GPS World

Tag: NGA

  • Advancing geomatics tradecraft and education in the public interest

    Advancing geomatics tradecraft and education in the public interest

    Image: stock_colors/E+/Getty Images
    Image: stock_colors/E+/Getty Images

    Anyone keeping up with my columns may know that I have been highlighting the geodesy crisis and programs that advance the science of geodesy (July 2020, November 2022, December 2022, and March 2023). On June 13-15, I had the privilege of participating in a working group event convened by the Geomatics Emerging Scientist Consortium for Education, Research and Capabilities Enhancement (GEO-ESCON). The GEO-ESCON, established in the summer of 2022, is a multi-university consortium serving the need of the Office of Geomatics of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for personnel with advanced geomatics expertise, a sustainable pipeline of critical geomatics skillsets, and capabilities enhancement in geomatics and other applied sciences. The 15-member consortium is led by The Ohio State University (OSU), which serves as GEO-ESCON’s managing higher education partner.

    GEO-ESCON is part of OSU’s Battelle Center for Science, Engineering and Public Policy in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. As stated in an OSU press release, OSU was selected for its role with GEO-ESCON because of its longstanding commitment to geodetic education — its collegiate geodetic program is the oldest in the United States and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in both geodetic engineering and geodetic science.

    OSU is home to more than 80 researchers across six colleges who focus on core research and development aspects of geospatial science and technology, including geodesy, remote sensing, photogrammetry, GIS, positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT), computer vision, mobility, smart cities, data analytics, autonomous systems (UAS, UUS and UGV), medical imaging, and precision agriculture.

    The GEO-ESCON consortium is designed to create a geographically distributed, multi-disciplinary network of universities to educate the federal geomatics workforce at advanced levels and provide opportunities for applied research and technology development. Higher education institutions are invited to participate in GEO-ESCON based on their capabilities in geomatics. As of July 18, the consortium has 15 members and two additional universities are in the process of becoming members. Click here for all GEO-ESCON member institutions.

    GEO-ESCON convened the June Geomatics Challenge Working Group to discuss pressing geomatics challenges and discuss potential solutions. The event facilitated dialogue between representatives from NGA’s Office of Geomatics and academic attendees on geomatics challenges of national priority that could result in actionable proposals to address the challenges. The working group enables representatives of GEO-ESCON member institutions to gain a deeper understanding of NGA’s geomatics priorities, build relationships with NGA leaders, collaborate with colleagues at other institutions, and provide recommendations to GEO-ESCON and the NGA. There were 47 academic participants representing 14 universities.

    NGA aims to encourage institutions with varied expertise to propose solutions that achieve greater outcomes through collaborative work. The agency provided six broad categories of geomatics challenges for discussion. See the image below for the categories of interest.

    Proposals submitted in response to the June Geomatics Challenges Request for Proposals (RFP) will be eligible for funding consideration and selected activities are expected to be awarded before the fall semester.

    The word “tradecraft” in the categories of interest was intriguing. In general, tradecraft refers to the skills, techniques, and practices used by professionals in various fields to carry out their work effectively and discreetly. During World War II, however, the term became associated with spy work and now is mostly used to refer to the techniques and procedures of espionage. NGA is concerned with the dramatic drop in the number of individuals pursuing careers in geodesy — that is, the geodesy crisis in the United States.

    Event attendees were asked to prioritize the topic(s) that most interested them, so that they could join a small group on the topic to identify issues, and discuss approaches, solutions, and potential actions for the challenge. Several universities had multiple representatives, so they selected different topics aligned with their individual interest.

    The meeting had professional workshop facilitators, technical advisors, NGA subject matter experts (SME), and student recorders. Facilitators encouraged the full participation of all attendees to elicit a range of viewpoints and generate previously unconsidered solutions that could bridge differences in approach — resulting in solutions that were supported by many.

    The small groups aligned with a specific challenge utilized the expertise of technical advisors — experts in geomatics or related fields with considerable industry, government, and/or research experience — who supported the development and maturation of proposed Geomatics Challenge solutions. The role of technical advisors was to work with the other leaders in their small group to encourage the full participation of all attendees and mentor the groups toward the generation of novel solutions. I was a technical advisor for the “unified height” topic.

