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NV5 Geospatial Blog

Each month, NV5 Geospatial posts new blog content across a variety of categories. Browse our latest posts below to learn about important geospatial information or use the search bar to find a specific topic or author. Stay informed of the latest blog posts, events, and technologies by joining our email list!


Monitor, Measure & Mitigate: Integrated Solutions for Geohazard Risk

Monitor, Measure & Mitigate: Integrated Solutions for Geohazard Risk

9/8/2025

Geohazards such as slope instability, erosion, settlement, or seepage pose ongoing risks to critical infrastructure. Roads, railways, pipelines, and utility corridors are especially vulnerable to these natural and human-influenced processes, which can evolve silently until sudden failure occurs. Traditional ground surveys provide only periodic... Read More >
Geo Sessions 2025: Geospatial Vision Beyond the Map

Geo Sessions 2025: Geospatial Vision Beyond the Map

8/5/2025

Lidar, SAR, and Spectral: Geospatial Innovation on the Horizon Last year, Geo Sessions brought together over 5,300 registrants from 159 countries, with attendees representing education, government agencies, consulting, and top geospatial companies like Esri, NOAA, Airbus, Planet, and USGS. At this year's Geo Sessions, NV5 is... Read More >
Not All Supernovae Are Created Equal: Rethinking the Universe’s Measuring Tools

Not All Supernovae Are Created Equal: Rethinking the Universe’s Measuring Tools

6/3/2025

Rethinking the Reliability of Type 1a Supernovae   How do astronomers measure the universe? It all starts with distance. From gauging the size of a galaxy to calculating how fast the universe is expanding, measuring cosmic distances is essential to understanding everything in the sky. For nearby stars, astronomers use... Read More >
Using LLMs To Research Remote Sensing Software: Helpful, but Incomplete

Using LLMs To Research Remote Sensing Software: Helpful, but Incomplete

5/26/2025

Whether you’re new to remote sensing or a seasoned expert, there is no doubt that large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini can be incredibly useful in many aspects of research. From exploring the electromagnetic spectrum to creating object detection models using the latest deep learning... Read More >
From Image to Insight: How GEOINT Automation Is Changing the Speed of Decision-Making

From Image to Insight: How GEOINT Automation Is Changing the Speed of Decision-Making

4/28/2025

When every second counts, the ability to process geospatial data rapidly and accurately isn’t just helpful, it’s critical. Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) has always played a pivotal role in defense, security, and disaster response. But in high-tempo operations, traditional workflows are no longer fast enough. Analysts are... Read More >
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MIE4NITF: The Newest Standard for Time-Series Enabled NITF Imagery

Jason Wolfe

A greater demand exists within the defense and intelligence community for the ability to view and analyze a time series of images, especially as more UAVs and high-resolution satellites that capture motion imagery become available. Temporal analysis is used in applications such as change detection, tracking patterns and movement, and activity-based intelligence. Having the right software application to process data from the latest motion imagery formats can help to make more informed tactical decisions. ENVI is one of the first commercial software products to support the newest standard, MIE4NITF.

The Motion Imagery Extension for NITF is essentially a container that defines a standard for creating a time series of NITF images. The MIE4NITF standard was developed to combine the rich metadata support in NITF images with time-series information provided by Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) and Full Motion Video (FMV) systems. Modern hardware that collects this type of data will soon exceed the capacity of video standards defined by the Motion Imagery Standards Board (MISB). The MIE4NITF standard allows for greater bit depths, frame sizes, and numbers of bands; in addition to support for multiple cameras and data modalities such as thermal and visible imagery.

ENVI 5.5 Service Pack 1 provides a new menu option: File > Open As > Military Formats > MIE4NITF. Selecting any file from a NITF image collection will open and animate the entire collection in the ENVI Series Manager.

MIE4NITF raster series created from CorvusEye® WAMI data, 07 August 2014, Webster, NY, USA.

An important aspect of working with MIE4NITF is the ability to analyze individual frames, or NITF images. The ENVI Series Manager allows an analyst to load specific images within a series to the ENVI Layer Manager for further analysis. Metadata are encoded as NITF Tagged Record Extensions (TREs). Right-clicking on a single image layer displays the NITF metadata for that image.

NITF Metadata Viewer in ENVI, showing metadata for a single image segment within a MIE4NITF series.

By combining greater aerial coverage with detailed metadata, MIE4NITF is expected to become the new standard implemented across defense and intelligence agencies.

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