deadline was not
strictly applicable, but they in turn had other deadlines to meet prior
to that time in upgrading their cell sites to determine and transmit
users' location information, as well as ongoing timeframe obligations
to respond to PSAP upgrade requests.
We are almost at the end of 2005 and the question is: Where do things
stand? The answer, in a nut-shell: from a carrier perspective - fairly
good; from a PSAP perspective - pretty bad. The culprit - continued
lack of funding to upgrade the PSAPs to receive and use location
information. ... Read
more
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Packing the GIS Business Case for
the Board Room
How to build a
bulletproof GIS strategy, business case and implementation roadmap and
sell it to executives - and everyone else
by Ross Smith,
Managing Consultant, and Neil
Saward, Principal, PA Consulting
 GIS technology is not new and the opportunities for
leveraging it for
business benefit are typically well understood, at least by GIS
professionals and vendors. Despite this, we have found that one of the
main impediments to effective GIS implementation - and the realization
of the benefits expected - is the lack of executive commitment
necessary for the multi-year, multi-million dollar investment.
Why is it so difficult to sell the
benefits that GIS can bring to
executives? Have you found that no matter how much you evangelize about
the operational improvements that a GIS capability would bring, you are
constantly aware that the GIS initiative is between the cross-hairs
when budget cuts are made?
How best can you ensure that your
executives unilaterally buy-in to GIS
and see cutting GIS funding as a last resort? The answer is simpler
than you think: Packaging. The means by which you package your
arguments, logic and supporting evidence and the language you use to
articulate them will have a direct impact on how successful you are at
making your case and winning them over. ... Read
more
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Letters and comments
from the previous week (or so) will appear on Thursdays. If you missed
an
article referenced below, it might be because you are not subscribed to
all our newsletters. You can change your preferences here.
- Adena Schutzberg's View
from Here editorial drew comments
on both the simplicity of Google Maps and the community's (lack of?)
reaction the USGS reorganization and its fallout.
B.K. DeLong of
BrainStream points to two aspects of the "basicness" of the new online
mapping offerings that make them so interesting.
"Many folks on the Internet have not had free access to such GIS
software as GoogleEarth (GE). GE makes it very accessible and easy for
anyone to have immediate interaction with GIS info.
"The second item is collaboration - hundreds of people are gathering at
bbs.keyhole.com and on blogs, email lists and forums around the Web to
gather GIS datasets and create these elaborate projects."
Brian Timoney of The Timoney Group shared
his
experiences comparing "old school" GIS to Google Maps and the like:
"In the simplified world of Google Maps the non-technical user feels
that much more in control of the content. Contrast that to the
discomfort that the average ArcIMS or MapGuide web map engenders with
their collections of unfamiliar icons.
"Then there's the matter of money. Google Maps has shown that the
non-GISer can create "mash-ups" for next-to-nothing at a now
astonishing pace and new services such as Ning will no doubt accelerate
that trend."
"As general web map fluency develops, the novelty of one-off hacks and
mashups will wear off but the demand for well-designed maps with
compelling combinations of fresh data will only increase."
Rich Gibson, one of the authors of Mapping
Hacks, candidly addresses Google Maps:
"Schuyler and Jo and I spent a huge amount of time while writing Mapping
Hacks in trying to provide simple instructions to describe this
simple process. And frankly, for the most part, we failed at making it
simple.
"Google Maps made it simple, and they made it open. This openness
extends past their open API and (somewhat) open data to the basic
architecture. If you want to learn how to put Google Maps on your own
site you can view the source code that other people use to put maps on
their own sites.
"What happens next? If we are clever we work to continuously
encapsulate the complexity of geospatial tools and processes within
ever easier interfaces."
Anthony Quartararo of Spatial NetWorks
references a recent thread
on GISLIST and shares his basic understanding of the situation:
"IMHO is that ESRI and other big vendors have seen the face of death,
and that face is Google."
Julian Bleecker of Techkwondo.com
addressed his understand of the call for GIS professionals to stay at
their posts:
"I may've read your dispatch wrong, but calling for GIS experts to stay
at their posts suggests a kind of narrow perspective on what's changing
in the world of locative media and services - collaboration."