    NGA’s SME participated in the working group activities and provided additional context for the individual topics, and other unclassified details related to the Geomatics Challenges.

    To capture the discussions at the group meetings, student recorders took detailed notes during the small group discussions. The recorders were graduate students — primarily in geodesy or other STEM fields — and they did an excellent job of capturing the discussion, action items, and potential proposals.

    As previously stated, individuals self-selected the topic that interested them but over the course of the three-day meeting individuals were asked to participate in other Geomatics Challenge small groups to provide constructive critiques to produce the best research projects. This was an excellent concept that, in my opinion, helped to improve draft proposals and identify new collaborative projects.

    As an example, the need for a unified height system that defines, assesses and correlates all height measurement processes became very evident when individuals participating in the “remote sensing and geophysics” topic engaged with the “unified height” topic members. This joint-topic group meeting helped form new partnerships and formulate new proposals.

    The GEO-ESCON and the participating institutions have an ambitious schedule of submitting and awarding the grant proposals before the end of the government’s fiscal year. That said, the participants appeared to be up to the challenge and prepared to make it happen. For obvious reasons, I cannot describe any of the projects discussed, but I will highlight them when they become available for public distribution.

    For now, I would like to state that GEO-ESCON is a great program, and it supports the advancement of the science of geodesy and geomatics. I believe that integrated and collaborative organizations are necessary for the successful development of geospatial products and services, and GEO-ESCON is the epitome of this concept. If you believe your institution would benefit from joining this consortium, I encourage you to visit their website to learn more or reach out directly to GEO-ESCON’s team ([email protected]). Click here to subscribe and stay up to date on GEO-ESCON news.

    In conclusion, as in my previous column, I would like to remind everyone that geodesy is the foundation for all geospatial products and services.

  • U.S. geodesists urgently needed

    U.S. geodesists urgently needed

    Matteo Luccio
    Luccio

    With the last generation of trained geodesists either retired or getting ready to retire, we are at a critical stage of not being able to meet the geospatial needs of the future,” wrote David B. Zilkoski in his Nov. 1 Survey Scene column on our website. Few people, he pointed out, realize our $1 trillion geospatial economy — from precision agriculture to smart cities, from UAVs to location-based services — depends on geodesy. A collapse of geodesy would also harm our efforts to monitor rapid changes in the Earth’s surface due to sea-level rise, the deformation of tectonic plates, and temporal changes in the Earth’s water reservoirs.

    Federal agencies, Zilkoski recalled, used to send staff to be trained in geodesy because they needed geodesists for such significant projects as the readjustment of the U.S. national horizontal and vertical geodetic networks. Now, while U.S. federal agencies still require this expertise to develop and refine geodetic models and tools, so do major U.S. companies for everything from routing delivery trucks to controlling earth-moving equipment to guiding tractors.

    A January 2022 white paper by Mike Bevis and others titled “The Geodesy Crisis” reported that China has more geodesists than the rest of the world combined, and the number of Ph.D. geodesists in the entire Department of Defense, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is approaching zero.

    I discussed the geodesy crisis with Everett Hinkley, who works for the federal government, serves as a subject-matter expert on several high-level boards, and dubs himself a “concerned citizen geodesist.”

    Matteo Luccio: How did we get here? Was it due in part to the success of GPS?

    Everett Hinkley: The factors include:

    1. In the early 1990s, the U.S. government largely disinvested in academic research and academic sponsorship in geodesy. Without student sponsorship, the few university programs that produced geodesy experts withered on the vine.

    2. Math and science skills in U.S. public schools have declined.

    3. More subtly, there was a subliminal and misguided notion that “Now that we have GPS, why do we need to continue to improve our geodetic models?”

    ML: If left unaddressed, in what fields or applications will the crisis manifest first?

    EH: In areas where precise positioning is critical: cadastral mapping, self-driving vehicles, sea-level rise (a growing danger) and others. The effects will be felt incrementally, at least at first.

    ML: Are some geographic regions of the United States particularly vulnerable to some effects of the crisis due to high subsidence, drift or other ground movements/changes?

