Shutting Down a School for Ten Days to Profile Local Slums and other Education GIS News

The plan at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Deonar for the nine days after November 26, is no classes. Intead more than 1,700 students, 150 professors and staff members along with the director of TISS will collect data for a socio-economic survey in the slum pockets of M (East) ward of the city. This effort is part of the school's 70th year celebration.

The team from TISS will profile more than 230 communities in the area and list the number of hospitals and educational institutes in the area using the Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.  “Our aim is to make a difference in the living conditions of the ward where the disparities are huge,” said Leena Joshi, project in-charge. A proposal for transformation of the ward has been discussed with chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan.

- Hindustan Times

In a project that is part competition and part research study, George Mason University professors Charles Twardy and Kathryn Laskey are assembling a team on the Internet of more than 500 forecasters who make educated guesses about a series of world events, on everything from disease outbreaks to agricultural trends to political patterns.

They are competing with four other teams led by professors at several universities. Each differs in its approach, but all are studying how crowdsourcing can be used.

At stake is grant money provided by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which heads up the nation's intelligence community.

- Fosters via GotGeoInt

NGA is using academics at Washington University to gather data on Peru.

Being led by Professors Stewart Bruce (GIS), Aaron Lampman (Anthropology) and Andrew Oros (Political Science and International Studies), this unprecedented program will involve using open source software to obtain information regarding demographics, water resources, health-related issues, energy and food resources so that future problems can be anticipated in both scope and location in Peru.

- GIS on the Chester Blog via GotGeoInt

Abu Dhabi's Education Council (ADEC) is looking to use GIS to better serve students and to teach them.

While ADEC is looking to introduce GIS in specific classroom and teaching functions, the applications it has developed play a more strategic role, said Aly. ADEC has developed a Master Plan application, to provide information around the ten year plan to redevelop Abu Dhabi's school infrastructure. The application, which is under ongoing development, provided information to parents and students on which schools were being shut down in the emirate, where new ones were opening, and how pupils would be allocated to new schools, as well as providing a planning function in plotting demand for new schools based on residential districts.

- ITP

Long Provides Blueprint for NGA Modernization #geoint2011

Letitia Long, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, provided a four-point plan for making her vision a reality. Last year at the GEOINT conference she emphasized that she wanted to put the power of geospatial intelligence in the hands of more users. This year she updated the GEOINT Symposium audience with the progress that the agency has made. The four elements of the plan are:

CONTENT - The goal is to expose 100% of the content within the agency and make it discoverable. Any source material,  commercial and NRO imagery; foundation data, whether it is spatial or aspatial in nature ... Whatever is in the analyst's shoebox and especially finished product she wants posted on NGA website.

OPEN IT ENVIRONMENT - Long wants an environment that is two way where users can contribute to the CONTENT environment as well.

CUSTOMER SERVICE - Long emphasized that it is all about the user experience.  "We are a full service organizations; we understand the user's footprint and can anticipate the needs of our customers; we need an open IT environment to expose all that content," she said. "We will always be embedded with our mission partner; but increasingly our mission partners are GIS-savvy. We encourage it. For users needing assisted service they can enter into a chat with an analyst that helps the mobile force in certain challenges, what Long calls proactive assisted service.

ANALYTICS DEPTH - Long emphasized that when content is easily accessible and the user is being served, then the NGA can get to the deeper analytics. Long said that over 100 applications for mobile use were being developed and she demonstrated an iPad app developed by NGA to help disaster response team.

Quotes of the Day GEOINT Conference 2011 #geoint2011

Jim Clapper, Director of National Intelligence

Referring to the current budget crisis situation:

• We are going to have to reduce our contractor profile
• We are all going to have to share in the pain
• We are all going to have to give at the office

Paraphrasing New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford Clapper said, "We are running out of money so now we must begin to think."

Bruce Carlson, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office

Clapper Pushes Integration While Asserting Realistic View of IC Budget Situation #geoint2011

During his years at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and later at the Pentagon, Jim Clapper,  currently the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), admitted his organizations were lucky to be awash with money earmarked for the intelligence-gathering technology and replete with the personnel to carry out the mission.  Times have changed but the mission still grows and demands on geospatial intelligence are still exploding.

"What I'm pushing…it's integration," said Clapper. "GEOINT provides foundational the base over which all other intelligence can be overlaid...It makes for a better product for decision makers whether they are sitting in a fox hole or in the White House."

Clapper laid out his strategy that includes integration in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. Horizontal in that information must flow across the intelligence communities (IC); and vertical in the sense that integration must be about engaging with state, local, private, and tribal sectors, and it must also apply to those in the allied forces.

But the IC faces the reality of bulging national debt which itself threatens national security. "We are all going to have to give at the office," said Clapper. Clapper said that, coincidentally, today his budget was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget. It includes double digits cuts in the billions over the next 10 yrs. "We are going to have to reduce our contractor profile...We're all going to have to share in the pain," he said.

In a frank discussion with President Obama, Clapper told Obama that this is a litmus test for the Office of the DNI indicating that these budget cuts might signal that the office was in jeopardy of surviving. But it appears that Clapper wants to fulfill the mission of the Office of the DNI.

An area where there is huge potential in getting savings is integrating IT. "If there is an area where we can bring about efficiencies and savings, that's it," he said. He mentioned that while cloud computing is certainly one solution, "an enabler" it's not a panacea. Clapper is focusing on eliminating redundancies within IT and said he will deliver his implementation plan this December. Paraphrasing New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford Clapper said, "We are running out of money so now we must begin to think."

"Yes, we have a challenge but we'll get through this one too. I'm very proud of what geospatial intelligence has done or is doing," said Clapper.

But sounding a note of caution he said that "Contractors will contribute in the future but at the same time we have been luxuriously funded over the last 10 years. When I was at NGA in those dark days after 9/11, we rapidly expanded the workforce by brining on contractors; perhaps we didn't do that as efficiently as we could have."

DigitalGlobe Gets Nod from NGA on RDOG

DigitalGlobe's Rapid Delivery of Geospatial Intelligence (RDOG) program to provider faster delivery satellite data and intelligence to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency got an added boost today with the federal agency issuing a contract for $37.9 million in additional funding for the program. Jeff Kerridge, senior vice president and general manager of DigitalGlobe’s defense & intelligence business unit said that the original RDOG concept was just a small area online originally that provided but that the web services platform continued to grow withing the past few years. This new contract represents recognition from NGA as to success of the delivery platform. Kerridge said that the program is in alignment NGA director Tish Long's goal of getting more data online and getting closer to the customer. 

The objective of RDOG was to provide end users, especially warfighters, access to satellite data within hours of data acquisition. The new contract will expand the scope of image delivery to cover in excess of 10 countries, with imagery delivered within three to five hours after data collection. The ability to provide faster access is facilited by the increase in the number of ground stations located within the equatorial region. This year, DigitalGlobe has activated four new ground stations around the world and three more are planned for 2012, which will take the total number of ground stations to eleven. Kerridge indicated that this added ground station capability for more frequent downloads of satellite data is equivalent to adding another satellite to the constellation.

The RDOG interface is a "Google Earth-like" experience that allows for roaming, panning and zooming to the data that is tagged with information about when it was collected. RDOG also represents the intentions of DigitalGlobe to bring this type of functionality to users in both other public agencies as well as commercial businesses.