Geospatial information systems (GIS) are essential for predicting threats and planning military operations to counter them, but data governance remains a persistent issue that can negatively impact readiness and mission success. Significant and ongoing challenges include vetting sources to ensure that information is reliable, managing vast amounts of data from disparate resources, and prioritizing data feeds to correlate with the most critical mission objectives. The priority throughout is to grasp the immense potential impact of data and harness it to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) advantage.
A potential Congressional amendment for the 2018 Geospatial Data Act may go part of the way in addressing these challenges, but the Department of Defense must do more on its own if data-driven initiatives like the Army of 2030 and similar efforts are to reach their fullest potential. Three priorities, in particular, can help DoD incorporate today’s evolving guidance from not only Washington but also futureproof military geospatial systems for decades to come so they reliably support the military analyst of tomorrow.
GIS Governance is a Work in Progress
The Geospatial Data Act in 2018 brought much-needed clarity and guidance for practitioners who work daily with GIS data. The legislation created a set of standards and policies aimed at reducing duplicative efforts and enabling more robust and secure data-sharing across all levels of government and the private and nonprofit sectors. However, the guidelines remain a work in progress, especially in light of how quickly the pace and size of geospatial data collection continue to grow.
That is why Congress is working to amend the law to further clarify standards, promote best practices, and push the nation closer to a shared infrastructure for the collection and use of geospatial data. The amended law would commission research into roles that each type of organization and government agency should ideally play in such a national infrastructure.
The amended law would also examine how much money federal agencies are spending on geospatial data annually and clarify how the GIS market ties to the broader U.S. economy. As these efforts continue to play out, the analysts and engineers who work daily with geospatial data are the ones who must put guidance into practice
Four DoD Priorities for Futureproofing Geospatial Data
Here are four priority areas where practitioners can best focus their efforts to optimize and futureproof how data is gathered, analyzed, and shared across DoD’s vast geospatial technology ecosystem of spaceborne, airborne, and groundborne assets.
1. Reduce cost and latency of data provisioning – As mentioned, Congress plans to examine costs, and it will not take long to see how some of these costs are duplicative. Especially where commercial sources are involved, DoD agencies sometimes end up paying multiple times to access the same data; or they may pay a premium to sources that provide faster access than the standard government GIS data pipeline allows. DoD should explore a more strategic, common repository approach for smarter provisioning, lower latency, and efficient archiving of GIS data that’s available to multiple stakeholders.
2. Align data standards at both the granular and metadata levels – While the sector has come a long way in the past two decades, there is still too much variation in how data and metadata are managed. For example, the formatting of time, origin, and other basic image data may vary between systems; these variations and omissions can increase with more advanced attributes such as the amount of cloud cover or infrared data. DoD should embrace more open data and API standards for more alignment at both the granular and metadata levels.
3. Optimize AI/M Edge processing at the source – Given that industry analysts estimate that $500 billion or more is spent annually on GIS data, any cost savings for connectivity, storage, or human analysis on such data is welcome. Edge-based AI/ML systems can reduce all these costs by processing data at the source and sending back highly vetted and contextualized data. This will reduce costly scenarios such as when a satellite sends back 4TB of raw data, the majority of which may turn out to be useless after analysis.
4. Embed security more deeply at the system root – System trust is founded on security; and that foundation must reach deep into core infrastructure. If hardware isn’t secure, then a system cannot be secure. Organizations must ensure security not just at the user or application level, but also at the foundational IT level across the entire GIS technology ecosystem.
Implementing GIS Data Priorities
A more modernized and agile approach to systems and infrastructure will help advance all three of these data priorities and facilitate the cost savings and strategic improvements sought by Congress in the Geospatial Data Act. Central to this approach are open, scalable cloud-based frameworks and automated data management tools for AI-powered insights at scale.
Since building infrastructure from scratch is not always practical, DoD should explore options for elastic secure, resizable compute capacity and bandwidth to analyze multi-petabyte datasets such as LiDAR data from mobile and aerial mapping systems, along with reams of other geospatial data collected daily by satellites, drones and ground-based vehicles. In addition, in certain instances where imagery resolution is restricted, organizations should avoid making the perfect enemy of the good by working to build assets to whatever level the technology allows.
These advances will also streamline collaboration around contextualized GIS data, including users who may not have expertise in data science or geographic information systems. A satellite image, for example, will become more useful for the chromatics analyst at headquarters, while at the same time better supporting the field strategist studying terrain and the warfighter in search of a quick snapshot for situational awareness.
DoD leaders cannot afford to stall on the path to maturing GIS systems. While evolving guidance from Congress may point the way, the agencies and the analysts who work and collaborate daily with geospatial data are the ones who must mature GIS systems over time. Tooling and processes continue to evolve around Geovisual data management, 3D visualization, analytic applications, and enterprise integration capabilities across a variety of OGC standards – such as 3D Tiles, WMS, WMTS, CDB, CityGML, GeoTiff, LAS, KML, and others. By maturing capabilities in these ways, DoD stakeholders can ensure operations are not only ready to meet today’s critical national security needs but also futureproofed for tomorrow’s innovations and mission priorities.
The author, David Guffey, is Director, USSOCOM & IC Accounts at Intel Corporation. His co-author, Andrew Awalt, is Industry Technical Specialist – Defense & National Security at Intel Corporation.