In life, few things are certain. In family, love and friendship, fewer. Add more people — workplace, groups, associations, government, society, nations, war — and the complications multiply, the certainties become more scarce.
Some things, however, remain fixed, and true. We call them facts. They are not subject to denial or claims of fakery. They can sometimes be distorted, or their interpretation disputed, but at the end of the day they remain what they were at the beginning. Facts. True.
They do not require a majority to believe in them, nor even a powerful minority. They exist outside belief, heedless of the powers of persuasion, cajolery, hucksterism.
The facts do not always, to their detriment, speak for themselves. Reason does not always prevail. But the facts continue to exist, ruling the operations of the universe.
It has been said that journalism’s duty is to print the facts and raise hell (Chicago Times, 1861). I submit to you that it is a scientist’s duty — and an engineer is a scientist — to live and practice by the facts, to preserve the facts if necessary. To raise hell? That may be a matter of taste or personal style. But to see that the facts are known, shared, publicly available — that can be undertaken without uncomfortable or unpleasant hell-raising.
Guerrilla archiving and data rescues have mushroomed across the U.S., in response to fear that the U.S. government will remove facts it dislikes from its own websites. All-day hackathons are organized by volunteers; the events focus on downloading federal science data sets, particularly those related to climate change, from government websites and uploading them to a new site, datarefuge.org, an alternative source for data. They’re also feeding tens of thousands of government web pages into the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library with the mission of “universal access to all knowledge.” And of course someone has devised a custom-built app specifically for this purpose.
Climate-change data has a geospatial aspect, and much of it was collected with GPS equipment. Positioning coordinates lie at the heart of so much key information. So an attack on carefully assembled, scientifically overseen data can be interpreted as an attack on the validity of global positioning technology. Whether or not we take it personally, we should be wary of any attempt to deny or abolish any facts, anywhere.
We’ve seen this before, in other forms. The LightSquared episode in 2011–12 produced blatant denials of the physics of radio-frequency waveforms, for personal and institutional profit. We don’t yet know if this is happening again, whether government data has been erased or simply moved elsewhere.
Whether or wherever they appear or disappear, the facts continue to exist, and perhaps they deserve more respect than they’ve been getting.
Last year, Huntsville, Alabama, was the site of the National Geospatial-intelligence Agency’s (NGA’s) first HackAThon — just one outreach event to take advantage of talent and skills outside the agency that could enrich the efforts of NGA.
The HackAThon was an initiative of both previous NGA Director Letitia Long and current Director Robert Cardillo. It was so successful that NGA had four other HackAThons in major cities, including New York, Boston and San Francisco, with a repeat this year in Huntsville.
The weekend HackAThon led up to the GeoHuntsville Summit, a geospatial conference that has been an annual event for more than 10 years. The conference was opened by long-time geospatial professional and advocate Chris Johnson and Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, who both have had supportive connections with NGA. The mayor highlighted the fact that for its size, Huntsville was somewhat unique in that it had a higher per capita population of Ph.D.s and engineers than any other city in the U.S. That same wealth of talent extends into geospatial, with more than 70 geospatial firms in the area.
New GeoHuntsville Director
GeoHuntsville Executive Director Jorge Garcia
Chris then introduced Jorge Garcia, who is taking over as the GeoHuntsville Executive Director. Jorge retired from the FBI, where he served as assistant director, Directorate of Intelligence. His 16-year military career includes combat tours in Iraq, which preceded 21 years with the FBI, and later intelligence work in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Jorge highlighted the goals of GeoHuntsville that were his marching orders, including the advancement of geospatial tools to prevent and/or mitigate natural and manmade threats to the region while fostering research, development and education of the geospatial tradecraft.
