Tuesday, October 20. 2009

A Geographer at the State Department

At the GEOINT Conference, Dr. Lee Schwartz spoke about his job as the geographer for the U.S. Department of State, and, in particular, working with a new administration. "I"m often asked what is my job like with the change of administration," said Schwartz. He said that he is faced with making GEOINT relevant to the most senior policy makers because it is still a challenge. Not many of them appreciate the technology.

Schwartz also noted how the geospatial community is somewhat inward focused. "We as a community are far too self congratulatory. Too often we are moving things form GIS geek to GIS geek without following up on which applications are the best used." His department worked with NGA during the Tsunami in Bande Ache, Indonesia and with the Chinese for the Sichuan earthquake hailing these as landmark data sharing agreements. In the case of the Chinese earthquake there was a post operation celebration, but afterward Schwartz said he never found out how imagery was used indicating that cooperation was good but follow-up was poor.

Finally, Schwartz had an interesting observation about geospatial technology. "We shouldn't forget the power of a good map," commented Schwartz. "The use of [the term] COP (common operational picture) drives me crazy because its really nothing more than a good map." His department also supports a variety of non-governmental organizations and Schwartz is particularly adamant that the depiction of international boundaries, maritime boundaries and the like are extremely important to field operations in far parts of the globe.

Posted by Joe Francica in GEOINT 09 at 12:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to	[ Top level ]
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information?   Subscribe to this entry