Tag: GeoIntelligence Insider

Spatial finance: Show me the money

Image: CalypsoArt/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

Money comes, and money goes. Who can stop the ebb and flow? It comes and goes whither it will. But we can watch the tide. We can paint the tide. We can measure the tide. We can harness the tide. And we can ride the tide. What would it be like to master the tide?

Welcome to the world of spatial finance. Here is where money meets geographic information systems (GIS). It stops being just a quantity. It takes shape with x – y – z coordinates and moves through time. Mark money by its location and track it through time and you know its velocity — and Energy = Velocity x Mass ^2. When an object in motion hits another object, the transfer of energy is its impact. In the case of money, one dollar has the mass of 1, because it can only be divided up so many ways before it can’t buy anything, and then its impact is zero.

Consider the mass of 1 million dollars. How far can it go before its impact reaches zero? Much further is the answer. And it stands to reason that the closer a person is to the release of the money, the greater the impact and, likewise, the further away, the lesser the impact, until it is just a trickle. That is, unless the money is released very slowly. Impact is a factor of speed. This is monetary theory.

The astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was also an economist, and he devised the quantity theory of money. Later theories postulated that quantity is only one variable, and an expanding quantity can be countered by velocity to control the impact of money in an economy.

If the velocity of money is slowed down enough, then trillions of dollars can be released into the economy with minimal impact, or so the theory goes. But it is just a theory. It has never been tested before, at least not on a massive scale. Spatial finance helps understand the speed, location and direction of money, and thus, stem the flow of the tide.

The chart below published by the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) shows the mass and velocity of money since 1969 combined into a single chart. One line shows the increase in the amount of money in circulation (mass) and the other line shows the speed it is moving through the economy (velocity). It is obvious the velocity of money theory is in full practice as the mass increases parabolically against an exponentially decreasing velocity.

Chart: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)

Inflation has been in the news a lot lately. It will continue to be in the news. Trillions of dollars released into the economy in a short period of time has consequences. The effects are yet to be known, but it’s enough to know that the risk is there. Everyone is on high alert. We know this.

It is the same if we lived along the coast of Indonesia or Sri Lanka. The tsunami in the Bay of Bengal took place 17 years ago now, in of December 2004. It will never be forgotten by the people who were there, and every day, those who live there do so with suppressed anxiety. They understand the destructive power and force of a rushing tide. Water, volcanoes and tectonic plates are powerful forces. When they are combined, the lives of 200,000 people end in an instant. Living on a fault line is perilous.

Similarly, living on the world’s reserve currency might feel like standing on solid ground, but when trillions are removed from beneath the firmament, one has to wonder. It is not a question of if it will happen, but when? The stock exchange is at record highs. Many trillions are being printed, and trillions more will be. Is this the tsunami? Are we standing before a rushing tide? The higher the S&P goes, the more uneasy it feels. It is natural to wonder, is this where Noah began to build the ark? Or is it too late already?

Perhaps we are looking at it all wrong. It is not a rising wave that will come crashing down. The S&P is measuring the depth of the rising water. Rather than crash down, it could just keep rising. It is now twice as deep as it was one year ago at the bottom of the pandemic. The speed of its recovery is its velocity. It took 157 years through peace, war, boom and bust for the S&P to get to the level it was when it crashed in March 2020. Since that time 18 months ago, it has more than doubled.

Can the speed of that velocity be measured? How many hands did the trillions of dollars pass through before its impact reached zero? Is the money still changing hands?

Where was the first wave of money spent? Who spent it? On what was it spent? Where did it finally settle?

Is there a reservoir the money flows into when it reaches its end?

Spatial finance seeks to answer these questions. It is a growing industry. New tools are coming online. The financial wizards of tomorrow will track and harness money with precision, knowing where it is and where it is going, and catching it before it gets there. Isn’t that how the game has always been played?

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate, but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy, not merely for one group, but for all groups.”

~ Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (1946)

The Federal Reserve provides rudimentary geospatial economic data for mapping. Visit GeoFRED to learn more. The most current data is 2019; records go back to 1969. Spreadsheets of geospatial financial data can be downloaded for more in-depth analysis and mapping. Here is a .gif of how the income per capita in each county has changed year over year since 1969 to 2019.

Income per capita by county 2000-2019 annually. (Image: GeoFRED)

There is much more to spatial finance than I covered here. This is just one aspect of the growing field of study. You are encouraged to learn more. As monies transition toward digital currencies, this field will expand even further.

I’d like to thank two people who helped me put this article together. Insights were provided by Robert Farnsworth, GISP; and Arnold Rogers, who wrote an article on the future trends in geospatial technologies and submitted it to me, which was an inspiration. Thank you both.

Here is how to connect with them:

Robert Farnsworth on LinkedIn

Arnold Rogers at [email protected]

William Tewelow is a senior aeronautical information specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a 2016 graduate of the FAA’s management fellowship Program for Emerging Leaders and a mentor with the FAA’s National Mentor Program. He served on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation and led a national strategic geospatial initiative under the authority of the White House Open Data Partnership.

William is a designated Geographic Information Systems Professionals (GISP). He has degrees in Geographic Information Technology and Intelligence Studies and is currently earning his master’s degree in Organizational Leadership with a focus on Performance Management.

William retired from the U.S. Navy after serving 23 years as a Geospatial and Imagery Intelligence Specialist, a Naval Aviator, a Meteorologist, and a Tactical Oceanographer earning three achievement medals. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center. He is married, enjoys traveling, connecting people, solving problems, and interested in new technology. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

September 8, 2021
Diving into real-time geospatial threat intelligence
“Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore, it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”

“Data! Data! Data!” He cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.”

— Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Watson is to Holmes what information is to intelligence. Watson could listen to the client story, observe the situation, and recite to Holmes all the relevant facts, but he lacked the ability to string together the seemingly random pieces of information into a coherent chain of events leading to the correct hypothesis. A computer can become a Watson, but it takes a human to be Sherlock; however, a human misguided by cognitive biases will end up as Inspector Lestrade, always coming to the wrong conclusion.

When it comes to data, the analogy of drinking from a fire hose is an understatement. Consider that a digital image can be terabytes in size and every day millions of images are taken. Facebook generates 4 petabytes of data daily, and each day there are 500 million tweets and 306 billion emails. Additionally, there are 20 billion connected devices. Combined, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. If a grain of sand represents a byte of data, then every three days more data is created than there are grains of sand on the Earth, and it is only increasing.

Somewhere in all that data are signals. Real-time threat intelligence systems are looking for those signals before the next huge event occurs. It is a high-stakes hunt for Leviathan, except that Leviathan is only a packet of sand traveling at lightspeed through a cloud obscured by dust.

Nellis Air Force Base takes part in Red Flag 15-2 at its Combined Operations Center in 2015. (Photo: Senior Airman Thomas Spangler/U.S. Air Force.)

Interpreting a Signal

The massive volume, variety and velocity of continuously flowing data far surpasses the ability of humans to process. It exceeds the bandwidth most systems can handle. And it quickly overwhelms the capacity to store, manage and act on the information in a timely and cost-effective manner. Resources are not infinite. The best model to handle an overwhelming amount of data is the human brain. Humans are biological sensors. Every moment of every second of our lives, our bodies are receiving an endless stream of stimuli from internal and external sources. Most of this stimuli registers at an unconscious level, and as long as the stimuli is normal and expected, it goes unnoticed by the conscious mind. If, however, any discomfort is experienced, the conscious mind is notified. Then that becomes the focus until normalized. Externally, the same applies to computer data systems. Normal conditions are ignored, but if there is something unusual, such as a loud constant noise, or a colder than normal temperature, it draws all the processing attention.

In the realm of intelligence that is basically how things function. Algorithms are written to learn the normal patterns of life and to identify specific events, words, names, etc. As long as data is within normal parameters, it gets little attention, but as soon as an anomaly exceeds a threshold or something triggers the algorithm, it will immediately be brought to the attention of the intel center. An example can be viewed on the Global Incident Map dashboard. I encourage you to sign up for a free 72-hour membership. If you want to see what real news looks like, this would be a sampling. The number of real incidents that happen across the country and around the world that you never hear about, many of them hair-raising and all of them open source, add to the few stories the media has been able to tell about cyber attacks. Scroll down the page. There are many filters, but I recommend turning them all off to see the full extent of information. Clicking on an incident will drill down into the actual source so you can read about it more thoroughly.

Below is the U.S. Army’s real-time critical incident dashboard called the Joint Analytic Real-Time Virtual Information Sharing System (JARVISS). It tracks and monitors activity near U.S. Army installations and standalone assets of interest around the world.

Another dashboard for cyberattacks is Check Point, which shows just how aggressive cyberthreats are throughout world. Here, you can see the patterns of coordinated attacks. A war is underway. The soldiers are cyberwarriors. No country is safe. View the Live Cyber Threat Map.

JARVISS is designed to target criminal activity and provide natural disaster information in and around Army installations and stand-alone facilities, as well as COVID-19 threats. (Image: Steve Gardner/U.S. Army}

Fast Analysis in Real Time

Monitoring this information, analysts look for connections. If a plane veers off its flight path, the local operations center is notified. An automatic query shows if any critical-infrastructure assets or other important structures and facilities are in the area. The analyst can immediately find out the type of aircraft, the call sign, who the plane is registered to and who filed the flight plan. Weather radar can be overlaid to see if that is a possible reason for the deviation. Incident reports can be displayed in real time within the area of interest, along with social media feeds and other sources of communication. Traffic patterns can be displayed.

The important question that needs to be answered is whether this is a potential threat. Is there a connection to anything going on anywhere else? A dossier is developed on the person who filed the flight plan, the one who is assumed to be the pilot and the person or organization to which the plane is registered. All of this is being done in a matter of minutes, while the airplane either returns to its flight path or continues its diversion. The air traffic control tower is contacted to share information on the aircraft and its deviation. If the tower does not have an answer, it will radio the pilot for an answer. The passenger and crew manifest also are analyzed. All the data that can be pulled together — including the remaining fuel burn and the aircraft performance limitations — are analyzed.

Patterns emerge from the data. These patterns lead backwards to a cause and forward toward the end result. Finding those clues in the data requires a team of specialists from six primary intelligence disciplines.
- An imagery intelligence analyst brings in the live-streams and remote sensing.
- A human intelligence analyst seeks motivating factors and ways to deescalate the situation.
- A measurements and signatures intelligence specialist defines the operating limitations and the mechanics and science particular to the scenario.
- An open-source intelligence analyst accesses and queries open-source data sets to provide clues.
- A signals intelligence specialist focuses on the communications and electronic signatures.
- A geospatial intelligence analyst brings it all together and provides spatial context through the map the team uses that shows the events unfold in real time.
These analysts and sometimes many others will collect all these pieces of information and turn them into intelligence that decision-makers can use to take action. That is the purpose of intelligence; as CIA veteran Richard Heuer stated, “Intelligence seeks to illuminate the unknown.”

Fortunately, most alerts turn out to be false positives, but every one of them is treated as if it were “the one.” These false positives turn out to be excellent, real-world exercises that hone the skills of the team and wire the brain for speed. These events can last mere minutes or several hours. It’s an adrenaline rush.

To explore live streaming data feeds, Esri has a growing volume of data in its ArcGIS Living Atlas.

“My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere…”
— Sherlock Holmes, “The Sign of the Four,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

William Tewelow works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a graduate of a management fellowship program. While on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation William led the project to crowdsource the National Address Database for the White House Open Data Partnership. He is a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) and a Maryland Scholar STEMnet Speaker. He has a degree in Geographic Information Technology and Intelligence Studies from American Military University and is currently earning a degree in Organizational Leadership. William retired from the U.S. Navy after serving 23 years as a Geospatial and Imagery Intelligence Specialist, a Naval Aviator, a Meteorologist, and a Tactical Oceanographer. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. He is married, enjoys traveling, solving problems, playing with data, and fascinated by new technology and historical context. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
July 14, 2021
Can GIS predict an economic recovery?
Image: Tryaging/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

Geospatial data is key to logistics, including for the huge increase in e-commerce we are experiencing following the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown.