    EH: Yes. The two areas that will show the first signs of divergence between actual and assumed locations are those that are tectonically active (both horizontally and vertically) and low-lying coastal ones.

    ML: Besides funding, what could entice college students to enter the field?

    EH: Basic marketing is needed by the geospatial community at large. We need to reach out to math “stars” in high school and let them know that pursuing a career in geodesy will guarantee them employment after graduating from college.

  • NGA seeks feedback on how to improve Earth modeling

    NGA seeks feedback on how to improve Earth modeling

    NGA logoThe National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is seeking information from the GNSS community on upgrades to its Stardust program.

    Stardust develops models of the Earth used in geomatics. The upgrades will result in modernization of geomatics information technology systems and infrastructure. The update includes migration of models to the cloud.

    The NGA posted a request for information (RFI), with responses due by 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Dec. 21.

    Stardust is run by the NGA Foundation GEOINT Integrated Program Office, partnered with the Foundation GEOINT Group (NGA/SF) within the Source Operations and Management Directorate.

  • NGA awards HawkEye 360 contract for RF mapping

    NGA awards HawkEye 360 contract for RF mapping

    Up to five-year contract follows a successful pilot program that demonstrated the value of commercial RF geospatial intelligence

    HawkEye360 logoHawkEye 360 has been awarded a contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to help the agency discover, characterize and map activities that emit energy in the radio frequency (RF) bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.

    HawkEye 360 specializes in RF data and analytics from space-based satellites.

    HawkEye 360 will provide NGA the means to develop global datasets, enabling users to discover and monitor a broad range of RF activity across large geographic areas.

    The $10 million one-year contract includes an option for four more years. It will support users throughout the NGA enterprise, including the combatant commands and other mission partners.

    HawkEye 360’s data will support a variety of analytics missions for NGA, including military activity and the trafficking of military, nefarious, non-state and transnational criminal (or illicit) activity. The company’s growing constellation of satellites will provide insight into developing events in a timely manner, and the company will work collaboratively with NGA on an ongoing basis to effectively meet the agency’s mission needs.

    “We’re pleased to be moving from the pilot into an NGA long-term operational contract, which showcases the value of unclassified, shareable commercial RF insights,” said HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini.

    “This program is an excellent example of agile acquisition rapidly delivering high-impact GEOINT to the warfighter,” said Alex Fox, the company’s executive vice president for business development, sales and marketing.

    NGA leveraged a National Reconnaissance Office commercial integration study contract with HawkEye 360 in September 2020 to execute a test and evaluation contract with the company.

    NGA then issued a competitive RFP in March 2021 and awarded the contract in July 2021. “We are excited to continue working with NGA to address current mission requirements and expand the RF GEOINT tradecraft to address an even larger set of mission requirements, much like NGA has done with their pioneering use of commercial imagery,” Fox said.

    HawkEye 360 operates a constellation of nine RF-monitoring satellites. Twenty-one additional satellites are fully funded and scheduled for launch in 2021 and 2022. Once complete, this baseline constellation of 30 satellites will provide collection revisits as frequently as every 20 minutes.

    Following the establishment of the baseline constellation, HawkEye 360 plans to launch a second-generation constellation of 30 additional satellites by 2025 to satisfy projected capacity and operational requirements.

    The company’s RF data and analytics produce actionable insights for national, tactical and homeland security operations, maritime domain awareness, environmental protection and a growing number of new defense and commercial applications.

  • NGA launches new phase of Earth magnetic field project

    NGA launches new phase of Earth magnetic field project

    Image: Credit: Petrovich9/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images
    Image: Credit: Petrovich9/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

    The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency launches Phase 4a of MagQuest Challenge to advance NASA’s ability to measure Earth’s magnetic field

    The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has launched the Demonstration Phase (Phase 4a) of its MagQuest Challenge to develop novel data-collection approaches for the World Magnetic Model.

    The WMM ultimately ensures the accuracy of navigation, because it corrects for differences in magnetic forces at a user’s location. The model is used by thousands of systems for mobile navigation apps and is critical for military and commercial uses around the world.

    Produced since 1905, the WMM originated with data collection from two ships surveying 500,000 miles of ocean. Today, the data is collected by satellites operated by the European Space Agency that will eventually reach the end of their useful life.

