OMB Budget Guidance For Geospatial Initiatives

The White House has given agencies via the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) how to move e-government and lines of business initiatives forward. Of note for geospatial:

By April 1, the Geospatial Line of Business program management office will provide recommendations to revise its governance structure, a 2012 business case and budget request for imagery for the nation and a modernization plan, including a target architecture of the geospatial platform.

- FedNewsRadio via @MAPPSorg

Using Geospatial Abduction to Locate IEDs

University of Maryland computer science Ph.D. student Paulo Shakarian and computer science Professor V.S. Subrahmanian, together with University of Torino (Italy) computer science Professor Maria-Luisa Sapino have developed a technique called geospatial abduction which finds the best explanation for observed information in space. They’ve successfully used it to predict the locations of IEDs planted by insurgents. It harkens back to the ideas in the TV show NUMB3RS:

And like many of the NUMB3RS episodes, the SCARE mathematical formula is based on abductive logic. Classical deductive reasoning tries to state what follows from a set of facts, while abduction tries to find the best explanation for a set of observations. In this case, the observations are the locations of the IED attacks, together with the ethnic make-up of neighborhoods. The best explanations correspond to the most likely locations for the weapons caches supporting these attacks.

- press release

Quote of the Week

“I truly believe that this is the future,” he said. “I think eventually, all government spending will be done this way.”

- Earl E. Devaney, chairman of the federal Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, speaking to Redlands residents and GIS users at ESRI on how a website tracks federal stimulus money Wednesday night, quoted in the San Bernardino Sun.