The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works. — Jeff Bezos

This past year has been a boon for the e-commerce industry. It increased from 4% of retail sales a decade ago and pushed past 20% in 2020, reaching nearly $800 billion — a 32% jump in 10 years.

Online businesses climbed to all-time highs. A few examples stand out. Amazon’s stock increased in value 83% over the course of last year. That type of growth happens with startups and small-cap companies but is usually unheard of with large blue-chip stocks.

Along with Amazon’s growth last year, FedEx had $69 billion in annual sales. DoorDash, an e-commerce food delivery company, has a market valuation of $45 billion, making it larger than Domino’s Pizza, Texas Roadhouse and Yum! Brands combined; and Yum! Brands owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

The e-commerce global trend in online sales is expected to reach $4.9 trillion in four years based on only 2.14 billion online shoppers. That is less than one-third of the world’s population. There is a lot more room to grow. This past year moved the trend several years forward.

Where are all those goods stored?

Photo: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Jasen Moreno-Garcia/U.S. Navy

Each consumer requires an average logistics space of 35 square feet. In the United States alone, there are more than nine billion square feet of warehouse space, and when online sales increase another 10% it will require 3 to 4 billion square feet more of space to keep up with demand.

The increase in freight driven by this trend is captured in the chart below published by the Federal Reserve, with data provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The blue line is increasing freight transportation services, while the red line indicates on-hand inventories.

As transportation increases and becomes more reliable — a reflection of the overall health of the logistics supply chain — the amount of on-hand inventory decreases, allowing sellers to free up space and save money, or offer greater variety knowing that stocks can readily be backfilled.

However, when inventories get too low, the system is subject to severe supply shocks, making prices more sensitive to the law of supply and demand. The grey-shaded areas on the chart are economic downturns officially recognized as recessions.

If delivery took six-to-eight weeks these days, it would signal a crisis somewhere in the world.

21st-century logistics

Goods from global corporations now arrive at each customer’s doorstep. This is 21st-century logistics. Home delivery in two days or less is the expectation. The compression of time in this industry is astounding when compared to “the way things used to be.” The way things are compared to the way things used to be reminds me of hearing my grandparents talk about life before automobiles.

Back in my day, ordering from a catalog required calling the company and speaking to a representative. The call had to be made from a corded landline, and long-distance charges might apply. If ordering a gift for someone in the household, it was difficult to be clandestine with everyone nearby. The other option was to mail in an order form. Either way, delivery took a minimum of six to eight weeks, and sometimes more. If delivery took that long these days, it would signal a crisis somewhere in the world.

Screenshot: VesselFinder

Fighting an epidemic with GIS

Knowing where to pre-position supplies ahead of anticipated demand is a geospatial problem. Most think of this in terms of sales to customers and deliveries ahead of seasonal demands, but many countries in the world are facing this dilemma right now figuring out the best way to distribute COVID-19 vaccines. That challenge is taking place in your own community and has been a long-standing public health challenge.

Beginning in the mid-2000s, geospatial information systems (GIS) were brought in to help control outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus. In 2014, I took a Penn State geospatial intelligence course. The final exam addressed the geospatial challenges of fighting an epidemic. Theoretically, it was difficult to get the required goods to the right place at the right time. But now, it’s not an exercise, and getting it right is not an option.

If you have received the COVID-19 vaccine, you can appreciate the pharmaceutical industry for developing vaccines in record time. However, getting the vaccines to everyone is a logistics challenge, and GIS is the unsung hero. Logistics is the life blood of empires — it is the game of kings and generals. With it, wars are won and commonwealths prosper; without it, empires crumble to dust.

How Geospatial Data Guides the Goods

Back to the traditional understanding of supply chains from seller to buyer. The needs of the buyer are simple: faster, better, cheaper. For the seller, it is much more complex, and considerations deal heavily with location.
- Where is the best place to have a distribution center?
- Is it more important to be close to a multi-modal transfer station, or to population centers, or are land prices more important?
- What about access to highways?
- What are the trade-offs in delivery times being further away from the population?
- Is the trade-off worth it for the cost of land and lower taxes?
Geospatial data can answer all of these questions, even going so far as to run “what-if” scenarios.

At the local level, transportation logistics schedules the most efficient routing to deliver more packages along the shortest path. This saves time and fuel, as shown in the image below using Maptitude software. Radiuses can also be calculated based on drive times instead of distances.

Caliper truck routing software can be used for planning deliveries that account for vehicle capacities, time windows, multiple depots and more. (Image: Caliper)

Navigation routing applications are dynamic, and pick-ups are automatically routed to drivers while out on delivery runs. Dynamic routing avoids delays such as accidents and road closures.

This same type of technology is used for emergency services to respond to a call. Ambulances, police and fire trucks all use dynamic routing to get to distress calls as soon as possible.

Global transportation logistics also need to account for international laws and regulations as cargo passes through each country. These regulations can be onerous, but the logistics industry has worked out the legalities to ensure a seamless, uninterrupted flow from ship to train to airplane to truck and to final delivery. It is symbolized by the universal 40-foot international shipping container standardized throughout the world.

At each facility, inventories are tracked. Each item passing through receives a time and location stamp. Estimated delivery times are sent via text message to your mobile device or email. When the item is out for delivery, it is possible to watch it on a map as the delivery truck makes its way towards your location. When the item is delivered to your doorstep, a picture of it is sent to your phone with an alert that the package was delivered.

Only a few days earlier, the manufacturer — perhaps on the other side of the world — placed the item in a box and taped it shut; even though you ordered it in your language, the order received by the manufacturer was in their language. The package started its journey to you at the next scheduled pickup, maybe within an hour of you placing the order. Shortly afterward, your order was on a ship or an airplane. As you went about your usual business, the incredibly efficient system of e-commerce sped your package around the world to deliver it to your doorstep.

Logistics has undergone a revolution built upon the most advanced technological innovations: robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, mobile devices, cloud computing, electronic payment processing, and a vast geospatial framework.

In fact, it is a continuously operating, seamless, geospatial mesh running on a global scale across all time zones that allows the industry to function. Every aspect of the logistics supply chain relies upon GIS in some way, from land, air and sea navigation from global location-based systems down to inside a warehouse for storage and retrieval of merchandise. Modern-day logistics is a geospatial industry connecting goods and services to consumers, putting the GIS in lo-gis-tics.

Image: U.S. DOT

Can GIS predict the future?

Regarding whether GIS can predict a market correction… I’ll not make a prediction, but the Transportation Services Index (TSI) for March is due to be released today, May 12. If it is down from February, it would mean two months of back-to-back decline. April’s numbers won’t come out until June. However, here is an indicator of where things currently stand. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, CA, the largest shipping ports in the United States is five days behind schedule, which is down from over 10 days in January.

The TSI is a leading indicator of the economy. When 20% of sales are online in a consumer-based economy, the wellbeing of the commonwealth is measured one delivery at a time.

“Trade isn’t about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.” — C. J. Cherr

William Tewelow

William Tewelow works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a graduate of the FAA management fellowship program. He served on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation leading a national strategic geospatial initiative for the White House Open Data Partnership. He is a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) and a speaker for the Maryland STEMnet Scholar program.

He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center. He has degrees in Geographic Information Technology, Intelligence Studies, and is completing a masters degree in Organizational Management.

William is a 23 year veteran for the U.S. Navy serving as a Geospatial Specialist, Imagery Intelligence Specialist, a Naval Aviator, a Meteorologist, and a Tactical Oceanographer. He is married, enjoys writing and traveling.

His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
May 12, 2021
Smart infrastructure depends on GIS

Get ready! Here comes the boom.

The physical and digital world are integrating. We are nearing the edge of the analog universe. Physical immersion is giving way to virtual immersion. It is the virtualization of products and services in the evolution of technology. Michael Saylor calls it the sixth wave of software engineering. We are moving away from externally experiencing data and are moving towards actively interfacing with data directly in virtual space.

“You can Zoom anywhere at the speed of light and bend time and space.” — Michael Saylor

The world of tomorrow is already here. We are waking up to it. The blips of information at the fringes are coming nearer. The horizons of time are as far as one can see into the future and the past. How far can you see? From wherever you are there are others who can see a little further. Look forward. Look back. Others are ahead and behind. They exist where time is most comfortable for them. Some take up positions living in the past. Some stake their place as far into the future as they are able. Look towards those early adopters. Ask them what they think. They see more clearly the blips of information out on the horizon.

What are those blips? How will they impact the geospatial community? How can you position yourself to take advantage of the coming trends?

America needs to go back to work and America’s infrastructure is old and in disrepair. In 2019, Congress introduced H.R.4687, the SMART Infrastructure Act, a $2 trillion bill but it never made it out of the House. However, that bill is being reintroduced. This time it will become a bill putting America back to work and its price tag will likely eclipse the previous bill. It will address infrastructure — all types of infrastructure: physical, data, cybersecurity, health, financial, transportation, energy, and communications. It will be a primary theme for the next two decades. Get ready! Change can happen fast and it’s about to accelerate.

“The future happens slowly and then all at once.” — Kevin Kelly

Rebuilding this infrastructure will require geospatial technologies. STEM has been the siren call for the past 30 years and for good reason. Those who heeded the call and invested their education into coding, engineering, data science, geospatial technologies, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and other STEM related fields are going to lead the coming workforce. Now is the time to get certified and establish your credentials.

Take the case of architectural design and construction. It used to be blueprints drawn on light tables. That is how I learned to do it back in the 1970s. Then it all moved to computer aided design (CAD) drawings. Now, urban planners and architects create immersive 3D virtual reality (VR) visualizations. That is becoming standard practice.

Image: teekid/iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

Project managers used to spend their day making their rounds walking the site ensuring the project was being built to specifications. However, that is changing. Soon, each worker’s safety glasses will have built-in augmented reality (AR). They will build their portion of a project exactly to plan. Project managers will connect with workers in the field and see the project they are working on progress in real-time while in their office on 3D models.

When the project manager does walk the site he or she will be wearing augmented reality (AR) head-up displays and able to compare the physical construction to the digital model in real-time. Backhoe and excavator operators will grade to exact precision. Robots will be common at construction sites assisting operations and enhancing current capabilities. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) will fly regular patterns over construction sites. Heavy-lift UAVs will supplement cranes for some operations. Subsurface structures, whether buried beneath the ground or behind a wall will be digitized with precise location data making future replacements and repairs swift and easy. The uses of geospatially dependent technologies will continue to grow. The construction worker of tomorrow will be very different than the one of today.

Photo: Trimble

The new infrastructure will be built with smart technologies and incorporate renewables and “green energy” initiatives with a responsible approach to sustainability; for example, roadways will have embedded peizo-electric crystals in the asphalt to generate electricity from passing vehicles. The electricity will charge batteries that will power smart sensors embedded in the street and provide power to street lights with sensors and 5G networks along the roadways. Excess power will transfer to other microgrids for use elsewhere. Energy will also come from capturing wind on top and along the sides of buildings, along roadways, and at tunnel exits and entrances. Thermocouples will capture heat and generate electricity.

Solar power will be generated from panels, windows, films, and even paint surfaces. All of these sources together will feed into microgrids. Some of this renewable energy will convert water to hydrogen for fuel cells, and some will power carbon dioxide (CO2) converters to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and create synthetic fuels. In 2010, Sunexus submitted a geospatial study of the solar reforming process to the Office of Scientific & Technical Information (OSTI). The study showed that nearly 58% of industrial CO2 waste from power plants, cement plants, ethanol production, and natural gas processing could be converted to synthetic diesel fuel.

Image: U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Besides energy, other smart materials will be used such as small sensors that are geospatially sensitive nanodevices embedded in roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings and other structures. They are wirelessly connected to one another creating a 3D mesh network. These nanodevices continuously report their structural health. This 3D mesh network can detect vibrations passing through it that cause distortions in the mesh framework.

Geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) will profile devices based on their normal statistical ranges. If any data such as location, temperature, humidity, pressure, acoustics or health status exceed the device’s standard deviation the GeoAI will analyze surrounding nodes in the mesh network to depict patterns. Suspect events will immediately come to the attention of emergency services. These microdevices can provide early detection of cracks in a structure or deterioration of a surface protection layer.

The use of these devices extends beyond structural monitoring. More broadly, they have societal applications too, such as for security purposes. When fitted with acoustic sensors they can detect sounds, and by geospatially analyzing the data from many thousands of devices the epic center of a noise event can immediately be located. Take for example a gun shot, fireworks, an explosion, or a vehicle accident. The increased acoustic signal would trigger the GeoAI monitoring the devices to plot a spatial analysis of the acoustic report. The map would alert area would flash red on the monitor at the control center and nearby cameras would zoom in on the location providing images and live video feeds all within moments of the triggering event. The analysts at the control center could immediately assess the situation and dispatch the proper response units.

Embedded devices also serve as seismic sensors blanketing broad areas and are able to record surface vibrations moving through the mesh network. An earthquake would appear as a moving wave field along the network.

Additionally, data from the mesh network can integrate with other devices. It can provide smartphones with precise location data. Imagine no longer standing on a street corner turning in circles trying to figure out which way to go. When connected with the mesh network and looking through AR glasses or the smartphone view screen the path will be illuminated. Autonomous vehicles will connect with the mesh network and have absolute positional accuracy and have awareness of other vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians ensuring a more safe and efficient experience for everyone.

The mesh network can be used as a base layer for georeferencing the world. Notifications, warnings and requests for information can be sent to smartphones within an exact georeferenced location. Imagine being in your third-floor apartment sitting in your chair, listening to music on your headphones and reading an ebook. You are oblivious to the noise outside. An audible alert is sent to your phone and calls your attention. You look at your phone and a message is requesting information related to a possible gunshot at DD°MM’SS.sss N, DD°MM’SS.sss W. You click on the notification and a map opens up. You see it is right outside your window. You go to the window, look outside and see two people duck into a car. You watch as red tail lights drive away. You look back at the location on the street where the vehicle had been and a person is slumped over leaning against a stairwell.

On your phone you press the red alert button on the map application triggering a distress signal and confirming the incident may have been a gunshot and someone has possibly been injured. Emergency services immediately dispatch. Others nearby received the same alert message because it was automatically generated and sent out to all phone numbers within the area defined by the geospatial acoustic solution. Surveillance cameras on the corner of buildings were also triggered by the alert and automatically focused on the origin of the noise. Images of the assailants were captured along with the license plate of the vehicle. As the vehicle drove away a network of surveillance cameras continued following it turn by turn until it was finally intercepted and the occupants apprehended.

This world is nearer than it seems. The technologies are already here. Once the infrastructure bill is passed construction projects will begin and our physical world will begin to integrate with the digital world. The engineers design it. The construction workers and robots will build it. And it will be geospatial technologies holding it all together.

William Tewelow works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a graduate of the FAA management fellowship program. He served on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation leading a national strategic geospatial initiative for the White House Open Data Partnership. He is a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) and a speaker for the Maryland STEMnet Scholar program. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center. He has degrees in Geographic Information Technology, Intelligence Studies, and is completing a masters degree in Organizational Management. William is a 23 year veteran for the U.S. Navy serving as a Geospatial Specialist, Imagery Intelligence Specialist, a Naval Aviator, a Meteorologist, and a Tactical Oceanographer. He is married, enjoys writing and traveling. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

April 14, 2021
Why geospatial data needs artificial intelligence

By San Gunawardana, Guest Author

Advances in geospatial technology have opened up many new possibilities in areas such as national security, urban planning and emergency preparedness. When I was embedded with the U.S. Army as a scientist in Afghanistan, I got to experience firsthand the exceptional value of 3D data. The military used nation-scale imagery and lidar to generate 3D maps that then informed their safety-critical operations. However, since lidar—like most three-dimensional unstructured data—contains incredible complexity and detail, it was painfully slow to analyze manually.

As a result, the impact of this technology was severely restricted by speed and cost due to the significant manual effort required to extract actionable insights. As we looked to the future, where lidar would become commonplace in consumer electronics and automobiles, it became clear that there was an opportunity to combine computer vision/AI with large-scale cloud computing to rapidly and automatically generate actionable insights from 3D data.

Screenshot: Enview

After returning from Afghanistan, I reconnected with Krassimir Piperkov, a former colleague from ICON Aircraft, and fellow Stanford alum, to launch Enview. Our objective was to automate 3D geospatial analytics and create a living 3D model of the world to help organizations to protect their critical infrastructure and communities.

Powering geospatial data with AI can take the limits off 3D data analytics, prevent threats from becoming incidents, and protect critical infrastructure. What used to take days or months to process can now be done in minutes, enabling analysts, operators, and decision-makers across the public sector to make timely and accurate decisions. By enhancing our understanding of the physical world, this technology empowers us to tackle pressing challenges like wildfire prevention, humanitarian assistance, disaster response, and more.

Let’s take a look at how AI-powered 3D modeling is being put to use.

Digital twins

A living 3D model of the world, or a digital twin, can be used for many purposes. Enview’s software fuses many different data sets together to create digital twins that are global in scale but have high-resolution to enable local decision-making. These digital twins include 3D terrain, vegetation, buildings, and infrastructure such as power lines, roads, and water works. Enview also fuses real-time and forecasted conditions, such as wind, temperature, humidity, traffic, and IoT (internet of things).

This sort of rich representation of the physical world is an incredibly complex big data challenge. Data comes from radically different sensor modalities, with different resolutions, formats, time-domains, and accuracy. AI plays a critical role in automating the fusion of these datasets, by helping to intelligently align and then fuse them into a cohesive entity. 3D geospatial data is particularly challenging, as it is unstructured data, which requires a new generation of deep learning frameworks whose convolutional kernels are specifically developed from the ground up to work on unstructured data. Further, the datasets are massive in scale. A square-mile of 3D lidar data can have hundreds of millions of points; the magnitude of the data easily passes the petabyte scale when one considers applications that span nation-scale areas. In order to process this volume of data, modern geospatial AI architectures must be containerized and dynamically deployable across cloud compute resources to generate timely insights.

AI is essential to help human experts to extract meaningful insight from this overabundance of data. The application of automated workflows allows experts to look at larger areas, with more speed and higher frequencies. This machine-assisted cognition draws upon the respective strengths of people and computers to do what neither could do on their own.

Humanitarian aid and disaster relief

3D models can be built to monitor hurricane hotspots, such as the Gulf Coast, before major storms strike. By layering in real-time weather information such as rainfall, winds, and flooding, these models can help with planning, emergency response, and relief efforts.

This data also provides life-saving insight that can assess damage to buildings, transportation, and downed power lines, in addition to determining where to send medical and relief supplies, and how to best get them there. 3D data can help to lessen the impact of future weather events by updating the baseline understanding of how storms impact coastal communities so they can plan for the future.

Screenshot: Enview

Infrastructure protection

Inadequate clearances between vegetation and power lines can result in wildfires and unplanned power outages. Many federal, state, and local regulations are in place to mandate clearances, and power line operators monitor their networks continuously to ensure that they abide by these regulations and prevent incidents and outages. However, doing so by walking or flying the lines and judging distances with the human eye is challenging and inaccurate.

The ability to identify the exact location and clearances of high-risk vegetation early, and at scale, lets operators identify, prioritize, and address problem areas proactively. Lidar-driven programs have helped with risk-reduction, but are constrained by the massive levels of manual data manipulation required to derive insights from this 3D data. The automation of 3D geospatial analytics through AI, machine vision, and parallel computing enables the accurate and rapid identification of at-risk areas, protecting critical infrastructure and communities.

Screenshot: Enview

Fighting wildfires

Devastating wildfires resulting in the loss of life and property have become commonplace in the western U.S. and other parts of the world. The tools and methods previously relied on to keep communities and infrastructure safe are now struggling to keep up with this increased threat.

Geospatial information, including 3D data, provides a digital view of the physical world and, when paired with AI, gives stakeholders the informational edge they need to minimize wildfire damage, injuries, and deaths. This technology can be used to automatically build and update real-time, high-resolution wildfire risk maps that give firefighters and communities more notice when threats are imminent, and provide firefighters with real-time situational awareness when they’re fighting the blazes.

Change detection

According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHSMA), third-party excavations are one of the leading causes of pipeline incidents in the U.S. These incidents can lead to service disruptions, expensive repairs, and sometimes serious injuries or deaths.

Detecting signs of excavation or earth movement via aerial patrolling is challenging and costly, while resource limitations make it difficult for pipeline operators to continuously monitor remote areas such as farms. AI-powered 3D maps can be used to monitor topography and accurately detect changes that threaten pipelines in real time.

3D data provides remarkable value when it comes to decision-making as it relates to many different applications—from military defense to protecting neighborhoods from wildfires. However, its success hinges on one thing: speed. The ability to process 3D geospatial data rapidly, and at scale, is made possible through advances in AI and cloud computing. In the future, we can expect to see more exciting and innovative use cases for AI-powered geospatial technology.

San Gunawardana is co-founder and CEO of Enview, a geospatial analytics company. After finishing a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Stanford, Gunawardana went to Afghanistan, where he combined data analytics and remote sensing to detect threats and prevent incidents. He is excited to apply those insights to help the energy sector solve problems. He has done computer vision at NASA, built imaging satellites with the Air Force, and was an early employee at ICON Aircraft.

January 27, 2021

NASA’s Artemis program will need lunar spatial reference system

We leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
—Astronaut Gene Cernan’s closing words, the twelfth and last person on the moon as he stepped back into the Apollo XVII Lunar Module on December 13, 1972.

Apollo was about vision, courage and discovery. Apollo helped unravel the mysteries of the moon — a serene, desolate, and barren place, bleached by the sun, and covered in a pale, gray, abrasive dust made up of microscopic, razor sharp, glass-like shards called regolith that is 60 feet deep in places.

Beneath the regolith is the bedrock of the moon — the Lunafirma.

The next phase of exploration is building a permanent base station on the moon, aptly named Artemis, Apollo’s twin sister. It would be fitting when mankind returns that the next person who steps out onto the lunar surface were a woman.

Figure 1. (Photo: NASA) — **Figure 1.** (Photo: NASA)

Artemis Moon Log/Program Entry Date 42: Earth Day is Tuesday, November 4, 2025The regolith mining operations are proceeding as expected. All operations are 100% solar power until additional mobile thorium reactor units arrive. The only existing thorium reactor unit is the Clavius Crater water extraction operation. Construction of the Selene-1 Moonbase has encountered a setback. No other issues are reported.

The regolith in the surrounding plain is 6 meters deep. The Miners have not experienced any issues. The electrostatic power suits are repelling the abrasive dust better than expected. The Miners have cleared a 50 m2 area down to the bedrock. From the Gateway observation deck, it appears as a small square crater. The Miners are working non-stop on rotating shifts clearing regolith, recharging, replacing parts, or in transit.

Analysis of the regolith reveals a uniform distribution of 21% silica, 13% aluminum, 10% calcium, 10% iron, 5% magnesium, and 2% sodium and titanium. Minor amounts of chromium, phosphorus, and potassium are present. Hydrogen is 0.0027%. The metals are all oxides containing 40% elemental oxygen, which is being separated during processing for later use.

West about 200 km, towards Mare Crisium, the gravitational anomalies increase but within the Selene-1 Moonbase crater the anomalies are negligible. Geospatial analysis of the drill cores show an extensive concentration of lithium beneath a 12-meter-thick layer of basalt east of Ginzel Crater. Towards the south are increased concentrations of titanium and tungsten. Ejection debris discovered during the regolith mining operation showed traces of neodymium. The estimated trajectory of the ejecta points to it coming from the Moiseev Crater complex. An expeditionary rover is in route to collect samples and will arrive in 6 hours. Readings from those samples will be in the next log report.

