2018 ISSUE 3

THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE UNITED STATES GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE FOUNDATION Connected

For the United States andCrisis its territories, 2017 was a landmark year for natural disasters—and a data-driven turning point for domestic crisis mapping

> GEOINT Law and Policy > Special Report: AI at SXSW > Q&A with former DigitalGlobe CEO Jeff Tarr > GEOINT 2018 Symposium Highlights

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 1

contents 2018 ISSUE 3

12 CONNECTED CRISIS For the U.S. and its territories, 2017 was a landmark year for natural disasters—and a data-driven turning point for domestic crisis mapping By Matt Alderton

During the Montecito Mudslide in January, organizations used Esri mapping technology to monitor potentially affected structures in hazard zones. IMAGE COURTESY OF ESRI COURTESY IMAGE

FEATURES 02 | VANTAGE POINT USGIF announces plans for trajectoryXyzt, a new, 20 GEOINT LAW commercial-facing AND POLICY GEOINT event

As technology advances, 04 | INTSIDER legislatures and courts GEOINT 2018 Symposium 34 | HORIZONS highlights; USGIF and Lifetime Reading List, Peer lag behind Achievement awards; first Intel, USGIF Events by Rob Pegoraro K. Stuart Shea Endowed Calendar Scholarship awarded 36 | PERSPECTIVE 30 | MEMBERSHIP PULSE Q&A with Jeff SPECIAL REPORT: AI at SXSW AGI, ManTech, USGIF Tarr, USGIF Board 26 THE STATE OF AI Individual Member Member and former 30 John Desmarais DigitalGlobe CEO Experts at SXSW 2018 discuss upcoming hurdles ON THE COVER: TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM These satellite images, for AI as well as the looming captured before and GOT GEOINT? COMMUNITY NEWS after Hurricane Irma, singularity, machine ethics, Regular blog posts on geography, Visit us online every Monday reveal damage at Long Beach, research & development, GEOINT for our weekly round-up of and the future of work Key West, Florida. in mainstream media, and more all things GEOINT Image courtesy of by Kristin Quinn DigitalGlobe TRJ-055 vantagepoint

Geospatial Intelligence: The Totally Made-Up Term That’s Changing the World USGIF to host inaugural, commercial-facing trajectoryXyzt event in September

Around 2003, we in the intelligence something new, as well as a new has grown from this initial event to an and defense communities had a moniker: the National Geospatial- annual GEOINT Symposium with as problem. Years earlier, we’d forced Intelligence Agency (NGA). many as 5,500 attendees and hundreds together remote sensing and imagery Congress added the required of exhibitors. Additionally, USGIF has analysis with mapping and chart- language into the fiscal year 2004 eclipsed 250 member organizations, ing—two distinct disciplines and National Defense Authorization Act awarded more than $1.1 million in cultures—to create the imaginatively and President Bush signed it into law, scholarships, presented GEOINT named National Imagery and Mapping but no one in government, industry, or Certificates to 800+ students from our Agency (NIMA). Though we realized academia (U.S. or abroad) knew what 14 accredited academic programs, and the potential advantage this integrated GEOINT actually was. We’d created developed the standards for a profes- operational approach would provide an internal strategic communications sional GEOINT certification program. us over our adversaries, and despite campaign to bring the workforce GEOINT is now a commonly used NIMA performing admirably in the along—but what about getting the rest term globally in the defense and wake of 9/11, it simply didn’t work as of the world excited about this new intelligence context, and the engage- envisioned. Myriad obstacles, primarily term and new operational construct? ment among government, industry, related to history and culture, and to a And so, in the fall of 2003, Geo-Intel and academia has been remarkably lesser extent immature technologies, 2003 was hastily conceived and successful and fruitful. Adoption of complicated our quest. executed in New Orleans. This highly the term continues to grow. Taking a few pages from the collaborative effort, led by a group of As time passed, it became clear books of successful change agents, government and industry executives that technological advances were we decided to rally NIMA’s workforce who recognized the need to foster combining to create something we around a new vision for a collective discussion around GEOINT, exceeded termed “The GEOINT Revolution.” future—without disregarding any of everyone’s expectations. This growing This included the commoditization of the respective heritage organizations nucleus of a public-private partner- commercial remote sensing, powerful and tradecraft. The agency needed ship led to the creation of a nonprofit analytic software, ubiquitous precision a new name and a new operating educational foundation—USGIF—to geolocation data, far-reaching broad- framework. foster the idea of GEOINT, to produce band, rapidly advancing processing After much whiteboarding and future events, and to germinate the power, affordable cloud storage, and brainstorming, we settled on the education, training, and professional advanced analytics and visualization. term “Geospatial Intelligence,” which development to underpin the nascent However, the government and mil- allowed us to acknowledge the GEOINT tradecraft. itary aren’t the only ones affected by mapping and imagery collection and With a very small staff and a strong the GEOINT Revolution. The features analysis legacies while providing cadre of volunteers, the Foundation in this issue—a chronicle of crisis