Presentation Highlights
Ken Graham, Director, Platform Services Division, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA)
As a sponsor of the event, and active part of GeoHuntsville, there was heavy participation by NGA staff, including NGA recruiters eyeing the 15,000-plus geospatial talent located in Huntsville. Ken discussed the success of the HackAThons and other outreach efforts developed by NGA’s Enterprise Innovation Office. Its focus on unclassified open source tools is changing the culture away from “that’s the way we always did it” to completely out-of-the-box thinking including “Shark Tank”-like evaluations of tools developed outside the agency, without the very slow and expensive procurement methods that took years to place new innovations into the hand of NGA users.
Ken explained that rather than NGA developing exact descriptions and specification of what the agency wanted, it instead describes a problem or need. The NGA then leaves it up to the creativity of outside developers to think of new approaches and solutions to the problem.
Most of the solutions can be created in unclassified environments and then tested by NGA staff using real agency data. In many cases, this negates the need for outside developers to have TS/SCI clearances, which are expensive and time consuming to obtain. The NGA goal, which sounds very ambitious, is to be able to get new tools into the hands of users less than 24 hours after a problem is identified!
Dan Koch, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Koch demonstrated a system developed by ORNL that integrates various GIS tools in one easy-to-use environment called the Incident Management Preparedness Coordination Tool Kit, or IMPACT for short. This system was initially designed for EOD use during potential bombing events, but the system also proved useful to a broad audience of first responders.
The system can be used with web services, but also can operate in a disconnected environment, since much of the needed data resides locally. IMPACT includes traditional GIS tools and external data access augmented with bomb-blast patterns, crowd evacuation animations, plume models, contagion spread simulations, active shooter view-sheds, antenna placements and patterns and real-time live data feeds.
The afternoon breakout sessions included a detailed demonstration of IMPACT. You can see a demonstration of IMPACT in this youtube video. Some of the attendees mentioned that the system would be even nicer if it used the new CESIUM WebGL virtual globe to show 3D data.
Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT)
J.D. D’Arville of the ALDOT explained ALDOT’s use of off-the-shelf UAVs (DJI Phantom 3s and 4s) with eMotion software and senseFly S.O.D.A. cameras to capture very high-quality aerial imagery in multiple spectrums (see the senseFly video.} The imagery was then assembled into metric 3D models using Pix4D that permitted them to monitor contractor work. One early success was discovering poor “cut and fill” procedures by a contractor.
John Russell of ALDOT then explained survey data collection using what I believe is very disruptive technology —AeroPoints, developed by Propeller Aero. AeroPoints is a very accurate automated system that uses UAVs with innovative ground control pads to capture 2-cm-accurate aerial imagery. See a video of it in operation here.
Mike Botts, OpenSensorHub
Botts presented the latest examples of work he and his colleagues have done to advance the practical use of remote sensors. He pointed out a key advantage of working with GeoHuntsville, in that both developers and end users had the ability to learn from each other.
One example he cited was showing the display of live UAV video on a static map to a participating local fire chief. Since the video was related to the geography but not accurately geo-referenced, the fire chief said that it wouldn’t be useful. He explained that trying to figure out exactly what he was looking at and from which direction would be too time-consuming and potentially confusing. Botts and his staff took the problem in hand and developed a simple way to place the video footprint in the exact location and orientation that was spatially correct. This had been done before with high-end military systems, but never so simply and effectively.
UAVs
There were also several presentations by UAV users and the UAV users’ group that addressed both hardware and software. However, the UAV topics that still dominate the discussions are the administrative and legal issues that still cloud the use of the technology.
These were only the highlights of the conference. Although lasting one day, this was an information-rich conference worth attending.
Most of you are familiar with hackathons, but this one was focused on geospatial solutions for first responders with NGA’s GeoQ as a foundation. The goal was to hack unclassified geospatial datasets and open-source tools to build effective solutions for disaster response and recovery.
The foundation – NGA’s GeoQ
Ray Bauer, who heads up the NGA GeoQ effort, was the keynote speaker. He explained how GeoQ meets the goals set by former NGA Director Latisha Long and current Director Robert Cardillo to take advantage of open-source data, applications and most important talent. Ray explained how the growing complexity of the GEOINT world forces NGA to take advantage of every geospatial resource available while keeping their classified work secure.