The Parabolic Solar Powered (PSP) laser torches in the open crater basin are performing as expected. The Constructors are 3D fusing the regolith into silicate glass forms and transporting them to staging areas for later construction. The higher-than-normal content of iron in the regolith is giving the glass forms a reddish hue.

At the south pole, the water extraction operation at Clavius Crater has been operating uninterrupted for 816 hours. The thorium reactor is powering the entire operation. The smelter is distilling volatiles out of the regolith at the rate of 1m3 every 8 hours extracting a liter of water every 24 hours. The operation is on schedule for the two 100-liter tanks of water for delivery to the Selene-1 Moonbase by the due date.

There are five 4G cellular towers around the perimeter of the Selene-1 Moonbase and regolith mining area at 3 km intervals. The cellular array is providing accuracies of 1 millimeter allowing for precision mining, drilling, construction, and transportation. As the operation expands, more towers will be added. Two more towers are stationed at Clavius Crater. The 360° cameras and radar provide continuous surveillance and monitoring.

Testing of the 3D vision and synthetic neural response systems of the robots is complete and all of them are operational. The real-time connectivity with the robots allows controllers onboard the Gateway to remote link into any of the robots using virtual headsets and haptic body suits for full-immersion control. AI is constantly scanning for anything unusual and alerts the controllers to remote in; otherwise, the robots operate continuously and efficiently. The Miners are clearing nearly 5m3 of regolith every 24 hours during light conditions.

Phase I is underway. Miners are leveling off the exposed bedrock to begin construction of the landing pad. Once finished, the Constructors will use the PSP laser torches to begin fusing together the silicate glass blocks to make the landing pad. Afterwards, The Miners will begin Phase II and lay the foundation for the railgun to propel the filled mineral containers back to Earth. Both Phase I and Phase II are on schedule.

The setback encountered during construction of the Selene-1 main base station is due to excessive heat build-up. The Excavators are clearing the floors and shaping the walls within the lava tube. However, the heat from the laser torches is building-up and shutting down the machines prematurely. When the ambient temperatures exceed 160°C the machines shutdown to protect their electrostatic coatings. Having no atmosphere and no wind the heat is not dissipating. The fluid in the heat exchangers is overheating. Until directed otherwise, the Excavators are doing 90-minute shifts and the Torches for 35 minutes. The Torches have to fuse together the support beams and the silicate glass protective layering behind the Excavators to preserve structural integrity. A software update set the laser torches to pulse fire extending the heat build-up for an additional 5 minutes. Only 15 meters have been cleared but the inflatable habitats require at least another 85 meters into the lava tube. The setback pushes back the date for completing the base station by approximately 620 hours. A temporary external module can house the astronauts for their return on April 19, 2026 until Selene-1 is completed.

The above fictional account of a Moon Log entry for the Artemis program is based on NASA’s mid-October announcement selecting Nokia to build a 4G network on the moon.

An in-depth look at the announcement holds interest for the GIS community.

The Artemis program will be heavily dependent on spatial technologies and require a Lunar Spatial Reference System. However, the Moon has significant challenges. There is no constellation of satellites orbiting the Moon to provide precise location data like GPS satellites do on Earth, and it is not possible to develop such a satellite system around the moon because the moon’s gravitational center is lopsided and weighted towards Earth due to tidal lock. This causes orbital decay of lunar satellites until they eventually crash into the lunar surface.

However, there are four orbital inclinations that allow for indefinite low orbits and may provide for a future Lunar Positioning System (LPS). Such a system would be extremely costly, so a less expensive and more immediate LPS will be a ground-based cellular network array; and 4G is preferred over 5G because it offers longer ranges, which is why NASA selected Nokia. NASA is working on other solutions through the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program.

Figure 2: Unified Geologic Map of the Moon https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-releases-first-ever-comprehensive-geologic-map-moon Orthographic projections of the "Unified Geologic Map of the Moon" showing the geology of the Moon’s near side (left) and far side (right) with shaded topography from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. It will serve as a reference for lunar science and future human missions to the Moon. Gravitational mass concentrations are also depicted in the image showing the majority being on the nearside while the farside is void of gravitational concentrations. Check out a video of rotating sphere. https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/unified-geologic-map-moon (Photo: NASA/GSFC/USGS) — **Figure 2: Unified Geologic Map of the Moon.** Orthographic projections of the “Unified Geologic Map of the Moon” showing the geology of the Moon’s near side (left) and far side (right) with shaded topography from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. It will serve as a reference for lunar science and future human missions to the moon. Gravitational mass concentrations are also depicted in the image showing the majority being on the nearside while the farside is void of gravitational concentrations. Check out a video of rotating sphere. (Image: NASA/GSFC/USGS)

In a blow to science fiction novels, it will not be humans out on the barren, dust covered lunar landscape, or in the cold depths of crater shadows with pickaxes and jackhammers. It will be robots working prolonged periods in extreme temperatures running on solar power or nuclear power while constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and direct solar radiation.

Accomplishing this will require real-time communication with spatially enabled, artificially intelligent machines able to support fully immersive experiences with 3D vision headsets and haptic feedback systems so controllers at the base station wearing special suits can remote into any robot.

Due to a 2.5-second transmission delay between the Earth and the Moon, Ground Control will be limited to observation and analysis. Autonomous rockets will ferry cargo and supplies between more distant locations on the moon and ferry astronauts back and forth to the Gateway space station.

The ground-based 4G cellular towers will be mobile units with retractable towers about 25 meters high with a circular array of solar panels that will unfurl about 10 meters up from the base of the mast to protect them from the abrasive regolith dust.

Beneath the panels rovers and robots will plug in and charge their batteries as they journey to and from the base station. The towers will have 360° cameras and sensors and will provide data links and a localized spatial reference system.

However, objects in flight, such as autonomous rockets, will require other means to navigate across the moon and between the space-based cargo ships and the base station.

One solution is visual-inertial odometry (VIO). It uses one or more cameras and at least one inertial measuring device. Those components are already standard on almost every smartphone. Position accuracy using VIO is derived by feature recognition — the most prominent features on the moon are craters.

In support of this initiative, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) is sponsoring a software developer’s challenge to create algorithms for identifying circular patterns in imagery. It’s harder than you think. Learn more here.

Figure 3. (Photo: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) — **Figure 3.** (Photo: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

The base station will be inside a lava tube beneath the moon’s surface to protect astronauts and equipment from solar radiation and micrometeor impacts. Most of the resources for the moon base will be extracted and processed in-situ, which requires spatial analysis of drill core samples to pinpoint where to mine for minerals in the subsurface layers and where to locate scarce resources such as water. The lava tubes on the moon are also valuable for mining operations but navigating an underground environment with autonomous machines poses challenges of its own, some of which are spatial awareness. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently held a developer’s challenge to address navigating in subterranean domains.

“Reaching the Moon by three-man vessels in one long bound from Earth is like casting a thin thread across space. The main effort, in the coming decades, will be to strengthen this thread; to make it a cord, a cable, and, finally, a broad highway.”
—Isaac Asimov

William Tewelow works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a graduate of the FAA management fellowship program. He served on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation leading a national strategic geospatial iniative for the White House Open Data Partnership. He is a Geographic Information Systems Professional and a speaker for the Maryland STEMnet Scholar program. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center. He has degrees in Geographic Information Technology, Intelligence Studies and is completing a masters degree in Organizational Management. William is a 23-year veteran for the U.S. Navy serving as a geospatial specialist, imagery intelligence specialist, a naval aviator, a meteorologist and a tactical oceanographer. He is married, enjoys writing and traveling. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes

January 13, 2021

How the Civil Air Patrol relies on GIS for civil defense

As technology evolves, the Civil Air Patrol will continue to be a platform for implementing new technologies to secure the country in times of crisis.

The strength of this country isn’t in buildings of brick and steel. It’s in the hearts of those who have sworn to fight for its freedom!
—Captain America

Eyes of the Home Skies, World War II-era poster of Civil Air Patrol. (Image: CAP)

If you are someone who likes aviation, GIS and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and computer vision, and you want to fulfill a greater sense of purpose, the perfect time is now.

The Flying Minute Men, so called by Robert Neprud in the 1948 Story of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), serve on the frontlines of national threats and disasters. They are the air wing for first responders.

CAP works with many government organizations including the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard, and many others.

CAP works with non-government organizations too, such as the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), the GIS Corps, the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG), and the Red Cross.

CAP also works with youth teaching valuable skills in leadership, community service, STEM and aviation. It has a proud heritage originating in World War II.

In the final days of 1941, the world was in flames. Dark shadows lurked in the waters off American shores. German U-boats attacked ships along the coast. The newly established Office of Civilian Defense understood the importance of aviation for stopping the U-boat threat but lacked the military resources. On Monday, December 1, 1941, six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Administrative Order 9 was signed creating the Civil Air Patrol, but there would be no celebration. The threat was all too real. The Battle of the Atlantic had begun. Within a few months Germany sank over 230 ships in U.S. waters. American shores were on fire.

A list of known shipwrecks and their locations in U.S. waters can be downloaded from NOAA’s Coastal Survey website. It is not a complete or a clean dataset so some wrangling will be required. A shortcut is using the shipwreck layer in Google Earth. Along the Atlantic Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea there are multiple sunken German U-boats. Most notably are U-85, the first U-Boat sunk by the U.S. Navy in WWII, less than 20 miles off of Nag’s Head, North Carolina (35.885, -75.2829); and U-853, the last one to be sunk in WWII 10 miles off the coast of Rhode Island less than 24 hours before Germany’s surrender (41.2268, -71.4187).

The American tanker SS Harry F. Sinclair burns south of Cape Lookout North Carolina, torpedoed by U-203 on April 11, 1942. (Photo: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)

During the War, the Civil Air Patrol flew 5,684 aerial escorts for shipping convoys keeping the sea lanes safe and enabling supplies to get to Europe and North Africa. Shortly after the war, on July 1, 1946, President Truman recognized the valuable contribution made by the Civil Air Patrol making them permanent, but once again there was no celebration. On the same day, responding to overwhelming public attention, TIME published “COSMOCLAST EINSTEIN: All matter is speed and flame.” Radios around the world tuned-in as the clock counted down to zero hour. The first post-war atomic bomb was detonated at 22:00 Greenwich Mean Time (5:00 PM Eastern) in Bikini Lagoon (11°36’00” N 165°29’00” E) over a ghost fleet of ninety-five ships in the middle of the Pacific. History’s long shadow fell over the moment. The applause of a grateful nation for the Flying Minute Men was silence.

It is the mark of real heroes, duty is the highest honor, the rewards are personal having the courage to stand in the face of danger and clasp the hand of Victory. It is valor not fame that makes heroes of normal men and women. The Civil Air Patrol rarely makes the front page, but it supports many of the nation’s most significant events.

Photo of Ground Zero taken on September 12, 2001 by Civil Air Patrol. (Photo: CAP)

The first photographs of Ground Zero released to the public the day after September 11, 2001, were taken by the Civil Air Patrol. With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 the Civil Air Patrol took on a much larger role in homeland security. CAP serves a unique purpose flying a multitude of missions because aircraft can fly for extended periods at optimum altitudes to get the best resolution. CAP imagery is often the most currently available and of the highest quality after an event. The Civil Air Patrol aircraft can carry interchangeable sensor arrays, such as thermal cameras, synthetic aperture radars, lidar, communications equipment, and more. Imagery collected by the Civil Air Patrol is publicly available on the CAP GIS Portal.

In 2017, FEMA hosted a Disaster Crowdsourcing Exchange laying a foundation for working with the Civil Air Patrol to push the imagery out to various crowdsourcing channels. The Red Cross Humanitarian OpenStreetMaps Team (HOT) used it to map road networks. Crowdsourced imagery analysts used it for feature extraction and damage assessments. In 2018, this effort was developed further using Hurricane Michael imagery of Panama City, Florida, for creating artificial intelligence algorithms to identify and extract features.