2 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 “Those who apply it will have a decided USGIF CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD advantage. Those who fail to apply it will The Honorable Jeffrey K. Harris ignore the power of GEOINT at their own peril.” USGIF CEO AND EXECUTIVE EDITOR Keith J. Masback

MANAGING EDITOR mapping successes during natural differentiator. Those who apply it will Kristin Quinn disasters that affected the U.S. in 2017, have a decided advantage. Those who [email protected] an examination of GEOINT law and fail to apply it will ignore the power of EDITOR policy in the commercial realm, and a GEOINT at their own peril. Brad Causey special report from SXSW on the state Drawing from the Foundation’s [email protected] of artificial intelligence—are a strong successful history and internationally testament to this. established position as a thought leader ART DIRECTOR The expanding application of GIS, and convening authority, USGIF will Gretchen Kirchner Rund [email protected] the ongoing maturation of location now lead the intellectual charge with intelligence, and burgeoning business respect to the use of the term GEOINT ASSISTANT EDITOR use cases across a number of verti- and the establishment of its commer- Lindsay Mitchell cals are sparking further imaginative cial applied framework. [email protected] approaches. GEOINT technology has We’ll launch trajectoryXyzt at the EDITORIAL INTERN gone viral, though the term “GEOINT” Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., Andrew Foerch has not. Some are trying to stretch the on September 19-20. This first-of- [email protected] definition of GIS, or cram more into its-kind event will lay the building the concept of location intelligence blocks for commercial efforts at the than logically fits. convergence of geospatial intelligence. Ironically, the community is at an The immersive experience will blend PUBLISHER inflection point where we’re experienc- visionary keynotes, lightning talks, Jordan Fuhr ing the inverse of the problem we faced interviews, technology releases, and [email protected] in 2003. We have the near-explosive deep connections made through AD SALES emergence of a powerful synergy in engaging networking opportunities. Jeff Ley the commercial world at the nexus of trajectoryXyzt won’t be just a [email protected] remote sensing from phones to drones GEOINT Symposium on the West to space, geospatial and location infor- Coast. While we anticipate many of mation of all types and layers, data the companies and attendees at this analytics, and data visualization…but event will be organizations without no term to describe it. any presence in the defense/intelli- Trajectory is the official magazine So, USGIF proposes that geospa- gence communities, we know some of the United States Geospatial tial intelligence is ready to take its of our USGIF members will join us or Intelligence Foundation (USGIF). place alongside business intelligence, showcase their commercial offerings. artificial intelligence, and competitive Attendance at this inaugural event will LETTERS AND COMMENTS Email [email protected]. intelligence in the business world. be limited to approximately 500 partic- The GEOINT framework has been in ipants and about two dozen exhibitors. SUBSCRIPTIONS dynamic, iterative development for Taking GEOINT to the commercial Sign up for free at 15 years. sector is an ambitious undertaking, trajectorymagazine.com. It’s time to talk about GEOINT and I hope you are as excited about the USGIF MEMBERSHIP in the commercial and consumer possibilities of this event as we are… For information on becoming a marketplace. It’s time to share lessons trajectoryXyzt will be unlike anything member, email [email protected]. learned and to crosswalk best prac- USGIF has ever presented. TWITTER tices. It’s time to develop GEOINT @trajectorymag practitioners native to the commer- cial sector. It’s time for GEOINT to be taught in business programs at the undergraduate and graduate level. From precision agriculture, to oil and gas exploration, high-velocity logistics, marketing and retail, smart cities, the Internet of Things, and autonomous KEITH J. MASBACK | CEO, USGIF PUBLICATION MANAGEMENT vehicles, GEOINT is a key competitive @geointer 847-205-3000 | GLCDELIVERS.COM