    NGA’s MagQuest Challenge is promoting the development of miniaturized solutions to determine whether they can produce data useful to support WMM production. NGA has an extensive network of government partners collaborating on the WMM production, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the British Geological Survey, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Defense (DOD), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) among others.

    As part of its core mission, NGA provides geospatial intelligence products and services to decision makers, military service members, and first responders.

    The MagQuest Demonstration Phase 4a will take place on HeroX, a social network platform for crowdsourced solutions.

    Three winning teams from Phase 3 of MagQuest each proposed a magnetometer design to measure the Earth’s magnetic field. In this new phase, the teams will receive several million dollars in awards, including a $1.55 million incentive prize purse, to develop their proposed magnetometers. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center will conduct independent testing on each team’s prototype.

    Following Phase 4a, successful teams will integrate their magnetometers into their satellites and launch their systems, acquire data and share their results with NGA.

    “Our ultimate goal is for all three teams to successfully develop a magnetometer, each of which can be sent into orbit to determine viability for WMM production,” said Mike Paniccia, NGA program manager for the World Magnetic Model. “We want to test as many innovative and groundbreaking magnetometers as possible to ensure that NGA has a robust set of data suppliers to support the future of the WMM. We intend to have a competitive procurement for a data-buy contract following MagQuest and hope that these three teams, in addition to others from industry, will be able to supply comprehensive data sets to support the future of the WMM.”

    Three of the teams that participated in Phase 3 were selected to participate in Phase 4:

    • Iota Technology, the first-place Phase 3 winner, works alongside experienced teams from Oxford Space Systems and AAC Clyde Space. Their combined expertise in sensor technology, deployable structures and mission design informed the design of their SIGMA solution — a 3U CubeSat featuring a novel deployable boom and a 3D magnetometer array.
    • University of Colorado Boulder is one second-place Phase 3 winner, and their solution, COSMO, leverages recent innovations in CubeSat technology and novel magnetometer technology. The University of Colorado Boulder team includes experts and faculty from the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and they operate their missions entirely at the university, including using their own ground stations.
    • Spire Global and SBQuantum formed a partnership with a promising approach to become the other second-place Phase 3 winner. SBQuantum’s novel diamond-based quantum magnetometer technology is coupled with Spire’s expertise and existing infrastructure in satellites, ground stations and data processing to produce a unique solution.

    “This MagQuest Challenge is a testament to the power of the crowd,” said Kal K. Sahota, CEO, HeroX. “We are pleased to be part of securing the future of geomagnetic data collection and consequently contributing to the resilience and continued crucial work of the WMM.”

  • NGA seeks enhancements in predicting overhead geopose

    $50K prize purse for solutions to advance computer vision for time-sensitive mapping

    The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA have launched a crowdsourcing competition, the “Overhead Geopose Challenge,” which is being implemented by DrivenData and HeroX.

    The challenge seeks solutions that make overhead images more useful for time-sensitive applications like security and disaster response. Participants are competing for a prize purse of $50,000. To accept the challenge, visit this website.

    The challenge seeks to build computer-vision algorithms that can effectively model the height and pose of ground objects for monocular satellite images taken from oblique angles.

    Overhead satellite imagery provides critical time-sensitive information for disaster response, navigation, and security. Most current methods for using aerial images assume that the images are taken from directly overhead.

    However, the first images available are often oblique. These camera orientations complicate useful tasks like image alignment and change detection that are needed to ensure that maps are accurate in dynamic environments.

    Solvers will transform RGB images taken from a satellite to accurately determine each object’s real-world 3D structure or “geocentric pose.” Geocentric pose is an object’s height above the ground and its orientation with respect to gravity. Calculating geocentric pose helps with detecting and classifying objects and determining accurate object boundaries.

    NGA is continuously seeking novel concepts for assured positioning, navigation, and timing, said NGA Research Chief Scientist John Main. “We think the broader innovation community can help us support disaster response operations more effectively by exploring novel ways to understand where things are happening — or even better where things will be happening — during an emergency event. This is NGA Research’s goal and the reason we tap scientific and technical talent and ideas from national labs, universities, and businesses.”