Ray stated NGA’s hackathon goals, specifically:
“We are interested in working with participants to identify and create new, interactive and efficient ways of reading, disseminating and analyzing tons of data from disparate systems. We highly encourage leveraging open-source tools and other software solutions participants bring to the table. This hackathon is not just for those entrenched in the geo world! We’re interested in everything from new mapping interfaces, mobile solutions, lightweight and portable information dashboards, hardware integrations with commercial off-the-shelf tools like sensors and UAVs, and everything in between!
“The intent of this event is to think outside the box and employ new tools and alternative open-source data to more efficiently and accurately send the most relevant data to emergency responders quickly. Currently there are dozens of data sets that make it difficult to quickly search and integrate into a common operational environment, particularly across the sectors: firefighter, police, hospital, dispatcher, HEMSI, air evacuation, utilities, Department of Transportation, etc. How do we share information among these groups during disaster situations such as tornadoes, hurricanes, shootings, flooding, significant traffic events, chemical spills and other potentially catastrophic events?”
For those of you not familiar with GeoQ, there is an excellent overview produced by NGA that is on Youtube.
GeoHuntsville hackathon goals
The pre-event announcements listed the following goal.
Combine commercial and proprietary hardware and software solutions to create unique concepts/solutions. Specifically:
Solve disparate data problems among current open source data sets (i.e. overlaying multiple shape files with real-time data from multiple sources such as emergency responder software, sensors in the field, social media, e.g.).
Recreate more aesthetically appealing user interfaces considering numerous data sets — to include mobile solutions.
Suggest new solutions leveraging a subset of currently available data. (Use the data we give you, use the data you bring, use the data we don’t know about — and create a solution to a problem we don’t know exists.)
Integrate new solutions or disparate data into open source tools, like GeoQ.
Identify ways to more efficiently and accurately receive and analyze updates from the field. (This could be anything from a tool an emergency responder uses or social media resources.)
Come up with a way to disseminate critical information across agencies and geographic locations.
First responder involvement
The aspect of this hackaton that was particularly valuable was the direct involvement of numerous Huntsville first responders. Policemen and firemen were able to explain their difficulties and needs face to face with the programmers and engineers who were participating in the hackathon, so the participants were not operating in a vacuum. See my interview with the Huntsville fire chief.
Fueled with sodas, chips and snacks, the hackers worked overnight to accomplish the goals. At stake were three prizes, including a top prize of $1,000. The prizes were not huge, but they provided some incentive including bragging rights.
Although some results were similar to existing applications, the different approaches were still very impressive for a two-day event. You may find one or two applications worth your further investigation for integration in your systems.
The teams
Mobile Damage Assessment
Micah Cleveland and Larry Wilbourn provided firefighters with a way to directly report the status of damaged structures or casualties and triage via a smartphone.
Situational Awareness
The team of Larry Mason, Tyler Hughes and Michael Carroll built an application displaying real-time locations of all emergency vehicles and the display of preplan floor plans and imagery to show details such as electric and gas cut offs.
Virtual Reality GIS Display
Jason Rade and Jason Nofki demonstrated their system of displaying GIS data and imagery using a virtual reality headset. They indicated that the next step was to display the data as augmented reality.
OpenSensorHub
Steve Jones demonstrated a system to display Internet of Things (IoT) devices as live links on a map to display data, imagery and video from those sources. (Steve participated in the event, but did not enter into the competition.)
WEBEOC data to current devices
Two team members worked a problem proposed by Madison County Emergency Management Agency. They read legacy format WEBEOC data and converted the information into more modern device data structures.
And the winners are…
First Place: Mobile Damage Assessment
Second Place: WEBEOC data to current devices
Third Place: a tie between Situational Awareness and Virtual Reality GIS Display
A few gems developed at the hackathon may be useful with your applications effort. If you need additional information regarding the hackathon and participants, contact Chris Johnson of GeoHuntsville at [email protected].