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 3 COMMUNITY NEWS, EVENTS, AND EDUCATION

GEOINT 2018 USGIF NEWS GEOINT COMMUNITY NEWS EDUCATION GEOINT 2018 Symposium Highlights APPLICATIONS

“For people to be successful, you need to team together and be part of the greater community.” — JULIE BAKER, URSA

“We’re using these automated methods to create more information, but that new information still needs analysis. We’ve really dropped the ball if we don’t think about how humans are going to help us make sense of what it is that we’re processing.” — DR. SARAH BATTERSBY, TABLEAU SOFTWARE

“We are trying to find every human settlement one can identify from Dr. Sarah Battersby, Tableau Software these images. Essentially, we are remapping the planet with every settlement and every building one can see.” Julie Baker, Ursa — BUDHENDRA BHADURI, OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LAB

“There’s more data available now than we’ve ever seen and it presents a massive challenge for us.” — LT. GEN. CHARLES BROWN JR., USCENTCOM

“GEOWorks is not just a new website; it’s a new way for us to do business. Budhendra Bhaduri, Oak Ridge National Lab Lt. Gen. Charles Brown Jr., USCENTCOM [NGA] used truly agile approaches to create this site from concept to launch in just eight weeks.” — ROBERT CARDILLO, NGA

“A humanitarian today should expect that data crunching and analysis should be standard skill sets. Maybe someone here can create a program to teach analytic tradecraft to humanitarians so that we can all speak a common language.” — MINA CHANG, LINKING THE WORLD

“We’ve almost used up the creative acts of our predecessors. Since we can’t draft on them, we—everyone in this room—are going to have to learn to create anew.” — SUSAN M. GORDON, PDDNI Robert Cardillo, NGA Mina Chang, Linking the World Susan M. Gordon, PDDNI

4 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 “In Silicon Valley, the narrative was about the importance of coding. Technical literacy as we go forward into this world is necessary, but it’s not sufficient.” — SCOTT HARTLEY, AUTHOR & VENTURE CAPITALIST

Scott Hartley, Author & Venture Capitalist “The most important thing about data is that it’s true. The better the data, the more true the data; the more data you have, the less important the algorithms are.” — AUREN HOFFMAN, SAFEGRAPH

“We will fix the background investigation process and the backlog. A cleared and trusted workforce, that’s what the objective is, inside and outside Joseph D. Kernan, USD(I) of government.” — JOSEPH D. KERNAN, USD(I)

“This idea that innovation and R&D is ours by birthright— which we have lived on for years and years and years— is perhaps not an assumption Auren Hoffman, SafeGraph that we should continue with.” — DAWN MEYERRIECKS, CIA

“There’s one missing link, and I ask you to think obsessively about it: the customer.” — GEN. RAYMOND A. THOMAS, USSOCOM

“Turns out by using the geospatial information, by using the sociocultural information, I was able to do ‘precision-strike cricket tournaments’ right in the heart of some really bad places.” —DR. DAVE WARNER, MINDTEL Dawn Meyerriecks, CIA Gen. Raymond A. Thomas, USSOCOM

COMPLETE GEOINT 2018 COVERAGE With so many speakers, presentations, and exhibitors, it would have been impossible to see everything at GEOINT 2018. The GEOINT Symposium Show Daily by trajectory provided wall-to-wall coverage. Visit trajectorymagazine.com/geoint-symposium for keynote recaps, videos, exhibitor profiles, features, panel discussion overviews, and more! Dr. Dave Warner, MindTel