    “This is a hard computer vision problem that will benefit from the diverse approaches that a machine learning challenge can bring to bear,” said Greg Lipstein, co-founder and principal of DrivenData. “This is a great opportunity to bring together a fascinating dataset with a passionate community of experts to generate innovative solutions for disaster response and other time-sensitive needs”

    “Our global network of problem-solvers is perfectly suited to support the advancement of state-of-the-art methods for using and understanding satellite imagery,” said Christian Cotichini, CEO, HeroX. “Having great minds come together for an initiative like this will help us more quickly and more effectively support people in times of need.”

    Eligibility to Compete and Win Prizes

    The challenge is open to anyone aged 18 or older not affiliated with DrivenData or the challenge sponsor and permitted to compete under the laws of the U.S. and their local jurisdictions.

    Finalists will be determined by performance on a private test set of historical measurements, and bonus prizes will also be awarded for qualifying scores that reflect innovative approaches. All prize-winning approaches will be shared under an open-source license for learning and use by the community.

  • NGA Accelerator seeks second cohort of promising geospatial companies

    The NGA Accelerator based in St. Louis is accepting applications from early-stage geospatial companies for its second cohort until June 23.

    NGA logoThe NGA Accelerator is accepting applications for its second cohort. The St. Louis, Missouri-based NGA Accelerator is managed through a Partnership Intermediary Agreement between the Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC), the U.S. National Geospatial-intelligence Agency (NGA) and Capital Innovators.

    The accelerator collaboration, the first of its kind sponsored by a U.S. intelligence agency, aims to engage the geospatial ecosystem in the greater St. Louis region and beyond to develop innovations in geospatial technology through collaboration and a transfer of technology and subject matter expertise.

    The program is seeking novel geospatial based technology from early-stage companies that serve four core areas:

    • data management
    • advanced analytics and modeling
    • data integrity and security
    • artificial intelligence

    The value proposition is two-fold, said Josh White, NGA futures consultant.

    1. NGA has the opportunity to convey its needs directly to industry, which helps commercial vendors develop technology solutions tailored for the agency.
    2. NGA galvanizes its workforce toward transparency, innovation and modernization.

    Great innovation ecosystems are equipped to grow and attract talent, said Dedric Carter, Ph.D., chairman of Missouri Technology Corporation. “The collaboration is helping to fuel such an ecosystem by providing opportunities in the state for around eight promising early-stage geospatial sector companies from across the country,” he said. “Bringing the best potential from near and far is the attractive force that we need to super-charge innovation.”

    Companies selected to participate in the program will have access to incentives including a $100,000 non-dilutive grant, mentoring and coaching from subject matter experts from the NGA and Capital Innovators, investor connections and access to the greater Capital Innovators network, participation in a demo day in St. Louis, and more.

    “The NGA Accelerator powered by Capital Innovators has been an amazing experience!” said Tyler Carter, COO and founder of InfraLytiks. “We jumped right in to discussing problem/solution fits with NGA during the first week of the accelerator. We have also been working with the Capital Innovators team to improve and develop other areas in our business including our internal operations and sales and marketing.”

    Early-stage geospatial technology companies from across the U.S. are invited to participate in the program. Applications will close June 23 at 11:59 p.m. CT.

  • Enview unveils 3D AI as a web application, Enview Explore

    Enview unveils 3D AI as a web application, Enview Explore

    Screenshot: Enview
    Screenshot: Enview

    Application empowers users with expert visualization and analysis of lidar

    Enview, a pioneer in the scalable processing of 3D geospatial data, has launched Enview Explore, a powerful web application that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing to automatically process 3D data at a high speed and scale.

    Also, Robert Cardillo, former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), has joined the company’s board of directors. Following an oversubscribed round of funding in May, the company continues to experience growth and momentum in the market.

    Enview’s technology has been deployed on thousands of square miles worldwide to protect vital infrastructure and support mission-critical operations. Its unique method for classifying 3D data using neural networks and deep learning techniques reduces time to action by focusing on finding meaningful insights in 3D data.

    Previously offered as custom services for organizations such as Pacific Gas & Electric and the United States Air Force, this groundbreaking technology is now available for the first time as an easy-to-use, self-service web application.