Russ Pence of Avineon responded to the
assertion that there seemed to be little reaction in the geospatial
community regarding recent USGS reorganization confirmed he was deeply
concerned about the process and shared some insight.
"When I asked USGS whether they would allow contractor support to the
A-76 process the response was that it was going to be performed
internally with market research. Maybe the lesson here is that there is
nobody truly 'independent' that they can trust to perform such a study.
The civilian agencies need an independent entity to support research
into both these topics. DoD has been using this approach for some time,
with at least better and more open information in the decision process.
But that won't stop the wranglings of the electorate....."
Bruce Westcott, Geospatial Metadata
Consultant, answered the question "why do I not care about USGS?"
He answered this way:
"Poor Public Communications -- The USGS does a poor job of telling me
(a GI professional) why I SHOULD care.
"Gross Data -- All of my work is focused on development of products
sold to and used by REAL customers, who have, as you say, their
"heads down solving day to day problems in a variety of fields, keeping
cities up and running, water supplies clean..." I think that what they
care about is useful data. And my impression is that for many of those
customers, USGS data has minimal utility, largely because the scale is
too gross."
- Howard Butler's article
on the Katrina Imagery Warehouse and its creation prompted comments
from several of the contributors and big kudos from one reader.
Tom Kralidis of
Environment Canada, who participated in the project highlighted the
importance of open specifications.
"Note that we also threw up a WMC document, which you fetch from the
project webpage. I really enjoyed contributing to this project with
such a talented, capable mob.
"Yet another example of the flexibility and power of open specification
programs like OGC."
Wil Sprowl of Cardio Logic, Inc. gave a
glowing review the article and the project:
"The Katrina support story (in Directions) by Howard Butler
rates four stars in my book because not only was it well written it
points out that when the need is there, as it was in this case, that
many GIS and other professionals care enough to take time out from
their often 'too' busy schedules to work closely together to assist in
time of need. Norman Vine of Woods Hole also deserves a gold star for
recognizing the need and pulling it all together. Shows what a good
team can accomplish! Keep up the good work."
We welcome
your praise and
criticism via our comments tools provided along with articles on the
website, or via e-mail.
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CentralPark.com,
an Online Guide Complete with Interactive Maps
compiled by Nora
Parker, Managing Editor
The site creators explain on the website that they
"believe that Central Park deserves the best Internet alter-ego
possible; one that reflects the vision and passion of the original
designers." CentralPark.com does a good job of being the alter-ego of
the 843 acre park in central Manhattan. It offers a full guide,
calendar, history, photo gallery and descriptions of many different
aspects of the historic park. Aric Boyles, best known for his aerial
photograph of Central Park, created the site along with content
director John Moore and urbanscape photographer Rick Anderson. Of
course, the best part of the site to the geo-type will be Map It!, the
interactive mapping capability.
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The image on the left shows a northern section of the Park,
with North Meadow at the center. The image on the right shows a portion
of the Park including the Shakespeare Gardens. Source:
CentralPark.com. Used with permission. (Click
for larger image)
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Finding Your Customers: GIS for Retail
Management by
Tony Burns
This practical introduction to GIS
teaches retailers, from the largest national chain stores to
mom-and-pop corner markets, to analyze the "location dimension" of
their business and their customers using computer mapping programs.
Targeted at both professionals and business students, this book covers
the basics of the software technology, serves as a primer for key
mapping concepts, and explores the particulars of acquiring the
necessary spatial data. From ESRI Press.
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Unlocking the Census with GIS by Alan Peters and Heather
MacDonald
Seeking to demystify the census and
explaining the potential of GIS for understanding people, places, and
local economies, this guide explains how GIS can significantly ease
data management, allowing for new ways to analyze and present
relationships among variables. From ESRI Press.
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GIS For Sustainable Development edited by Michele Campagna
This book examines how GIS
applications can improve collaboration in decision making among those
involved in promoting sustainable development. This volume reviews
leading GIScience, providing an overview of research topics and
applications that enable GIS newcomers and professionals to apply
GIScience methods to sustainable spatial planning. From Taylor & Francis.
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Thanks for reading Directions
Magazine,
and be sure to tell a friend.
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