Intelligence on Demand (IOD)

Oblique Imagery Online a Significant Game Changer for Federal Agencies

By Art Kalinski, GISP

A new technology service has just been initiated that may affect almost every federal employee who needs to view high resolution oblique imagery in the United States and key locations around the world. This service is a joint effort between Pictometry International and defense partners.

First, in full disclosure, I’m a consultant for Pictometry. I debated if I should write this article, have someone else write it or leave it alone. Discussing it with my editor we decided that it was too timely and important not to cover and I was clearly the best person to do the article because of my first hand experience and knowledge of the topic. I’ll try my best not to sound like a commercial but I will present you with the facts as I know them.

To put this article in context I want to share by background with those of you not familiar with it. I learned about GIS in the mid eighties when I was tasked to do a base closure study for the Navy including the desire to close 10-20 percent of the Naval Reserve Centers nation-wide. The reserve centers were the most challenging because each required a detailed analysis of reservist assignment, travel and per diem costs for centers that were closed. Congressional pressure to not close facilities in local districts was a significant issue. Time was very tight and traditional paper map analysis would have been impossible until I learned about GIS. GIS permitted me to do ring studies of over 100 reserve centers involving 30,000 reservists very quickly and very accurately.

GIS proved to be such a powerful technology that I earned a Masters degree in GIS upon retirement from the Navy. I then joined the Atlanta Regional Commission as its GIS Manager for over 14 years. During my tenure we set up an ESRI ArcView Learning Center and taught over 1000 students during the 8 years of operation. One disappointment over those years is that even though we would occasionally get a police officer or firefighter through the class I never felt that GIS gained any strong traction with first responders. I got the feeling that it was just too hard and no one got proficient enough to use it in emergency situations.

Then everything changed. In 2006 we were exposed to a new technology that provided high resolution oblique imagery that was geo-referenced and very accurately measurable. It was extremely easy to use, could be overlaid with our GIS data and provided a visual operational picture that was not matched by even high resolution ortho imagery. (See my GSS column “The Whys of Oblique Imagery” April 8, 2008 for a scientific explanation why oblique imagery has proved to be so effective compared to using only ortho imagery.)

Police and firefighters took to it instantly. The technology was such an improvement over traditional GIS data with ortho imagery that we were seeing measureable improvements in the effectiveness of firefighters and other first responders.

The technology was being used by firefighters to preplan their action on the way to fires. The common operational picture permitted them to view and measure all aspects of their attack on a fire including access to the site, measuring the lengths of needed fire hoses and even measuring the heights of buildings to determine the lengths of ladders that would be needed. It was so effective and easy to use that over the past two years of keeping statistics one large county determined that they have reduced the attack time on a typical fire by 60-90 seconds. Police SWAT teams and 911 Call Centers also experienced similar success and believe that they have saved lives in the process.

The technology took root and soon most counties in the region were using it. It had an unprecedented impact on GIS. Most counties experienced a 10 to 20 fold increase in GIS usage in the more user friendly and understandable oblique environment.

After two years of hands-on experience with Pictometry, I was approached by them to promote and manage military projects. I was surprised the technology was not already used by the military and jumped at the chance to help. The opportunity to put the technology in the hands of the military and first responders means much more to me than just a job. While I was still on active duty I had the painful task of presenting the Flag on three separate occasions to family members of sailors lost in the line of duty. I can tell you first hand that presenting the flag to parents or young family members is one of those life changing moments that you never forget. So when Pictometry presented me with the opportunity to perhaps in some small way minimize the potential loss of yet another service member I was thankful for the opportunity. I jumped at the opportunity and feel privileged to be able to contribute and help those that may be in harms way.

What I soon learned is that the technology was very difficult for federal agencies to acquire. This difficulty stemmed from the business model used by Pictometry, flying and selling counties. In the early days, Pictometry would fly and sell imagery county by county. This worked extremely well for local governments, even those with limited budgets. The imagery was very cost effective and was a significant boon to tax assessors and first responders. So effective was this effort that their customer base includes 90% of the US Urban Areas. Overseas users have been equally impressed with partners operating in 137 countries and territories. Overseas users have been equally impressed with major cities in over 142 countries imaged.