    Screenshot: Enview
    Screenshot: Enview

    “Enview has built the world’s most scalable AI platform for transforming 3D point clouds into insight and action,” said San Gunawardana, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Enview. “We are solving one of the hardest problems in machine perception, and applying it to some of the most grounded and impactful challenges facing society. It is our goal to empower people with the confidence to perceive and navigate a rapidly changing world; Enview Explore is the natural next step in this journey and our team is excited to place this groundbreaking capability directly into the hands of operational end-users.”

    Key benefits of Enview Explore include:

    The power of 3D data. Three-dimensional unstructured data, such as lidar, contains incredible detail but is painfully slow to analyze manually. Enview solves this problem by combining its novel AI with the power of cloud computing to automate 3D classification and segmentation, giving users scalability that can support even nation-sized datasets.

    High speed. While current methods can take weeks or more to process data, Enview provides actionable insights in minutes. Enview Explore utilizes a new and innovative approach that applies AI to 3D data, yielding significantly faster results than traditional lidar software.

    Total data control. Enview Explore removes the need for outsourcing lidar to a third party by giving users the ability to perform classification, segmentation, terrain modeling, change detection, feature extraction, and intuitive visualization directly inside the application.

    Screenshot: Enview
    Screenshot: Enview

    “With this release, we wanted to show the world that you don’t need to be a professional to get expert analysis from lidar,” said Anthony Calamito, VP of Products for Enview. “Lidar and other 3D data hold tremendous value and provide unparalleled insight over 2D data sources. While unlocking that value traditionally has required an in-depth understanding of specialty software, Enview Explore lets anyone create meaningful insight from 3D data with just a few clicks.“

    The company also announced that Robert Cardillo has joined its Board of Directors. Cardillo served as the sixth director of the NGA from 2014 through 2019. In that position, he led the NGA under the authorities of the secretary of defense and director of National Intelligence to transform the agency’s future value proposition through innovative partnerships with the growing commercial geospatial industry.

    “Mapping the world in 3D opens new possibilities for national security and mission-critical infrastructure, including some of the most important challenges facing our nation today,” said Cardillo. “Enview has completely changed the game when it comes to what’s possible with lidar visualization and analysis, making unstructured data accessible and easy to use: in other words, creating coherence out of chaos. With a shared purpose and commitment, I look forward to working with the Enview team toward the future the world demands and our customers deserve.”

  • Despite ceremony cancellation, USGIF honors 2020 award winners

    USGIF Awards Program logoThe USGIF Awards Program annually recognizes the exceptional work of the geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) tradecraft’s brightest minds and organizations pushing the community forward.

    Award winners are usually recognized at the annual GEOINT Symposium. This year’s event, scheduled for April 26-29 in Tampa, Florida, was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “Unfortunately, you will not see the awardees recognized on the GEOINT Symposium stage this year,” said Kevin Jackson, chair of the USGIF Awards Subcommittee. “So please take a moment to read their accomplishments and join me and the USGIF in congratulating the 2020 USGIF Achievement Awardees and the runners-up.”

    Award winners are nominated by their colleagues and selected by the USGIF Awards Subcommittee.

    “The 2020 USGIF awardees reflect the importance and the significance of the outstanding work that occurs daily in the GEOINT community,” Jackson said. “You will see how the GEOINT community always rises to the occasion to face head on the world’s toughest problems and this year is no exception.”

    Academic

    James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute

    On Dec. 7, 2019, after denuclearization negotiations between the United States and North Korea collapsed, North Korea reversed commitments made in Singapore and resumed engine testing at its Sohae Satellite Launch Center. Using new technological opportunities offered by high-cadence moderate resolution satellite imagery and flexible high-resolution satellite image tasking provided by Planet Labs, analysts at the CNS, through the use of open-source GEOINT, detected and correctly identified preparations for the engine test 39 hours before it occurred. Announcing in advance that North Korea was preparing to violate an international nonproliferation commitment.