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 5 SOFTWARE PROCRASTINATION TOOLS GEOINT Mobile Topographer Free For improved mobile GPS Services Aims accuracy and function- ality, look no further than to Provide Mobile Topographer Free. Enterprise Surveyors, geographers, and hikers can use the app Offerings to calibrate their digital Across the IC maps, display and convert GPS data into Cartesian Jim Long, deputy director of the coordinates, and observe National Geospatial-Intelligence a sky view of the satellites Agency’s (NGA) GEOINT Services orbiting 1,200 miles overhead. Other capabili- Office, recently gave an update on his ties include height calculation, point projection office’s progress since it was formal- on maps, exporting point lists, and more. ized in 2017. Speaking in May at a USGIF GEOINTeraction Tuesday event hosted applicality.com/projects/mobile- by Tesla Government, Long said GEOINT Services is looking to small teams of topographer-free developers with geospatial experience to help the Intelligence Community (IC) achieve modernization. MarineTraffic Following the creation of the IC Information Technology Enterprise (IC ITE) MarineTraffic and IC resources such as Amazon C2S, GEOINT Services aims to synchronize the provides a compre- delivery of platforms, software, and infrastructure as-a-service to be leveraged hensive maritime across the IC. database, supplying According to Long, many capabilities the IC needs already exist, but not as a users with a live service. GEOINT Services includes two general categories: backend/IT services map showing hun- such as common development tools available through enterprise contracts; and dreds of thousands user-facing services that can be scaled across the enterprise. of ship and yacht locations around the world in near-real time. The app is connected to a vast network of Automatic Identification System receivers, and covers most major ports and EdGEOcation nautical shipping routes. Users can also view LGS Makes Second wind forecasts, animated playback of an indi- $7,500 Pledge vidual ship’s course, and millions of maritime photos. An augmented reality tool available as LGS Innovations for the an in-app purchase identifies nearby vessels second year donated through the device’s camera. $7,500 to USGIF’s marinetraffic.com EdGEOcation Giving Fund. The fund supports USGIF’s Forest Watcher K-12 educational outreach This app, released by program, which helps the Global Forest Watch, brings Foundation create and forest monitoring and alert provide GEOINT learning systems offline so rangers, materials for classrooms, environmentalists, and local sponsor STEM events, LGS presented the $7,500 check during GEOINT 2018 in Tampa, Fla. populations can respond judge science fairs, donate to deforestation and other materials to underserved schools, and more. damage in areas not “Science and technology innovation is our lifeblood at LGS,” said Ray connected to the web. The Ivie, president of integration and operations solutions for LGS Innovations. organization’s GPS system “Like most companies in the U.S., it has become more challenging to enables offline access to find and compete for STEM-educated young people. Therefore, we satellite maps and imagery. Users can monitor strongly support investment in programs like USGIF’s. We chose to custom areas of interest, set deforestation support the USGIF EdGEOcation Giving Fund so that we can be directly and fire alerts, upload their own datasets, and involved with their mission of investigate forest changes in the field. To learn more about bringing hands-on STEM initiatives forestwatcher.globalforestwatch.org USGIF’s K-12 program visit usgif. to classrooms to spark interest org/education/K-12. in young students toward STEM education and careers.”

6 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 SXSW Jim Long, NGA’s deputy director of GEOINT Services, gave an update on The CIA’s Digital Future his office’s progress in May at USGIF’s GEOINTeraction Tuesday event. USGIF hosted a special edition of its bimonthly GEOINTeraction Tuesday networking event in March—calling it GEOINTeraction Monday for its departure from the regularly scheduled weekday—in conjunction with the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas. Speakers were Teresa Smetzer, director of Digital Futures for the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Digital Innovation Directorate, and Dr. Bob Metcalf, the inventor of Ethernet and director of the UT Austin Innovation Center. Smetzer said the purpose of Digital Futures is “to accelerate the iden- tification and adoption of industry-leading technology and processes to solve mission problems.” Digital Futures’ goal is to modernize, advance, and transform the CIA mission by leveraging a network of commercial, industry, venture capital, academic, and partner agency expertise. The office also has an Innovation Hub in Silicon Valley it uses as an outpost to identify and assess potential “We are trying to be more transparent in terms of technologies. what our needs are,” Long said, pointing to software as an Smetzer listed three primary concerns facing Digital Futures: the expo- example. “Right now, I think [industry is] better postured nential growth in the velocity, variety, and volume of data; the emergence of than we are to show us things to understand the technical disruptive technologies—both as an opportunity for better data management competence from an evaluation perspective.” and analysis as well as a threat in the hands of adversaries; and the existence He said NGA is “starting to get back into the business of of legacy systems and processes that inhibit innovation and agility. software” but doesn’t intend to build all the software itself. “We’re different in that we start with the mission challenge first,” “The most important thing is we’re going to have peo- Smetzer said. “We’re not looking for cool new technologies, the next big ple who understand software—people who are going to widget, or something that’s really a solution in search of a problem.” be in leadership positions, who will write better require- Smetzer said the CIA is particularly interested in artificial intelligence ments, who will do better evaluations of software and and machine learning technology such as image recognition, segmenta- software-facing systems as we move forward.” tion, anomaly detection, and optimization. USGIF AWARDS Recognizing Outstanding Organizations & Individuals