The Civil Air Patrol captures imagery with the WaldoAir XCAM Ultra 50 by flying in overlapping circles as the aircraft sweeps over a disaster area. The overlapping images allow the system to create high-resolution 3D point clouds. The spatial intelligence algorithms employed with post flight processing conducted by Skyline and GeoX can automate feature extraction of buildings, vehicles, bridges, roads, cell towers, and other structures, and identify structures as destroyed, damaged, or undamaged. The system can begin damage assessments almost immediately. The process used to take several weeks with an enormous cadre of specialists and resources and now it can finish in a few days or less with a handful of specialized staff.

I had the privilege of speaking with the Director of Operations for the Civil Air Patrol, Mr. John Desmarais, or Moose as his friends know him. He is a 33-year veteran of CAP, has a pilot’s license, a master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and is married with two children. Moose shared how September 11th, 2001 changed his commitment and understanding of C.A.P.’s role working with and supporting homeland security missions. He shared with me some of the stories above and gave me an in-depth look into CAP’s future.

Today, the Civil Air Patrol supports important missions. For FEMA CAP does post-event damage assessments after hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes, dam bursts, and more. This will be able to get people the assistance they need much faster ultimately saving lives. This year alone, the Civil Air Patrol has saved 91 lives according to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. Other examples are providing search & rescue, border protection, homeland security, emergency flight services, remote sensing, humanitarian support, education and training, and Air Force training support to name a few. These initial successes led Christopher Vaughan, the Geographic Information Officer of FEMA, to request the Civil Air Patrol provide GIS support for natural disaster operations. CAP remains very active fulfilling that commitment. Mr. Desmarais said that CAP took close to half a million pictures for the 2018 hurricane season. FEMA hosts all of CAP’s publicly available imagery as part of its GEOPlatform.

GIS has always been a huge part of what the Civil Air Patrol does when looking at it from a basic level of identifying locations, features, and information. Now, GIS is becoming central to the operations of the Civil Air Patrol because it is a force multiplier as in the example above, using spatial intelligence for completing disaster estimates in days instead of weeks with a fraction of the staff. This is powerful and driving the future of CAP towards a more geocentric operation. CAP’s GIS future is in modeling, remote sensing, crowdsourcing, artificial spatial intelligence, and data sharing.

In 2019, the Civil Air Patrol proposed its path forward creating opportunities for its members to gain valuable GIS skills and creating a qualification in GIS Operations. The Civil Air Patrol has recently begun fielding courses with support from its partners to provide training qualifications. Members of CAP can receive the following training courses: GIS for Emergency Managers, GIS Applications for Emergency Management, GIS Specialist and training in HAZUS, a GIS-based hazard analysis tool. This requirement for operations to become geocentric is so great that a call went out for people who are doing GIS work to reach out to the Civil Air Patrol Wing in their local area and consider joining. To find out more get in touch with your local Wing, visit www.GoCivilAirPatrol.com and enter your zip code to find a CAP squadron near you or you can reach out to the CAP National GIS team at [email protected] for more information. The Civil Air Patrol is using GIS more every day for search and rescue operations where CAP members are locating aircraft crash sites using ADS-B and radar data, and locating missing persons using cell phone forensics, and creating situational awareness maps for tracking resources and planning purposes for CAP senior leaders.

The Civil Air Patrol is investing into autonomous aircraft technologies. It has the largest inventory of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) for civilian/ public safety use in the nation. The great advantages to CAP for sUAS are their low costs to deploy and their ability to collect close-up, high-resolutions imagery with minimal risk to people. In disaster areas flying low level flights are extremely hazardous to piloted aircraft because wires and cables and other smaller objects that have shifted. The use of sUAS will fly alongside emergency responders and CAP expects to have sUAS available for each of its 150 incident command posts across the country by the end of 2020 with over 1,000 trained operators nationwide.

In the future, the high-resolution 3D imagery point clouds will enable the Civil Air Patrol to provide real-time virtual environments and augmented reality enhanced awareness for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, especially when that imagery is infused with powerful geographic information systems and artificial spatial intelligence algorithms.

In the near term, the Civil Air Patrol will be expanding the number of aircraft it has equipped with FLIR and other high-end sensors and will continue growing its sUAS operations. It will continue its outreach efforts to build working relationships with new partners and bring onboard volunteers interested in supporting GIS and imagery analysis.

As technology evolves, the Civil Air Patrol will continue to be a platform for implementing new technologies to secure the country in times of crisis. The words spoken by Colonel Scott at the First Report to Congress in May 1948 continue to ring true.

“I predict that the Civil Air Patrol will grow immeasurably stronger — it will continue to contribute to the strength and the security of this nation.”
—Colonel Scott, First Report to Congress, May 1948

September 9, 2020

At-home crowdsourcing and citizen science for mapping enthusiasts

The world so close has never seemed so far away. Locked up and adrift, somewhere between the comfort of the past and the anxiety of the future, the present slowly passes by in a procession of nameless days. The living room has become a sundial. Shadows pass from one wall in the morning to the far side by day’s end. Outside, spring has sprung, but inside, winter lingers on.

Alone, we can do so little. Together, we can do so much.
—Helen Keller

Times like these, detached and disruptive, are opportunities in disguise. Ironically, while the world is confined and socially distanced from one another, humanity is more connected than it has ever been. Hard to believe, but smart mobile devices began just over a decade ago; and we are in the midst of a growing tsunami of connected devices, cloud computing, big data and open source. These events, coinciding with the exponential growth of geographic information systems and data analytics, have set the stage for crowdsourcing and citizen science. The era of empowering individual contributors has begun.

It has probably gone unnoticed due to all the political wrangling in Washington, D.C., but over the last two administrations, with bi-partisan support, without recognition or renown, a monument to American ingenuity was christened. Beginning in 2010, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act was passed. Then, in 2014, the White House elevated homegrown inventors and creators calling it the Maker Movement and hosted the first-ever National Maker Faire. In 2015, the STEM Education Act became law and in the same year the Senate introduced The Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act. In 2017, the American Innovation Competitiveness Act became law formally coining the term, crowdsourcing. In 2019, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) delivered the first-ever comprehensive report to Congress about federal agencies activities involving crowdsourcing and citizen science (FedCCS). Also in 2019, OSTP along with the General Services Administration (GSA) hosted the U.S. Government Open Innovation Summit.

The OSTP FedCCS report to Congress titled, “Implementation of Federal Prize and Citizen Science Authority,” cites 169 FedCCS prize competitions conducted by 18 federal agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST). However, the number of FedCCS projects is much greater than what is covered in the report. On Challenge.gov the amount of competitions rose from 744 in 2016 to 875 in 2018, and the prize awards ranged from $0 to $20 million with an average payout of $75,000 in FY2018. The next report is due in 2021.

Governments tapping into the resources of its citizens for innovation is not new, but it has never been on this scale and granted such authority. One of the first official attempts was the United Kingdom’s Longitude Prize in 1719 offering a King’s ransom of £20,000 [see article: From the Pyramids to GIS/GPS] to solve positioning at sea. Great Britain still honors the original Longitude Prize using the name for their national grand crowdsource competition. Similarly, in the United States the grand challenge is the X-Prize, the most famous one being the Ansari X prize. You may not know the prize by its name, but as NASA’s Space Shuttle Program phased down, the Ansari X-Prize kicked-off the space race among private companies. Scaled Composites won the $10 million prize in 2004 reaching space in a reusable craft, which became Virgin Galactic.

The term “crowdsourcing” means a method to obtain needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting voluntary contributions from a group of individuals or organizations, especially from an online community.
—15 USC Chapter 63 §3724 (2): Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science

The U.S. Federal Government already relies on the public for information to help improve and maintain its products and better serve the country. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has had an ongoing cooperative with the U.S. Power Squadrons since 1963 to report safety hazards to navigation and help maintain the information on maritime nautical charts. The agreement to support NOAA was renewed in 2013 for another 50 years.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) accepts reports from the general public, especially aircraft pilots regarding the accuracy of information in the products it publishes which can affect changes to aeronautical charts and flight operations.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has The National Map Corps (TNMCorps), which began in 1994 with the Earth Science Corps and the Adopt-a-Quad program. These two programs consolidated into a single online crowdsourcing effort to support USGS in 2013. TNM Corps helps maintain USGS’s maps and allows private citizens to do feature collection activities. It is easy to join and simple to use making it a way for all ages to join the crowdsource movement. What is also significant about USGS is that Dr. Sophia Liu, Co-Chair of the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science resides there. Dr. Liu helped stand-up FEMA’s crowdsourcing and citizen science unit in 2007. She is now the coordinator of FedCCS activities and helped co-write the 2019 OSTP FedCCS report to Congress.

Crowdsourcing is about actively engaging people in a certain task, sometimes a very specific micro-task that includes a two-way feedback loop with the public. We need to leverage the human power that is better at understanding, processing, and communicating information.
—Dr. Sophia B Liu, Innovation Specialist, USGS

Some of the most popular sites for GIS enthusiasts to get involved are Open Street Maps (OSM), GISCorps, GeoHIVE and Zooniverse. OSM has more than 2 million contributors worldwide and has been on the front line of international disasters beginning with the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Through its Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) it has supported operations of the Red Cross, FEMA, and United Nations. Through the power of the crowd, OSM contributors rapidly map transportation networks in disaster areas to show the most accessible routes in order for rescue operations and emergency supplies to reach the most impacted communities.

The GIS Corps, founded in 2003, operates under URISA and coordinates short-term mapping volunteer projects for humanitarian relief, human rights, disaster response, and other important efforts. Over 4,500 volunteers have helped support 195 missions around the world such as Hurricane Katrina, Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone, and the Nepal earthquake, in fact, if there is a crisis somewhere in the world, GISCorps is most likely going to have an effort in place to support it.

GeoHIVE (Geospatial Human Imagery Verification Effort) is an imagery based geospatial crowdsource platform which began in 2015 eventually replacing Tomnod in 2018. Digital Globe formed a collaboration with Radiant Solutions, SSL and MDA combining efforts and resources creating a more robust crowdsourcing platform. GeoHIVE’s 3,000 volunteers have contributed to nearly 700 campaigns. Registering for GeoHIVE requires an Amazon Mechanical Turk account, which allows contributors to be compensated for crowdsource tasks.

Zooniverse began as an astronomy site to enable hobbyists to help classify galaxy types but quickly grew into a crowdsource platform that encompasses all sorts of projects in addition to its cosmic origins including art, biology, literature and there are several spatially related projects to be found, as well. With Zooniverse you can contribute to science by studying gravitational waves or categorizing auroras as the ionized plasma washes up onto our cosmic shore.

90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today.
—Steven N. Rader, Deputy Manager, NASA, Center of Excellence

That quote by Steven Rader of NASA is accredited to Derek de Solla Price in 1961 referring to the exponential growth in the number of PhD’s and patents throughout the world. But now, science is in the hands of the Makers — those with 3D printers or those who can program a virtual world, or design an augmented reality, or those who can extract patterns from data and provide meaningful intelligence in geography, demographics, genetics, biology, and every field of study.

Citizen scientists are making a significant mark upon the world. Take for example CeCe Moore, a genealogy hobbyist who became a self-taught expert and now tracks down killers solving several cases using her laptop and open source DNA records. Gary Hug, a backyard astronomer, who built his own observatory in Topeka, Kansas, has discovered over 300 asteroids in near Earth orbits, and in March, Michael Mattiazzo, a citizen scientist astronomy enthusiast, discovered comet (C/2020 F8) SWAN which will make its closest approach to Earth on May 13th inside Earth’s orbit. Then there is Ted Ground, a citizen scientist hero. Ted is a winner in multiple citizen science competitions winning the NASA ideation challenge for the Mars ballast payload, the Bureau of Land Reclamation challenge for identifying insect invertebrates in rivers and estuaries, and the INNOcentive challenge for identifying trace minerals in livestock.

The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
—Peter Diamandis, executive chairman of the X Prize Foundation

Challenges are competitions sponsored by governments, private industry, non-profits and international entities. At the end of this article are listed several challenge sites. Agencies of the U.S. government post their challenges on Challenge.gov and CitizenScience.gov. Challenges are opportunities to work on projects for NASA, DOD, EPA, NOAA, FEMA, USGS, DARPA, and a growing list of agencies and companies. Most of these projects can be worked on at home with a laptop. Some challenges are for money or other prizes and some are just for the recognition, but all of them are ways to improve skills, build connections, and enhance a resume.