    Community Support

    NGA Expeditionary Operations Office

    NGA’s Office of Expeditionary Operations provides deployed personnel and technology to support GEOINT activities of worldwide U.S. military operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts, and other national security objectives. The team’s world-class workforce seamlessly enables trusted global GEOINT capabilities today, while developing programs and processes to meet emerging challenges. Robust partnerships with DoD and IC allies fuel innovation and expertise, helping U.S. and foreign partners build programs that anticipate their needs, expanding the GEOINT community and optimizing meaningful consequence across the GEOINT enterprise.

    Government

    Mark A. Skoog and Loyd R. Hook

    Implementing digital terrain solutions for safer aviation has been a career-long goal for Mark Skoog and Loyd Hook. As true innovators and lifelong proponents of using digital terrain data, Skoog and Hook lead the development efforts of NASA’s award-winning Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto GCAS), which prevents imminent collisions with the ground. Auto GCAS is the culmination of a decades-long effort to bring geospatial intelligence to aircraft safety. This work involved traveling the world, evaluating myriad digital terrain from Sweden to Hawaii. The team extensively tested the system to ensure against every category of controlled flight into terrain mishaps—and found it would have prevented every one, which resulted in ten lives saved thus far in the USAF operations.

    Industry

    Lockheed Martin Space GATR Team

    Globally-scalable Automated Target Recognition (GATR) is an artificial intelligence system that finds objects of interest in satellite imagery on a worldwide basis. It was developed by a team of scientists and engineers from Lockheed Martin Space who combined state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms with scalable high-performance computing in a cloud-based framework to achieve high-speed global automated target recognition (ATR). Unlike other ATR systems, GATR searches extremely large geographic regions with accuracy and speed. The GATR team, led by Dr. Mark Pritt, includes Tyler Bartelmo, Gary Chern, Dr. Austen Groener, Michael Harner, Andy Lam, Stephen O’Neill, Ryan Soldin, and Steve Wozniak.

    Military

    RS/GIS CX, The GRiD Team

    David Finnegan and the Geospatial Repository & Data Management System (GRiD) program provide the Department of Defense (DoD), intelligence community and geospatial community with a centralized repository for the storage, discovery, and dissemination of critical terrain and 3D data. Prior to the GRiD program, the National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG) lacked a centralized mechanism for the storage and discovery of this essential content. Historically, the data was subject to local storage, limiting visibility and resulting in retasking collection assets for previously characterized areas, putting military personnel and equipment at risk. By partnering with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the DoD, the GRiD program is now the community standard and enterprise solution for 3D/elevation data discovery across the NSG.

    USGIF, the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, is dedicated to bringing together the many disciplines involved in GEOINT to exchange ideas, share best practices and promote the education and importance of a national geospatial intelligence agenda. For more on the awards program, visit the USGIF website.

  • Global Mapper app now on NGA’s IGAPP store

    Photo: Blue Marble
    Photo: Blue Marble

    Global Mapper Mobile is now available to U.S. government agencies through the Innovative GEOINT Application Provider Program (IGAPP).

    The mobile app is provided by Blue Marble Geographics.

    Administered by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the mission of IGAPP is to streamline the deployment of commercial mobile apps to government personnel by bridging the gap between traditional government contracting procedures and non-traditional businesses.

    Blue Marble’s GIS software is used by hundreds of thousands of mapping professionals throughout the world who need affordable, user-friendly, yet powerful GIS solutions. Users come from a wide range of industries including software, oil and gas, mining, civil engineering, surveying and technology companies, as well as government departments and academic institutions.

    Available on both iOS and Android platforms, Global Mapper Mobile enables remote access to mission-critical geospatial datasets in an easy-to-use application. Used in conjunction with the desktop version of the software, Global Mapper Mobile supports hundreds of GIS data formats — both raster and vector — and offers simple, form-based field data collection and geotagged photo capture.

    To address the specific needs of the geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) community, the IGAPP version of Global Mapper Mobile includes streaming access to online data services and the ability to store downloaded tiles for remote offline use.

    “IGAPP provides mission-relevant, cyber secure mobile apps to warfighters, aviators, mariners and first-responders,” according to John Holcomb, IGAPP program manager at Engility, the NGS’s broker for putting commercial applications into the GEOINT App Store. “The program provides commercial vendors with a rapid, cost effective, path to sell their products. We are thrilled to add the Global Mapper Mobile the store and look forward to getting into the hands of DoD users.”