At GEOINT 2018, USGIF announced THE 2018 USGIF AWARD WINNERS ARE: this year’s recipients of its annual Awards Program. The USGIF Awards 1. Academic 2. Community 3. Military 4. Government 5. Industry Program recognizes the exceptional Achievement Achievement Award Achievement Award Achievement Award Achievement work of the geospatial intelligence Award Foundation Dr. Richard Glen Canyon Dam Award tradecraft’s brightest minds and Dr. Kathleen M. Career Service Massaro, USACE- Modeling Team, SpaceNet Team organizations pushing the community Carley, professor, Team, National ERDC Geospatial the U.S. Bureau of forward. Award winners are nominated Carnegie Mellon Geospatial- Research Lab Reclamation and by their colleagues and selected by the University Intelligence Agency Autodesk Inc. USGIF Awards Subcommittee. 1 2 3

Dr. Kathleen M. Carley Lenwaski Campbell Dr. Richard Massaro

4 5

David Winslow (left) and Pete Kelsey Left to right: David Lindenbaum, Todd M. Bacastow, and Kevin Berce

8 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Professor Emeritus Honored For Community Contributions

USGIF announced Dr. Edward M. Mikhail, professor emer- itus of civil engineering at Purdue University, as the 2018 recipient of the Foundation’s Arthur C. Lundahl-Thomas C. Finnie Lifetime Achievement Award. Mikhail was recog- nized on stage at GEOINT 2018. Mikhail dedicated 50 years of his professional life to supporting the Intelligence Community. He joined Purdue University in 1965 and established what became a nationally and internationally leading graduate program in geomatics engineering. Although he is retired from the university, Mikhail continues to support the graduate Celebrating a program as a mentor to younger faculty and Ph.D. students. this award should be rightly given to my former graduate career devoted Mikhail’s impact can be seen not only through the knowl- students who have developed into exceptional scientists to supporting the Intelligence edge imparted to his students, but also in the many books and engineers, leading the GEOINT Community to cutting- Community, and publications he has authored. edge technological advances.” USGIF awarded Dr. “I am profoundly honored to receive this award,” Mikhail The Lundahl-Finnie recipient is nominated and voted Edward M. Mikhail, professor emeritus said. “As the only educator to be selected, I consider myself upon annually by the USGIF Board of Directors. This distin- at Purdue University, very privileged to join such a respected group of outstand- guished award is named for Arthur C. Lundahl and Thomas with the Arthur C. Lundahl-Thomas ing past awardees who have been stalwarts in safeguarding C. Finnie, celebrating their accomplishments in imagery C. Finnie Lifetime the security and well-being of our nation. In fact, I believe analysis and mapping, respectively. Achievement Award.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE The JHU program leading to the Master of Science in Geospatial Intelligence provides the concepts, models, experience, and learning to enable its graduates to lead and shape this emerging discipline. » Online program designed for geospatial intelligence practitioners » Multidisciplinary curriculum — History, Mathematics, Art, and Science » For government and private sector analysts, collection and program managers, and component leaders

1717 MASSACHUSETTS AVE. NW, SUITE 101 LEARN MORE AND APPLY AT: WASHINGTON, DC 20036 ADVANCED.JHU.EDUGEOSPATIALINTELLIGENCE 1.800.847.3330 | 202.452.1940