In closing, the legislation signed into law since 2010 culminating in the America Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2017 requiring bi-annual reports to Congress directs federal agencies to use Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science. This movement empowers the individual. There has never been a better time for an idea whose time has come.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
—Napoleon Hill, Author of Think and Grow Rich

A final note: The four-part television series, “The Crowd & the Cloud,” sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Waleed Abdalati, former NASA chief scientist, can be seen here.

May 13, 2020

Coronavirus: How mapping can stop a pandemic
Birth of an epidemic

Image: William Tewelow. Map data © Google

Men wearing white bio-suits entered the market from the main entrance. A panic ensued at the sight, and a commotion quickly spread through the crowd.

Shop keepers, sensing the worst, hurriedly gathered their belongings. People rushed towards the exits. More armed soldiers in white bio-suits pressed in, sealing off escape. Screams and weeping filled the market with the din of anxiety and fear. The Huanan Seafood Market was under lock down. The order was not to hurt anyone, but no one was to leave. The quarantine had begun.

Empty semi-trucks lined the main road. The trucks entered the parking lot one by one, and masked soldiers guided people into the backs of the empty trucks. Once filled, the trucks drove away until the market was empty. The people were transported to “isolation centers” several hundred kilometers outside the city.

Image: Duncan A Smith, CASA UCL. Data from Global Human Settlement Layer, https://ghsl.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.php

In Wuhan, the situation had deteriorated rapidly. A month earlier videos went viral about a mysterious flu with pneumonia-like symptoms. Most of the information was coming from citizen journalists. People speculated the Huanan Seafood Market was the source of the illness, but no official statements had been made.

Anxiety spread. People began fleeing Wuhan ahead of the Chinese New Year, which is the world’s largest annual human migration. Making matters worse, Wuhan is a major transportation hub in Central China, servicing 400,000 commuters per day through the Hankou Railway Station, a short, 15-minute walk to the Huanan Seafood Market.

Alerting the world

On Dec. 31, 2019, China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of the infection. The cause was a new strain of coronavirus along the same viral spectrum as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The next morning, on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020, the WHO declared the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) a public health emergency. It was also that morning that the seafood market was shutdown.

Above: One of the first and only videos coming out of China that covers the outbreak. Copyright: DW News, posted 23-JAN-2020

Twenty-three days after China notified the WHO, the city of Wuhan and the entire province of Hubei were quarantined and cut off from the rest of the world — an area comprising 57 million people, unprecedented in the history of public health.

Still, even with such extraordinary measures, it was already too late. The people moved faster than the system could adjust. Five million people, almost half the residents of Wuhan, had already evacuated. Many traveled to other parts of China to stay with family while others left China altogether, some finding themselves in countries they were banned from entering.

Containment and quarantine

China is now dealing with a containment issue at some level in every one of its provinces. In total, 174 million people in China are under some level of travel restriction. By comparison, that is equal to more than half the population of the United States.

China immediately began leaning on its massive surveillance network and facial recognition technologies to control the outbreak. Using these technologies, Chinese authorities could narrow the search for those most likely to carry the virus. The situation transitioned from a medical emergency to a national security emergency on Tuesday, Feb. 11, when China fired its two highest ranking medical officials in Hubei province, replacing them with a senior Chinese government party official.

Additionally, China continues working with the three cellular phone carriers in the country to gain access to users’ location data. This information will enable China to conduct geospatial analysis at an individual scale to identify those who have come into contact with infected areas. This practice is very controversial, placing privacy and human rights in conflict with public health security.

Roots of GIS in epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of people, place and disease, perfectly suited for geospatial technologies. Not surprisingly then, the true origins of geographic information systems (GIS) are founded in epidemiology, harkening back to John Snow’s Cholera map in 1854. The location of infected people clearly pointed to the Broad Street water pump as the cause. That changed the scientific understanding of the time from believing cholera was transmitted in the air to realizing it was a waterborne disease.

John Snow’s 1854 map of the London Broad Street Cholera outbreak. (Image: public domain)

Similarly, the scientific consensus of COVID-19 has also changed since it first emerged. When the outbreak began, it was believed to be zoonotic, meaning the virus originated from animals and transmitted to humans. It was then believed the virus could only be transmitted directly from person to person. Now, it is known to be carried through the air or by touching infected surfaces.

Each of these modes changes the transmission rate of the disease. This is known as the reproduction number, written as R0 and referred to as the R-naught number. The larger the R-naught, the more infectious the disease. COVID-19 is estimated to have an R-naught between 1.4 and 6.6, which is similar to its cousin the SARS virus; however, SARS only infected 8,096 people and this virus is already more than 10 times that amount.

In terms of GIS, the higher the R0, the greater the geographic area potentially infected. Narrowing the area to concentrate resources more efficiently requires improved modeling and collecting more data, both of which increase the time required before effective measures can be taken. This creates a dilemma between acting swiftly and acting accurately. This explains some of the images coming out of China showing people forcibly removed from their homes and placed in quarantine.

Image: John Hopkins CSSE, https://systems.jhu.edu/research/public-health/ncov/

Controlling the spread of the virus also requires knowing the source of each outbreak. The originating source, called the reservoir, once discovered can be cordoned off. Afterwards, through a process called “contact tracing,” all potentially infected people are tracked down and monitored or quarantined if necessary.

Probability models based on geospatial analysis use factors such as age, sex, pre-existing health conditions and distance from the reservoir overlaid with data such as population density to create an intensity map showing the areas most favorable to the spread of infection. People in the defined areas can be isolated and monitored, preempting further spread.

Click to enlarge. (Maps: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) requires data be aggregated at the zip code or county level, which is useful in defining regional trends, such as the CDC maps above of heart disease (red) and the areas of least physical activity (teal). Comparing the two visualizes the premise that exercise and good health go together. However, at this scale the information is not useful in fighting a dynamic and evolving situation like an infectious outbreak.

Ultimately, the goal is real-time feedback at a high-scale resolution. Smartphones and other mobile devices offer unique opportunities to combat epidemics. South Korea is using location information to help contain the outbreak. People use a special number to text where they have traveled. This is to assist in contact tracing if necessary.

Mobile devices can also report location data along with vital signs to monitor overall health and instantly identify individuals who may be a risk. The mobile device can also alert individuals if they are nearing an infected area and show the infected zones on their phones.

COVID-19 reporting via GIS

Systems can be established to report live events like Waze does for reporting traffic hazards, which have proven to report accidents faster than 911 calls. Also, the use of social media live feeds can help identify evolving situations and monitor existing ones.

Perhaps the government, working with mobile application mapping companies, should create a layer specifically for the epidemic that provides critical information, such as healthcare centers, some of which might be established specifically for the care of the disease outbreak.

Also, included in that public health layer would be high-risk areas, prohibited entry locations, areas under quarantine, and more, in order to provide an integrated interface to communicate with the general public. This is similar to how the departments of transportation, public works, and emergency response units provide information to the public to reroute traffic around congestion, accidents or closed-off areas.

Image: Coronavirus story map by Maria Laturnas, University of Potomac

A former U.S. Navy healthcare executive, Ben Boccuzzi, Ph.D., shared his thoughts on the matter with me. “The actual mortality rate of COVID-19 (in the U.S.) is hard to determine until mass testing can be done,” Boccuzzi said. “As of now, the true denominator (all people that would test positive for the virus) we only know of symptomatically and those that died from the disease. So, with these small numbers, the real mortality rate is not fully known. When testing begins on a grander scale, and more people are known to have the virus and do well, the actual rate of mortality will become much smaller.”

It is now more than two full months since the WHO declared a public health emergency. The number of known cases worldwide stands at 105,941 with 3,569 deaths affecting 100 countries.

If you’d like to track the virus, the John Hopkins GIS webmap interface updates in real time as new information becomes available.

Story Maps

Working with the University of Potomac, several students contributed story maps for this article. You can see their full projects at the links below:
Image: Coronavirus story map by Gangesh Khadka, University of Potomac

If you have read this far, thank you. I would like to leave you with the most important information in this article.

When I began covering this story it was early January, the virus was just beginning to make the news. Fear was in the air. I began to worry. As I immersed myself deeper into the topic, I became even more concerned; so much so, I bought two months of supplies preparing for a long-term self-quarantine situation.

If you’ve been watching the news, you may be nearing the same state of mind I found myself in. If so, I’ve got good news for you.

Paradoxically, people are attracted to fear. Fear is a potent biochemical rush. The horror movie industry rakes in $11.7 billion per year. Most media’s primary business is not information. It is using information to increase its readers and viewers, and fear captures people and holds their attention. The media is a profit-driven business. Facts tell. Fear sells.

The following is what is reported by the WHO based on 55,924 laboratory-confirmed cases since the coronavirus began. The study was published on Feb. 28. At that time, there were 86,992 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,979 deaths, equating to a mortality rate of 3.4%, but those numbers were mostly in China, specifically Hubei province. Outside of China, the number of cases were only 7,166 with 109 deaths having a fatality rate of 1.5%.

Image: Coronavirus story map by Zaid Alshaboul & Kush Shah, University of Potomac

These numbers do not reflect the whole story. If you are below age 50 and in good health, recovery is 99.1%, so there is almost no reason to be concerned. For those older than age 50 the mortality rate is 1.3%, and over age 60 it increases to 3.6%. For those over age 70 it doubles to 8.0%. The most vulnerable populations are those over age 80 with a mortality rate of 14.8%.

Additionally, those with pre-existing conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or respiratory disease are also at high risk. If you fall into either of those categories, take great care with your hygiene and personal protection. However, if you are below 60 and in moderately good health, there is less than a 1.3% reason to be concerned and more than 98.7% reason not to be concerned.

Unless something significant changes, the virus is a reason for caution, but should not be a cause for panic. The fearmongering has gotten out of control. We may or may not get COVID-19, but for those of us who do, most of us will only experience muscle aches, fever and a dry cough, about the same as catching a bad cold.

Ironically, be grateful in times like these. They give us reasons to take pause, love our family, appreciate what we have, realize life is worth living, and get our house in order. The truth is not the story we are being sold.

Image: wildpixel/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images
March 11, 2020
From the Great Pyramids to GIS/GPS

Connection to the Stars

Pyramids of Giza taken from the International Space Station. (Image: NASA)

The Great Pyramids still cast their long shadow upon history. It’s been said that even Time kneels before them. They are monuments to the state-of-the-art technology of the builders using their most advanced astronomy, engineering, mathematics and trigonometry as a testament to their understanding of the world.

They are monuments to the builder’s state-of-the-art technology at the time using their most advanced astronomy, engineering, mathematics, and trigonometry as a testament to their advanced understanding of the world.

The pyramids’ corners align perfectly to the four cardinal points. Shafts on the north slope point towards the circumpolar stars, the so-called “Imperishable Ones” because they never set beneath the horizon. The Great Sphinx, eternal companion of the pyramids, is perfectly aligned to face the rising Sun on the morning of the summer solstice.

These constructs defined the physical framework of their cosmogony — ancient Egypt’s center of the world — their prime meridian and equator. References of place were in terms of direction and distance from the pyramids.

The word meridian is a Latin derivative of meridiem, as in a.m. and p.m., meaning midday. The moment is marked by the sundials’ shadow being neither to the west nor to the east and is directly in the middle. It marks an imaginary line running from north to south. The Prime Meridian is synonymous with Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), Universal Time Coordinate (UTC), or the military time zone Zulu.

In Mesopotamia in 600 B.C. is a map carved into a clay tablet depicting Babylon in the center surrounded by a circular ocean marking the edge of the known world. Beyond the ocean are eight projections emanating like sunrays. Four of them point to the cardinal directions and the other four towards celestial bodies with mythological significance.

This map, called the Bitter Waters, the name of the circular ocean, is considered the oldest in the world; and thus, the first official cartographer forged together the geography of the physical world with that of the cosmos.

