Leveraging Forward-Deployed GEOINT as a Service

A problem that I regularly hear about from my customers in the Defense and Intelligence sector is that they are drowning in data. They have access to essentially all of our nations’ ISR resources and they can process that data on some of the world’s most robust hardware systems. Nevertheless, they are struggling to access the data, and then when they find what they are looking for, they are not always able to share it with decision-makers in a timely manner. These customers are coming to us asking for a solution that will enable them to keep the data where it is collected while making the data and the intelligence products created from that data readily accessible to their analysts and decision-makers that are located both in the Contiguous United States (CONUS) and Outside the Contiguous United States (OCONUS).

The problem is being exaggerated by the ever-increasing fleet of ISR platforms that are collecting Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI), Full Motion Video (FMV) and Hyperspectral Data (HSI). These assets are delivering unprecedented volumes of data, much of which is not even viewed for further analysis.

We are being asked for a solution that provides forward-deployed, server-side analytic processing and visualization of the finished intelligence products that can be made discoverable and exploitable in near-real time by analysts in theater as well as in other locations.

Fortunately, NV5 Geospatial (formerly Exelis) engineers have put together a solution that has the capabilities to meet this requirement. The solution uses a combination of several different tools:

1. HYDRA provides an overarching orchestration, workflow management and collaboration tool for frequently executed exploitation routines performed by analysts. By streamlining the operation of linking appropriate data with applicable algorithms, managing the queuing of ongoing processing, and tracking the performance and results, HYDRA automates redundant steps by the analyst to increase their efficiency and improve their collaboration across distributed environments.
2. Jagwire™ provides content management for a wide variety of GEOINT modalities. This tool manages the discovery of imagery assets on the server and federates access with any other Jagwire system on the same network to facilitate rapid data discovery.
3. ENVI Services Engine provides the ability to perform advanced analysis on imagery assets in an enterprise environment. Conducting Target Detection, Material Identification and Terrain Categorization can easily be applied to the federated assets to derive intelligence products.

By combining these three tools, NV5 is able to deliver to both OCONUS and CONUS analysts online, on-demand access to the same operationally collected data and intelligence products. This is an invaluable geospatial intelligence solution for defense and intelligence that enables the warfighter to utilize near real-time remote access to previously inaccessible intelligence.