913529_John.indd 1 27/04/18 3:39 AM ONLINE SCHOLARSHIPS Trajectory Receives USGIF Announces First K. Stuart Shea Endowed Hermes Website Award Scholarship Recipient Trajectory, the official magazine Sanghui Han was awarded the first ever $15,000 of USGIF, won a platinum K. Stuart Shea USGIF Endowed Scholarship at Hermes Creative Award in May GEOINT 2018. Han is pursuing a Ph.D. in imaging for its website in the category of science at the Rochester Institute of Technology “Electronic/Social/Interactive (RIT) in Rochester, N.Y. Media, Website Overall.” The The USGIF Board of Directors announced the Hermes Creative Awards is one of creation of this new scholarship at the GEOINT the largest competitions of its kind 2017 Symposium in honor of K. Stuart Shea, for creative professionals around one of the founders of USGIF and the first chief the globe. Winners range from executive and chairman of the organization. The individual communicators scholarship will be annually awarded to a Ph.D. to media conglomerates and student studying cartography, geography, or Fortune 500 companies. The imaging science. trajectory magazine website “Being a single mom and a student is challeng- Sanghui Han, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in imaging re-launched in April 2017 with science at Rochester Institute of Technology, ing, especially financially,” Han said. “What this robust new content initiatives and received the first ever K. Stuart Shea USGIF Endowed scholarship means to me immediately is some the goal to be more user friendly Scholarship. breathing room in my finances, which enables and responsive across all desktop me to better conduct my research. Another facet to this scholarship is the recognition and networking and mobile devices. Visit us at opportunities, which would expand opportunities after I graduate and throughout my career by open- trajectorymagazine.com to see what ing up possibilities for collaboration between organizations that have congruent missions. I hope the all the hype is about, and bookmark connections I make will empower me to bring together my experiences in the military and research at us to stay up-to-date on the latest RIT to contribute to the advancement of geospatial intelligence.” GEOINT Community news! Han earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Colorado, and upon com- pletion was commissioned as a U.S. Army intelligence officer. She began pursing her master’s degree in imaging science through RIT while deployed to Afghanistan and continued her studies throughout her Army tenure. She completed her master’s degree toward the end of her military career and then began pursing a Ph.D. in imaging science full-time.

OUTREACH Tampa K-12 Students Experience GEOINT 2018

More than 120 K-12 students from the Tampa Bay area had the opportunity to participate in various activities as USGIF’s Portable Planet STEM part of USGIF’s GEOINT 2018 Symposium in April. is now available for rental! Visit “We created a wonderful program for Tampa students usgif.org/education/K-12 to Raising GEOINT Career learn how to sponsor the map for this year,” said Lindsay Mitchell, USGIF’s lead educational Awareness your local school. manager. “By watching technology demonstrations and USGIF introduced students to participating in interactive activities, the children were GEOINT in April during Washing- encouraged to think about how GEOINT is used in their everyday lives. They also learned tonExec’s K-12 STEM Symposium, about the many career opportunities that require GEOINT knowledge and skills.” which was held at the Nysmith Fifteen eighth grade students from Stewart Middle School and 70 fifth graders from School in Herndon, Va. The STEM Shorecrest Preparatory School attended. The K-12 program was a full day of activities that Symposium is an annual event featured USGIF’s new 35-by-26-foot interactive map of North America called “Portable that educates the community Planet,” technology demonstrations, a geospatial analysis workshop, and a panel discus- about careers in STEM. The sion with leaders from academia, government, and industry. Additionally, USGIF’s Young Foundation exhibited in USGIF Professionals Group led a data collection activity with Tampa area high school Junior ROTC Organizational Member Altami- cadets and human geography students from Franklin Boys Preparatory Academy. ra’s pavilion, where USGIF staff The GEOINT 2018 K-12 program was generously sponsored by AGI, BAE Systems, and members of USGIF’s Young and Maxar. Professionals Group led children through a build-your-own-satellite Tampa area students station. Participants were also participated in activities on given information about satellites USGIF’s new “Portable Planet” map at GEOINT 2018. and imagery analysis.

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Public safety organizations used Esri mapping technology to track Hurricane Harvey’s forecasted path while analyzing anticipated precipitation levels.

12 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 connected For the United States and its territories, 2017 was a landmark year for natural disasters—and a data-driven turning point for domestic crisis mapping

WHEN HOUSTONIANS heard the name Harvey, they didn’t think much of it. Days ahead of the storm, the National Weather Service predicted it would unleash torrents of rain on southeastern Texas, causing unprecedented flooding in and around Harris County. But Houston had heard the same song before. In 2005, just weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, local officials ordered a mass evacuation under the specter of Hurricane Rita. Millions fled, but few got far. A lethal combination of severe gridlock and extreme heat caused >>