Early maps had few frames of reference. If you wanted to know your whereabouts, you had to already know where you were, otherwise, you’d need the expertise of a seasoned guide.

Celestial bodies were the primary means for finding one’s way, the main one being the Sun, especially at daybreak. In fact, for thousands of years the importance of the sunrise was so essential to getting oneself pointed in the right direction that to this day it remains the principle word for that action.

Consider the following. The way a map is pointed is how it is oriented. If someone is lost, physically or consciously, that person is disoriented. The skill of traversing overland is orienteering. These all stem from the Latin word for east, orientalis; hence, the civilizations beyond Byzantium were considered the Orient, and likewise, the word Asia comes from the Phoenician word for sunrise, Asu. Thus, setting out on a journey required waking up with the sunrise and marking the direction of the shadow and then dead reckon along that line due west, or opposite the line due east.

In fact, many ancient maps were oriented toward the east such as the Mappa Mundi mentioned later in this article. At night, the North Star and knowledge of the constellations were used for travel; but during the day, north was just a general direction. North was derived by drawing a right angle perpendicular to the line between the two points of sunrise and sunset. The term for North under Roman rule was pars caeli septentrionalis, which translated means, The part of the sky towards the seven stars, referring to Ursa Major and Minor. North was not of much use during the day until the invention of the magnetic compass.

The Early Superpowers and the Great Sea Race

The trade routes along the Silk Road collapsed after the fall of Byzantium in 1453, and where there is chaos there is also opportunity. Reestablishing dependable trade with the east was worth billions. Finding a sea route to become Europe’s source of spices and goods was too alluring. The “Sea Race” of nations had begun.

Cantino Planisphere. (1502) (Image: public domain)

Portugal won the first round of the Sea Race claiming islands to use for trade routes rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and reaching India in 1498. Columbus, sailing under the Spanish flag discovered the Americas in 1492. The Mappa Mundi by Spanish explorer Juan de la Cosa in 1500 is the first map to show the Americas.

Navigational maps were closely guarded national secrets; so much so, the Duke of Ferrara hired a spy, Albert Cantino, to steal a Portuguese nautical map, which is now named in his honor, the Cantino Planisphere, and it shows the emerging knowledge of the newly discovered world. It also marks the evolution of travel using celestial navigation. America, unnamed at the time, was a closely guarded secret by the Spanish and of top national interest.

Portugal and Spain dominated the oceans for most of the 15th and 16th centuries to the point that the world was divided between the two along a meridian known as the Tordesillas Line splitting the world between the two superpowers.

Technology Ignites the Golden Age of Sailing Ships

Thanks to early navigation of the Portuguese and the Spanish, the magnetic compass and the sextant came into use, allowing more precise calculations of latitude improving navigation. Cartography and surveying improved as a result. Ingenious approaches for telling time at sea were invented. One method used Jupiter’s four primary moons as a clock.

England, over 100 years late to the global expansion entered the Age of Sail in 1600 when Queen Elizabeth signed the charter establishing the East India Company (EIC). Contrary to both the Portuguese and Spanish models which were funded by their monarchies, the English created a profit-sharing corporate model, which would ultimately account for half of all the world’s trade.

The EIC remains the most profitable company in history (inflation adjusted), but the costs of running such a vast enterprise were also great. The EIC lost nearly 220 ships. Every ship lost was the loss of a captain, the crew, the cargo, and the ship itself. Shipping was a costly venture. Not counting pirates, storms and war, the primary cause of shipwrecks was incorrect location. Distances could be off by hundreds of miles, enough to end up in the shallows or the rocks.

The problem wasn’t latitude. That could be determined with a great degree of certainty using angular measurements of the sun and celestial bodies above the horizon. Longitude was the culprit. Knowing position on an east west axis proved much more difficult. Longitude was thought to be an astronomical problem, and in order to solve it King Charles II established the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England in 1675, which happened to be at the height of Europe’s scientific revolution, the primary scientist at the time being Isaac Newton.

However, as many of the greatest minds attempted to solve the problem, none were able to do so. Thirty years’ later the Royal Society presented the challenge to the public offering a reward of £20,000, which is equivalent to approximately $3.1 million in 2019. It was known as the Longitude Act of 1714. The solution finally came in 1736.

John Harrison, a clockmaker, understood that space and time are inextricably connected. Longitude was solved by having two chronometers, which literally means an instrument to measure time. One chronometer was set to local time each day at noon. The other was set to Greenwich Mean Time. The difference in hours between the two pinpointed the time zone and the corresponding longitude. The original time zones were not the political ones represented today. There were 24 of them around the circumference of the earth and each time zone corresponded to a different letter of the alphabet.

Time zones traverse in increments of -1 hour to the west and towards the east +1 hour for 12 hours in each direction totaling 24 in all. The Greenwich Observatory lies within time zone 0 which is the military time zone Z. In the military phonetic alphabet Z is Zebra but it used to be Zulu.. The more precise time could be measured, the more accurate the position, thus, location coordinates are measured in degrees, minutes and seconds.

Today, the world’s primary chronometer is called the Master Clock and is housed at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) in Washington, D.C. The USNO’s primary mission is position, navigation and timing (PNT). The grounds of the USNO is the home of the Vice President indicating the importance time is to commerce and the welfare of a nation.

GPS satellites set their internal clocks to the USNO Master Clock. PNT is so precise location can be determined down to the sub-millimeter level. Every smartphone’s geolocation is tied into this network. The U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock has a phone number, (202)762-1401, and every 15 seconds the voice of Time proclaims the exact moment, translating the decay of cesium-133 into the same language of the pyramids, the Sphinx and Stonehenge.

A final thought. Heraclitus said we cannot step into the same river twice. The river changes by the flow of itself. But, Time itself is a river and with each passing moment our lives forever change. Look back. It is the past — the place of regret and glory. Look forward. It is the future where hope and fear reside. Look at the present. It is the only place we are.

November 12, 2019
NOAA and the search for deep-sea corals

This article includes National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) undersea camera livestreams and an interview with an undersea expedition coordinator.

In a case of fortuitous happenstance, I found myself in an operations support center for an undersea expedition with two, large, flat screens mounted on a wall peering into the deep through the remote viewer slowly gliding through a dark blue barren abyss.

The NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer. (Photo: NOAA)

Deep dive into ocean exploration

That encounter led me on a deep dive of my own into undersea expeditions and becoming this month’s article.

I have been interested the deep sea since my youth growing up in the age of Sealab and watching The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Later in life, I served in the U.S. Navy and took part in one of the first successful real-world tests of a geospatially enabled, full-spectrum battlespace using tactical oceanography, which ultimately steered me into the field of Geographic Information Systems and Imagery Analysis.

That accomplishment helped in my being selected to establish one of the first operational GIS units for supporting Special Operations Forces.

After retiring from the military, I briefly worked as a nautical charts cartographer. So, from a practical perspective, for five years I worked supporting maritime, near-shore and riverine environments. However, going back another 10 years, I was formally trained in oceanography as part of my overall career in the Navy as an aerographer, which also included the disciplines of meteorology, astronomy and astrophysics.

Many years I spent observing and contemplating the ocean of air above, the waters below, and the heavens beyond. One cannot meditate upon the firmaments and assuage the wonder within. Whether for war or love, to ponder the sea and sky emotes an imprint on the heart.

Ocean, the larger part of Earth, alive and thriving, captivates our imagination. What must we, the conscious beast, have wondered when the first of us standing at land’s end looked out upon the mysterious deep of the Great Waters stretching from where he stood to the base of the celestial dome? Did he think it marked the end of the habitable world where mortals dwell and that the great expanse of waters separated us from the heavens where the sun rises and sets and where the moon and stars reside?

I shall reveal a secret; it is a mystery [of the gods] I tell you. There is a plant that grows at the bottom of the ocean, it has a prickle like a thorn, like a rose; it will wound your hands, but if you succeed in taking it, you will hold that which restores lost youth to a man.

— Utnapishtim, Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumeria 2100 BC)

Coral treasures

The Greeks, the race of ancient seafarers knew well the secrets of the sea. Aristotle, the wise philosopher of the ages, still teaches us through his pupil Theophrastus, who spoke of a deep sea plant, red and hard like a stone. He named it korallion. We call it coral.

Photo: NOAA

Aristotle also observed that sponges were better from deeper depths and invented the diving bell to collect them. Another of his students, Alexander of Macedonia, the warrior king, had a diving bell made of glass, a Colimpha, so he could walk the seafloor. Perhaps, on his conquest of Babylon, Alexander heard about the secret of Gilgamesh and sought the plant for himself. How valuable would such a plant be to a warrior king?

Corals have always fascinated man, like treasures from another world — not from this dry land called Earth ruled by air-breathing, upright beings, but from a world of water with bizarre and terrifying creatures and plants made of stone.

Photo: NOAA

Corals, as it turns out, are not a plant at all. They are the smallest of animals, called a cnidarian, and millions of them together form the broad-limbed, rock-like structures. They take many thousands of years to develop into the large, picturesque arrangements beneath the waves.

Colonies of corals form reefs. The largest of these is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia’s northeastern waters. The second largest is the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef in the Caribbean Sea. wherein lies the Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize. The Great Blue Hole was deeply explored this summer.

Corals are the cornerstone of the ocean. By some estimates, the world’s corals are worth nearly $10 trillion, but that diminishes their real value because if they perish the ocean itself could die. Corals are the proverbial canary in the coalmine, and throughout the world they are ailing.

The ocean’s health is in decline. There have been six severe coral bleaching events in the past 30 years and they are occurring more frequently and for longer periods each time. Over 20% of the world’s corals are already gone. Saving them is a concern for us all.

The United States is leading the effort to protect the ocean’s corals and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is at the forefront. The President’s Budget for 2020 funds NOAA for Ocean, Coastal and Great Lakes Research at $218.5M, which is an increase of $12.7M from FY 2018.

A team of scientists and researchers at NOAA are mapping deep sea corals in Alaska and Hawaii and along the coastlines of North America. Operations are underway aboard the Okeanos Explorer, one of NOAA’s ocean exploration vessels. It is on the second leg of Expedition 19-05 taking place from Tuesday, Aug. 27, through Sunday, Sept. 15.

The expedition begins in Canada’s largest underwater canyon, a marine protected area called The Gully 125 nautical miles (NM) off Nova Scotia, and then continuing south along the continental shelf. A deep-sea remotely operated vehicle (ROV), a modern-day Colimpha, is exploring the depths to over 10,000 feet (3,050 meters).

The dives are streamed daily from the ROV from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET. View the livestream here.

The ship’s location can be tracked online. Clicking on the ship icon will reveal details of the ship’s speed, heading, weather conditions and bathymetry

The Okeanos Explorer tracker allows users to follow the course of an Okeanos cruise. (Screenshot: NOAA)

NOAA’s Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program maintains the National Database for Deep-Sea Corals and Sponges, which is an interactive map portal with more than 650,000 records. It can be accessed here.

A Calling for the Ocean

I had the honor and privilege of interviewing Kasey Cantwell, an expedition coordinator for NOAA, after she returned from Halifax helping setup the command center for Expedition Deep Connections 2019 (EX1905).

In June and July of this year, Kasey led the Windows to the Deep Expedition (EX1903) from onboard the Okeanos Explorer, diving into a vast field of deep-sea corals known as the Blake Plateau about 100 miles off the coast of the southeastern U.S. It is one of the largest, most dense and diverse coral fields discovered at those depths.

Control room of the Okeanos. (Photo: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research)

Kasey’s seven years working at NOAA has been her dream come true. How every mission unfolds is what holds her fascination for the job. As the ROV Deep Discoverer descends, no one knows what they will find, but everyone knows they will be exploring an area never seen before.

They might find a shipwreck, or a plane crash, or a new species, or some strange geological formations. She very much enjoys listening to experts from around the world who are tuned in to the live feed from the ROV, discussing what they are seeing and — even with all that expertise — how often they are all surprised or stumped coming across something unexpected or never before seen.