This business model had a serious limitation for state and federal customers since it was very difficult to scale up to state and federal levels. No one had budgets to buy hundreds of counties let alone the entire country. I remember an early visit to a national bureau that clearly highlighted the problem. Most agencies don’t have budgets to buy imagery of the entire country. They can never predict where the next security event or emergency will occur and have to respond anywhere instantly. What they needed was access to all the imagery on an as-needed basis. This is what IOD (Intelligence-on-Demand) provides.

IOD is a service based on the successful online commercial service that Pictometry has been providing to the civilian sector for over a year, called Pictometry Online (POL). The POL service provides a variety of solutions, from real estate to engineering to golf. Large insurance companies use it as well as hundreds of roofing companies that can view and measure roofs and provide estimates to customers during their initial phone request.

Below is an example of how the Pictometry imagery differs from other imagery sites that only show ortho imagery. Although the straight down view shows Big Ben, it’s really difficult to make it out in this “ortho view.” The IOD image shows a very recognizable oblique view of Big Ben and the users can view it from five directions, north, south, east, west and straight down. Additionally since all historic imagery is also on file many locations will have several years of imagery that can be selected to show changes over time.

But these are not just “pretty pictures.” As the name Pictometry implies the images are metric – each pixel is fully geo-referenced. Users can easily overlay GIS data and perform rapid on-screen measurements of objects in the image with little to no training. Measurements such as length, area, ground elevation, lat/long, bearing, and locations can be made with the simple click of a mouse. And unique to oblique imagery, the height of objects can also be measured without the need to do stereo analysis – just click on the base of the object and drag upward to measure the height.

Note that even thin vertical features such as whip antennas, guy wires, stanchions and even signal flag halyards are visible in this sample image of the USS Wisconsin on historic display in Norfolk, Virginia.

The natural question is how IOD differs from the commercial access imagery sites. First, Bing Maps (previously Microsoft Virtual Earth), which uses Pictometry images, only has viewing capability — users cannot make measurements nor can they overlay GIS data layers or export annotated images. There are also limitations of image quality and coverage. Additionally, this system is accessed over non-secure HTML connections at a commercial site, meaning it is easy for a third party to view where a federal user may be paying special attention – a big issue for many federal customers.

IOD was set up to address many of these limitations. The IOD team has installed 2-petabytes worth of secure server storage to provide the entire Pictometry image library to federal users via a trusted cloud through secure but unclassified (SBU) access. And since the data center is being built in a SCIF, it is possible to provide higher classification access via SIPRnet or JWICS, should a customer require it. The additional advantage of operating in a secure environment is that a federal customer could initiate a sensitive or secure image collection and make it available through the same system as all of the commercial data.

The secure sites permit users to view all the imagery, overlay GIS data, perform accurate measurements, annotate images and export those annotated images to other users. This will be especially important in responding to natural disasters such as hurricanes since the Pictometry capture and processing technology is so rapid that Pictometry was able to provide geo-referenced imagery to FEMA a day after Hurricane Ike hit Galveston, Texas.

Pictometry is now testing a real time capability to download the geo-referenced imagery from aircraft directed from the ground.

Another service that can be ordered online is the automated generation of reflective surface 3D models. These models have been used to help determine volume of debris fields to more sophisticated flight simulator databases that are not only photo-realistic but measurable and photo-accurate. This is an especially important factor for use in tactical planning and mission rehearsal.

But the key decision factor is cost. This is where IOD solves several cost issues by charging an unusually low monthly per seat license. As a secure web service IOD answers several issues that have been important to many federal agencies including NGA. Since the secure servers house the imagery with remote back up, agencies eliminate the need for additional hardware and software. All users need is a URL. This imagery also satisfies the congressional mandate to save money by taking advantage of commercial off-the-shelf products (COP).

Most important to me is that this entire effort has led to testing of Pictometry cameras in military aircraft. Hopefully this will put the technology in the hands of people who need it the most, troupes in-theater, domestic security planners and first responders. As the image libraries expand and are updated they will be instantly available to all designated federal users.

The grand unveiling of IOD will be this month at GEOINT 2009 in San Antonio. To learn more see the Pictometry booth or contact Pictometry. My experience with this technology in the Atlanta region was an eye opener. Since it was very easy to use GIS usage jumped 10-20 fold and the most dramatic beneficiaries were first responders. If my Atlanta experience is any indicator, this technology will be a “game changer” for many Federal agencies. Most important, I know this service and technology is going to save lives.