IMAGE COURTESY OF ESRI USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 13 more than 100 evacuation-related deaths. And when evac- FROM CONTENT TO CONTEXT uees finally escaped the misery of traffic to return home, Like the separate fibers that constitute most found their streets dry and their homes unscathed. a single rope, GEOINT and emergency Next time, officials and residents resolved, there would be management are tightly intertwined. no evacuation. They have been since Katrina, when But Harvey wasn’t a false alarm. After making landfall the National Geospatial-Intelligence Aug. 25, 2017, the Category 4 hurricane lost strength and Agency (NGA) provided stakeholders a became a tropical storm. Then, it stalled. For four days it common operating picture that saved meandered along the Texas coast, dropping more than 60 lives and hastened recovery. inches of rainfall that caused $125 billion in damage—the Since then, crisis mapping—the same amount caused by Katrina—and at least 68 deaths. real-time collection, analysis, and Unfortunately, Harvey was only the first in a devastating distribution of location-based disaster trilogy of storms. Days later, Hurricane Irma ripped through data—has evolved in the wake of the Florida Keys. Two weeks after that, Hurricane Maria numerous catastrophes, each of which ransacked Puerto Rico. Both mangled the U.S. Virgin Islands has infused the global community on their journeys north. with valuable lessons. One of the most In 2017, the United States experienced 16 weather and significant catastrophes, for instance, climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each, was the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Associ- “There was no mapping data of “2017 was, in effect, ation (NOAA). Collectively, the crises claimed 362 lives and Haiti when the earthquake hit, so [vol- caused approximately $306 billion in damage—a new unteers] very quickly rallied to build the year of the ‘big U.S. record. a map of Haiti to help rescuers find data’ disaster. The “It was a very difficult year,” said Federal Emergency homes and navigate roads,” recalled Management Agency (FEMA) Chief Technology Officer Ted Kevin Bullock, director of business amount of data Okada. “We had numerous catastrophic disasters, any one development at DigitalGlobe. generated was so of which would have been historic in and of itself. It was a Volunteers once again rallied in enormous that nightmare.” 2013, when Typhoon Haiyan tore But 2017 also presented an opportunity. Twelve years through the Philippines; in 2015, [disaster response] after Katrina, domestic responders had cause to reflect on when an earthquake rattled Nepal; and really became about how far they’d come. What they saw when they did was a in 2016, when another quake struck crisis mapping community that has been fundamentally Ecuador. Each time, the crisis mapping data management.” transformed by geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), the perva- community learned and advanced. —TED OKADA, FEMA siveness of which has made the U.S. and its territories more But Houston is not Haiti, and Key responsive than ever to natural disasters. West is not Kathmandu.

These satellite images, captured before and after Hurricane Irma, reveal damage at Long Beach, Key West, Florida. IMAGE COURTESY OF DIGITALGLOBE, A MAXAR COMPANY ©2018 A MAXAR COMPANY OF DIGITALGLOBE, COURTESY IMAGE

