GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE

Geospatial Intelligence

Geospatial Intelligence

Introduction

Joint forces require the ability to rapidly respond to threats around the world. Geospatial intelligence (GEOJNT) supports this requirement by providing geo-referenced visual and data products (example, maps, charts, and digital files) that serve as a foundation and common frame of reference for any joint operation.

GEOINT is the exploitation and analysis of imagery and Geo spatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. GEOINT consists of imagery, IMINT, and Geo spatial information.

Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) includes imagery and Geo spatial data with other intelligence information to create products critical to intelligence, security and national defense. Today, GIS merging Geo spatial data with other forms of intelligence such as human (HUMINT), the signal (SIGINT), open source (OSINT) and technical (Techint). The GIS serves as a unique and powerful platform for integrating and fusing all these types of intelligence in applications in all corners of the organization.

Description

The term GEOINT encompasses either the standard, or traditional, and the specialized (integrated) capabilities of imagery, IMINT, and Geo spatial information. The full utility of GEOINT comes from the integration of all three, which results in more comprehensive, tailored GEOINT products for a wider scope of problems and customers across all functional areas. For example, GEOINT can incorporate advanced technology to create dynamic, interactive products such as realistic mission simulations that help determine the effects of speed, currents, tide, wind, daylight, etc. on a mission or intelligence problem. These products might be virtual fly- through and walk-through mission scenarios or interactive maps.

GEOINT can also create a common operational picture (COP) of a specific area by effectively using multiple and advanced sensors, multiple types of data and information (including operations, planning, logistics, etc.), as well as multiple intelligence disciplines to present a comprehensive visual depiction. This capability provides many advantages for the war fighter, national security policy makers, homeland security personnel, and intelligence community (IC) collaborators by precisely locating activities and objects, assessing and discerning the meaning of events, and providing context for decision makers (Goodchild, 2002).

Geospatial Intelligence and GIscience

GIScience therefore includes questions of spatial data structures, analysis, accuracy, meaning, cognition, visualization, and many more and thus overlaps with the domains of several traditional disciplines that are concerned with Earth's physical processes and how humans interact with the Earth (example, geography, geology and geophysics, oceanography, ecology, environmental science, applied mathematics, spatial statistics, physics), as well as disciplines that are concerned with how humans interact with machines (e.g., computer science, information science, cognitive science, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence).

However, GIScience is not central to any of these fields, representing instead a new kind of scientific collaborative that is defined by researchers from many distinct backgrounds working together on particular sets of interrelated problems, problems that are not only scientific in nature but also serve the needs of natural resource management, government, industry, and business (NRC, 2006).

It is important to make a distinction between GI and GIScience. While GI is concerned primarily with the hardware and software for capturing, ...