GEOINT 2010
By Art Kalinski, GISP
It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see. (Thoreau)
GEOINT is “the” conference of the year for geospatial intelligence professionals. This year’s attendance was even stronger than last year, with more than 3,3000 attendees and 225 exhibitors.
Originally scheduled for Nashville, the significant flooding of May third caused severe damage to the Gaylord Opryland Conference Center. The damage was so extensive that the facility will not reopen until late November, too late for the originally scheduled GEOINT 2010. The nimble USGIF staff did a rapid about-face and rebooked GEOINT at the Earnest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. The conference and all related activities went off without a hitch, a testament to the hard work of the folks at USGIF.
GEOINT Awards Ceremony.
There is no way to cover the entire conference in this column, but there is extensive coverage available online from USGIF. One of the useful features of GEOINT was the publication of a timely and professional-looking show daily that was authored by KMI and USGIF during the day/evening, printed overnight, and slipped under hotel room doors of attendees each morning. The daily laid out the schedule and highlights for the day as well as summaries of key speakers the day before. Reading the show daily publication online is a good way to review the conference for those of you that weren’t able to attend. Following are links to the show daily.
USGIF also produced a daily video show that played on hotel room TVs. This was yet another way to view topics that may have been missed due to conflicting schedules. I always found it frustrating to attend large conferences with competing exhibits and multiple-track break-out sessions. The combination of video shows, daily news, and online information helped mitigate this frustration. You can view the GEOINT TV presentations by clicking here.
USGIF videographer.
Describing the conference title, GEOINT 3.0 in the opening session, K. Stuart Shea, CEO of USGIF paraphrased a definition of geography that I first heard from Dr. Jerry Ingalls of UNCC. He stated that old geography merely focused on locating features, but with analytic tools such as statistics and GIS, new geography had evolved into a broad definition simply stated as “why what is where.” And knowing that, one could then perhaps predict “where the next what would be.”
That summed up my general take on the conference. GEOINT is rapidly evolving to meet the needs of warfighters. Without going into detail, you could “smell” the difference in just one year. There was a greater emphasis on integrating GIS, imagery, multispectral, FMV (full motion video), SIGINT (signals intelligence), HUMINT (human intelligence), human terrain, and crowd-sourced and open-source information into a cohesive temporal picture that could be quickly and easily visualized and understood by troops in the field.
There was a sense of urgency, as explained by General Koziol who heads up the ISR Task Force. He spoke of the rapid evolution of enemy tactics driving the need for faster response to ISR requirements. He detailed needs for software with deliveries in less than 30 days and hardware deliveries in less than one year. Any longer means that the solutions will be obsolete by the time they get implemented.
One example that demonstrated the rapid intel environment was explained in a FMV breakout session. One of the indicators of a potential suicide bomber was the observation that frequently two vehicles were involved, a lead vehicle carrying the explosives with a suicide bomber and a trailing vehicle with a remote detonator. Seems like many of the suicide bombers are not volunteers that will self detonate, so the trail vehicle makes sure the act is carried out. If the driver “chickens out,” the vehicle is detonated anyway, and the driver’s family receives no reward money, just shame. You can easily see how time-critical identifying a similar event and acting on it can be.
There was a general consensus among the speakers that sharing data rapidly with our coalition partners was critical to success. Our tendency to over-classify and restrict our data makes the perishable data less useful. However, that opinion was tempered at this conference with the yellow flags sent up by WikiLeaks.
General Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, was the opening keynote speaker. Having held every key position in the intelligence community including NIMA director during 9/11, he showed a keen understanding of geospatial technology. He indicated that GEOINT was the most integrative environment to visualize and understand the complex data sources we have. He also felt that GEOINT would be equally valuable in the emerging cyber threat arena by mapping the virtual environment coincident with real physical locations and acting as a visualization tool to understand and combat the threat.
General Clapper seems to have a wry sense of humor with little patience for games. During his interview with the president, he stated that with “one foot in assisted living” he didn’t have the time nor desire for a lot of “Oval Office carpet time.” This must have been quite off-putting for most politicos within earshot. General Clapper also indicated that the SECDEF efficiency review was going to affect all defense communities with the possibility of seeing similar cuts that we saw in the early 90’s, in the range of 20%. He further elaborated that “What I’d look to do is profit from what happened to us in the 1990s, and lay out a strategy for this and absorb the pain smartly.”
The new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency director, Letitia A. Long, shared her vision for NGA. She stated that “I want to put the power of GEOINT directly in the hands of our users.” She wants to change the user experience by providing online, on-demand access to GEOINT data. She also wants to expand the analytic capabilities by providing contextual analysis of geographic features and imagery enhanced with temporal and human terrain geography.
The expo was quite extensive, with elaborate booths by all the major players. The show daily did a good job highlighting new products and capabilities of the majors firms. One thing I like to do at conferences is look at the small booths on the fringes of the exhibit hall. There is always a gem or two to be found with these small emerging companies. One example at GEOINT 2010 was GCS research with TerraEchos. This company was demonstrating a simple underground sensor that was covert, sensitive, and could accurately detect sounds, foot, or vehicle traffic while mapping the location on a GIS. The device, based on early U.S. Navy passive sonar work, consists of a ¼-inch rubber cable housing a thin fiber-optic line fed with a laser. The cable is buried 6 to 18 inches below ground, could be thousands of feet long, and displays the vibrations though micro distortion of the laser-illuminated fiber optic line.
GCS Research Display.
GCS Research Display.
USGIF also announced and presented a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award to Esri’s Jack Dangermond. The only surprise was that it didn’t happen sooner.
In several years of attending GEOINT, the environment is clearly getting more complex and “squishy” with the integration of many different intel sources in a rapidly changing world and a greater need for speed. Intelligence and the need to understand and act rapidly is paramount. A quote by Henry David Thoreau used by one speaker was spot on describing what the GEOINT community is tasked with accomplishing: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
Subscribe to GPS World
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to GPS World to receive more articles just like it.
Follow Us