Better ROVs on the Horizon

Deep-sea exploration is relatively new. Technology continuously improves. The ROV’s ability to remain in place with its high-resolution zoom camera makes exploring and observing the deep-sea environment possible like never before. New discoveries happen with almost every dive.

Limitations exist with the present class of submersibles because they are loud, bulky and bright, scaring off much of the marine life. But the next evolution of deep-sea submersibles are being developed.

The next generation will be stealthy, artificially intelligent, autonomous systems with improved battery life and a suite of sensors able to accomplish much more than we can today. Several of these submersibles will be able to operate in a network, providing us new and fascinating discoveries and observing marine life more naturally.

The best way to stay informed about NOAA’s expeditions is subscribe to NOAA’s Faceook page.

Protecting Our Oceans

America can be proud of its ocean services. NOAA is standing as the vanguard protecting our seas, balancing environmental concerns and commercial demands helping ensure our oceans remain thriving and healthy into the future.

NOAA is identifying areas to be designated as marine protected areas (MPAs) that need safeguarding. There are 15,059 MPAs in the world, and more than 10% are in U.S. waters. MPAs prevent over-fishing and minimize the effects of pollution and further damage to coral reefs and marine environments.

In closing, the biome of the sea has been under explored and undervalued, resulting in less funding, care and attention; but recent discoveries in biotechnology have scientists believing corals hold potential for medicines and life-saving drugs.

Already, more than 40,000 compounds from aquatic resources have been identified for possible medical benefits. This interest is stimulating investment into undersea exploration and development.

In the future, doctors will prescribe pharmaceuticals originating from coral farms on the ocean floor — a secret revealed over 6,000 years ago inscribed on clay tablets in the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest writings in human history.

The sea summons us to its edge providing a moonlit path by night, and by day a diadem of sparkles herald the sun.

The majestic ocean, rhythmic and soothing yet chaotic and raging, is a tempest that both calms and terrifies the soul. And we, the conscious, land-dwelling beast seeks understanding and harmony with our sister the Sea. That calling is the mission of NOAA’s Ocean Exploration Research.

Strange fluid extrusions found on the escarpment of Verrill Canyon at a depth of 7,972 feet (2,430 meters) on Aug. 30, 2019. (Screenshot: NOAA Okeanos Explorer ROV livestream)

NOTE TO THE READER: In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim preserved mankind from destruction, and as a reward was given eternal life. He was ferried across the “Great Waters” known as Ea, separating the land from the heavens, and sent to live in the city of Dilmun where the Sun rises. Urshanabi, the boatman, was the only one who could pass over the waters between the two worlds. Gilgamesh tricked Urshanabi into taking him in his boat to the edge of Ea to the gates of Dilmun where Utnapishtim came and told Gilgamesh the secret.

September 11, 2019
The story of GIS at DHS: An alphabet soup of progress
Read the first part of this series: The story of GIS at DHS: From Manhattan to Katrina.

The Geospatial Management Office (GMO) is the designated coordinator of geospatial activities throughout the core of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters and its component agencies.

Part I described how and why the GMO was formed and some of the early activities when resources were limited and expectations were low. Following the devastation along the Gulf States from Hurricane Katrina, the efforts to coordinate and empower the GMO gained focus and energy.

Image: USDHS

Needed: Better coordination

The magnitude of devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, the uneven response and the inability for all levels of government to act in a unified manner prominently showed the gaping hole in the nation’s geospatial coordination mechanisms. The irony in this lack of coordinated government action, and the blame placed on President Bush’s administration, was that the lack of a geographic framework had been identified as a vulnerability since the late 1800s following the Civil War and never fully addressed.

A patchwork of Executive Orders and other stop-gap actions were in place, but action was needed by the Legislative Branch to finally address this, and, as is too often the case, it took a major disaster to cut through the politics and make this happen, resulting in the Geospatial Data Act. For a more in depth analysis of the Geospatial Data Act read the November 2018 Geospatial Solutions article “Geospatial Data Act Will Bring Huge Changes to America and the World.”

Hurricane Katrina had a sobering influence on federal agencies, providing renewed focus to find new ways to share information, and communicate openly and effectively using a common standard and language.

Dan Cotter, director of the GMO from 2005 through 2007, understood this challenge. Following his predecessor, Ryan Cast (the first director of the GMO), Cotter furthered the relationship with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), establishing a Homeland Security Working Group with several sub-groups to advance DHS’s mission. Heavy lifting began on the symbol standards, data model and the U.S. National Grid (USNG).

This collaborative effort was furthered when the GMO secured funding for the first agency-wide enterprise license agreement (ELA) with Esri for GIS applications, training and services. The ELA reduced the cost and administrative difficulties surrounding procurement of GIS software. This dramatically increased the number of GIS practitioners seeking to partner with DHS, FEMA and the GMO.

Cotter was tapped to be the DHS chief technological officer in March 2007, passing leadership to Jeff Booth, who advanced the portfolio and led significant efforts to optimize the geospatial toolset of DHS while migrating it into the federal data-center environment.

Establishing a culture of trust does not come easy in bureaucracies, and this was no different for DHS. Being a relatively new agency, agility and eagerness were key traits, especially with a very fast-paced and high-stakes environment. People would volunteer to take on requested tasks, but that blurred the lines of responsibility.

The launch of GeoCONOPS

The HSE GeoCONOPS is a strategic roadmap to understand and improve the coordination of geospatial activities across the entire spectrum of the Nation. Updated on July 22, 2019, (Graphic: GeoPlatform.gov)

The FGDC and other working groups helped make introductions for the DHS GMO, which furthered the need to clarify each department’s role in the bigger geospatial picture. Defining these various operational roles and responsibilities led to the creation of the Geospatial Concept of Operations, or GeoCONOPS.

GeoCONOPS was a multi-year initiative, and is a playbook for a range of disaster-related events. Though initially limited to the disaster response and FEMA’s mission, GeoCONOPS was a structured community effort to clarify the types and timing of critical geospatial data and analysis needed in a disaster and continues to grow to address other DHS mission areas.

GeoCONOPS was initially published annually as a book, but changes were made too often and it is now only maintained as a website. GeoCONOPS describes the use of geospatial technology in the five mission areas of DHS:
- Prevent
- Protect
- Mitigate
- Respond
- Recover
It also contains a curated inventory of geospatial resources available to the homeland security enterprise. The final version of the book (v.6, 2015) is available for download. Though often seen as a product, it is likely that the process behind the GeoCONOPS development was of equal or more value as it helped to define the lanes and build much-needed trust among the federal geospatial actors.

Cover of HSE GeoCONOPS resource book, v.4. (Image: Geoplatform.gov)

Through this effective collaboration model, the GMO benefitted from other significant advances elsewhere in the agency and the broader geospatial community. The development of the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) delivered value as a portal for the exchange of information and geospatial products on a common operating network among DHS member partners. If there is a major event taking place, such as political conventions, the Super Bowl, or the Boston Marathon, HSIN is sure to be part of the event’s command and control.

Its value was further proven by leveraging HSIN’s user-authentication capability, providing a trusted access-control mechanism for HSIN and other web-hosted geospatial capabilities. These access controls greatly reduced the deployment burden on the Geospatial Information Infrastructure (GII), which is an on-premises version of Esri’s ArcGIS Online suite.

The GII allows for trusted partners to gain access to hosted data, create working groups, and develop and share maps and geospatial applications. The GII also provides access to customized Common Operational Picture (COP) applications providing geospatial situational awareness for a number of operational partners.

These COPs are a result of their own evolutionary pathway, leveraging technology developed by and for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (Palenterra) and through a first-generation viewer called the Infrastructure Critical Asset Viewer (iCAV). Now, with the tools in the GII, highly customized COPs and dashboards are developed for specific events and incidents and shared on an as-needed basis with the full range of stakeholders.

Where NGA and DHS intersect

DHS’s development of a national geospatial dataset put NGA and DHS on intersecting paths. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) only focused on foreign threats and supporting the warfighter, but after the attacks of September 11, 2001, homeland defense was added to its mission.

NGA’s proven success internationally allowed it to quickly focus on acquiring and developing the best available sources of data. This conventional mission for NGA led to the formation of a new stakeholder group; hence, the creation of the Homeland Foundation Level Data (HIFLD) committee, which developed the first national dataset designed for homeland security and critical infrastructure protection, the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP).

Having been initiated in the intelligence community, HSIP’s distribution was strictly limited, which inhibited its adoption across the mission space. To broaden its use, plans were developed to migrate all or much of the program to DHS and to shift the burden of restriction from the need-to-justify sharing to the need-to-justify restricting. With this new emphasis on sharing and openness, HSIP evolved to the current HIFLD Open and HIFLD Secure versions.

The GMO solidified its mission and purpose with the elements of community, transparency, security, technology and data falling into place. Through the leadership of the former GMO directors, the foundation they laid established the GMO as a respected and strong advocate throughout the agency and its partners, from local governments up to the federal level, becoming known as the Homeland Security Enterprise (HSE).

The HSE established a very real link extending from the on-scene first responder to the White House. By the time David Alexander, Ph.D., passed the baton to David Lilley in 2016, the GMO could deliver on its promises and was ready to expand outward. Lilley focused on realigning efforts to match DHS’s policy supporting National Special Security Events (NSSE) and community outreach through its network of 78 fusion centers.

Shortly after Lilley departed DHS, Hurricane Harvey’s torrential downpours and historic deluge began. Acting Director Michael Donnelly agreed to an innovative HIFLD solution to support FEMA operations to help mitigate the flood of data and requests that typically accompanies events of this magnitude.

Hurricane Harvey was Donnelly’s initiation. Following this and storms that followed, Donnelly focused on steadily maturing the GMO through deliberate outreach efforts and strengthening partnerships, building on outreach to regional fusion centers and non-traditional mission areas such as cybersecurity.

While not typically an operational player, the DHS Geospatial Management Office has become a trusted partner to those on the front lines, providing expertise, data, insights and architecture. The GMO is a foundational resource for operators, elevating their capabilities as a force multiplier.

While we can only hope against another cataclysmic natural disaster or major attack, when one does occur, the nation’s geospatial community is better prepared to respond to and recover from whatever comes.

As the saying goes, the better one strives to become, the greater becomes one’s enemies; so, as threats continue to evolve, our investments into geospatial technologies and critical infrastructure will pay dividends now and in the future helping to secure America’s safety here and abroad.

Remember, next time you are watching a large, national level sports game or a big storm approaching, know that others are watching, too. Behind the scenes another game is being played — one with much higher stakes. The players, you’ll not see, and the names, you’ll never know, but safety is their mission and GIS one of their primary tools.

Nate Smith — co-author and main contributor because of his work with the GMO — gave the following presentation to GeoDC, Washington, D.C.’s, geospatial community of interest on GeoCONOPS.

Epilogue

An inspiration for this article was to recognize the DHS GMO and its partners for their growth and utility as demonstrated during Hurricane Harvey, on the assumption that it was not otherwise acknowledged by the community. Well, awkwardly, in between this two-part drama, recognition did come from the Federal Geographic Data Committee in the form of the 2018 Doug D. Nebert National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Champion of the Year Award.

Here is a great podcast by NGA’s Geointeresting about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Nate Smith has worked at the confluence of geospatial information and disaster management in both the domestic (U.S.) and international domains since 1992. He has been an innovator and pioneer in this discipline through his work supporting USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, FEMA’s GIS Solutions Branch and the DHS Geospatial Management Office.

He refined his knowledge of requirements through work as an emergency first responder and international humanitarian, and has shared his knowledge and experience through courses delivered at a number of Universities. His background includes deployments to disaster locations around the world in support of operations and coordination efforts for events ranging from insect infestation to conflicts.

He is currently an independent consultant affiliated with the Florida International University Extreme Events Institute and FIU’s Academy for International Disaster Preparedness. He earned a BA in Geography from UMBC and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from Virginia Tech.

Credits

DHS Geospatial Management Office

GeoCONOPS Manual (version 5, PDF)

National Geospatial Intelligence Agency

Department of Homeland Security

The GeoCONOPS Operations spaceship graphic
August 14, 2019