    “Over the years, the GEOINT community has strongly supported our products and has provided valuable feedback that has helped ensure the functionality of our software is addressing the needs of geo-intelligence,” stated Patrick Cunningham, Blue Marble President. “We are delighted that Global Mapper Mobile is now available through IGAPP and that more and more field personnel now have easy access to this valuable app.”

  • Planet’s breadloaf-sized satellites capture Earth surface

    Planet (formerly Planet Labs) has put about 300 satellites into space, in charge of photographing the entire land mass of the Earth every day.

    The satellites weigh 5 kg (12 pounds) and measure 20 x 20 x 44 centimeters, about the size of a loaf of bread. They are packed with commercial-off-the-shelf electronics and are built in downtown San Francisco. Mission control consists of a single engineer for dozens of satellites.

    Aptly named “doves,” the satellites circle the Earth in 90 minutes, their cameras continuously rolling. “It gives you a perspective of the planet as a dynamic and evolving thing that we need to take care of,” said company co-founder Will Marshall.

    Each day, the satellites transmit 1.2 million images at a spatial resolution of 3–5 meters, far more than enough to fully occupy all the analysts at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), one of Planet’s more than 200 customers.

    Historically, the NGA has relied on three or four very large, very expensive — and to global adversaries, very predictable — spy satellites. The agency has found Planet’s approach intriguing and challenging.

    Planet has devised computer algorithms to look for new features day to day, such as roads or buildings th

    at may signal activity of a significant or nefarious sort. Other customer uses are more mundane, such as agricultural companies monitoring crop health.

    Boundless. In December 2018, Planet entered into an agreement to acquire Boundless Spatial Inc., a St. Louis-based geospatial software solutions company, to further support its commercial business with the U.S. government and agricultural clients.

  • Team to collect Arctic surveillance data for NGA

    Photo: NASA
    Photo: NASA

    The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded GeoNorth Information Systems (GNIS) a five-year, $15 million contract for persistent surveillance services of the Arctic region. Lockheed Martin will provide a scalable geospatial processing platform to enable the surveillance project.

    GNIS will leverage Lockheed Martin’s Rosetta technology, which includes a versatile and highly automated set of commercial and civil image processing tools that scale and adapt to deliver precision geospatial intelligence products to the NGA.

    GNIS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tatitlek Corporation, an Alaska Native Village Corporation, will work with Lockheed Martin and the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ (UAF) Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF), under the banner of the Arctic GeoData Cooperative. GNIS and the partners will build, improve, monitor and maintain terrain elevation models of the Arctic region.

    “The Arctic region has significant global implications for environmental, economic and security factors,” said Gil Metzger, director of Applied Research at Lockheed Martin. “It is critical that we document and monitor this demanding environment with the best technologies available. Lockheed Martin is proud to be part of this innovative cooperative that establishes both an operational domain awareness capability and a foundation for advanced research.”

    The cooperative team will leverage each member’s unique expertise and capabilities to provide a one-of-a-kind solution to partners like the NGA.

    As the prime contractor, GNIS will perform overall project management, conduct day-to-day operations and provide access to commercial remote-sensing platforms through its existing direct receiving station located at ASF.

    UAF brings broad Arctic-related research and development, problem solving and the ability to refine existing scientific algorithms and methods to support specific project requirements.

    Lockheed Martin’s Rosetta toolset will transform the large volumes of sensed data into correlated geospatial intelligence products.

    “The Arctic domain poses many challenges,” said Jon Heinsius, general manager of GNIS. “Not only is it an area much larger than the whole United States and Canada combined, but its remoteness, intense weather conditions and unique characteristics are not found anywhere else in the world. The cooperative’s combined academic and commercial approach provides the NGA with tremendous flexibility to meet their current and future needs.”

    “The cooperative is going to be a supportive environment where participants can bring ideas, technologies, algorithms and research for development, testing and validation,” said Nettie La Belle-Hamer, director of the Alaska Satellite Facility. “The concept is to explore and nurture new ideas to take what we learn today to build for tomorrow.”