14 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 “There’s an interesting contrast regular people like between how we respond to a natural stay-at-home mothers disaster internationally versus how we who had evacuated respond when it happens in the United and wanted to know States,” Bullock said. “When the storms if their house had sur- hit last year, we were better prepared vived the storm,” said because local governments, state gov- DigitalGlobe’s Bullock. ernments, the federal government, big “We saw a huge influx companies like Google and Apple, and of people who now open-source projects like OpenStreet- understand the power Map had already mapped Texas and of remote sensing.” Florida really well. Even Puerto Rico To satiate the was fairly well mapped.” growing appetite for It’s the difference between commercial imagery crawling and running. In developing during and after nations, a shortage of remotely sensed disasters, DigitalGlobe imagery and maps means crisis map- in 2016 launched its NETWORKS OF JESSICA DECKER/SPATIAL COURTESY IMAGE pers must create content; in developed Open Data Program, nations, an abundance allows them to through which it releases high-resolution satellite imagery Organized by create context. in support of the humanitarian community. The program Jessica Decker, 700 volunteers came “Typically, the information that includes an activation protocol and a centralized data portal together online needs to be built in developing so responders know ahead of time what imagery Digital- to map locations countries already exists domestically,” Globe will release and under what circumstances. of shelter, food distribution, medical explained Ryan Lanclos, public safety DigitalGlobe’s open imagery was especially helpful during aid, and more in the industry team lead at Esri, whose Harvey because it included not only optical imagery, but also days that followed Hurricane Harvey’s Disaster Response Program (DRP) pro- synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from RADARSAT-2, devastation of vides 24/7 support to GIS users during which became available to DigitalGlobe in 2017 after the Houston. humanitarian crises. “That means company was acquired by RADARSAT-2’s Canadian operator: the community here can focus on … MacDonald, Dettwiler, and Associates (MDA). the next step—providing additional “With radar, we can operate at night or when there are information to help responders better clouds in the way,” Bullock said. “Because we had access to assess when and where they need to RADARSAT-2, we were able to create and release flood maps be moving.” that showed the extent of flooding while the storm was still Optimizing the “next step” has over Houston.” become the theme of domestic crisis GEOINT products such as this help create clarity in times mapping, according to Okada, who of chaos. said U.S. responders entered a new “I spoke to a colleague who lived in Houston during phase of emergency management in Harvey, and he described it as a ‘fog of war,’” Bullock said. 2017, fueled as much by data science “Communications were spotty and nobody knew where as natural science. to go for relief. With remote sensing, we can be a source of truth to let people know exactly where to go and what’s the SATELLITES SAVE THE DAY best way to get there.” “2017 was, in effect, the year of the ‘big data’ disaster,” declared Okada, who CALLING ON THE CROWD said there was an “avalanche” of data Of course, commercial satellite imagery is not the only in 2017. “The amount of data gener- milestone in the history of emergency management. ated was so enormous that [disaster Another is the rise of social media. Data from both con- response] really became about data verge for crowdsourced initiatives, which in 2017 took on management.” new significance within the domestic emergency manage- “The commercial One explanation for the data tor- ment community. rent is the promulgation of commercial The crowd has already been established as a vital industry has satellite imagery, according to NGA resource in developing nations, around which volunteer boomed so much Chief of Disaster Analysis and Domes- mappers mobilize after a disaster to create much needed tic Support Todd Noel. base maps. In developed nations that already possess con- during the last “The commercial industry has tent, the crowd can help provide context instead. two decades that boomed so much during the last two In 2017, the crowd proved it could deliver this context decades that information nobody had thanks to volunteers like Jessica Decker and Joe Larson. information nobody access to during Katrina everybody has The former is a front-end developer and cartographer who had access to during access to now,” Noel said. moonlights as a volunteer crisis mapper. When Harvey Katrina everybody And he means everybody. hit Houston she took to social media in search of crisis “During Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, mapping initiatives to join from her home in San Francisco. has access to now.” and Maria, our representatives were When she couldn’t find any, she decided to start one using —TODD NOEL, NGA inundated with phone calls from Fulcrum Community, the free version of Fulcrum, a mobile

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 15 app developed by Spatial Networks to facilitate field data formal responders and volunteers is collection during humanitarian crises. big but far underdeveloped,” explained “We’d heard a lot of reports about people asking for Norwegian crisis mapper Per Aarvik, assistance, but we didn’t see any real response yet by an president of Standby Task Force, a official organization,” said Larson, an integration engineer global network of volunteer crisis map- at Spatial Networks. “So when Jessica submitted an appeal pers. “Formal responders have certain to provision a Fulcrum Community instance for Harvey, we parameters for things like security and said, ‘Absolutely.’” training, and that can make collabora- Together, Decker and Larson mobilized a remote tion risky.” community of digital volunteers who collaborated via In 2017, federal responders conceded: the messaging app Slack, then used a mélange of source The benefits might justify the risks. material—including social media posts, commercial satellite Federal agencies have experimented imagery, news reports, and even firsthand accounts from with crowdsourcing since at least Houstonians—to map ground truth for the benefit of citi- 2012, when Hurricane Sandy pum- zens and responders. meled the East Coast. At that time, “The storm hit on Friday and we scaled up to 700 FEMA recruited crisis mappers from volunteers worldwide just over the weekend,” said Decker, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Lt. Christopher Capule, an Air Station who with Larson created videos and training materials on Team (HOT) to help it conduct damage Corpus Christi pilot, monitors the fly to onboard volunteers. “The entire operation took assessments and solicited data from the weather as Hurricane Harvey approaches the Texas coast place online; I didn’t leave the room I was in for the first commercial entities like Waze, whose Aug. 24, 2017. five days.” popular traffic app helped it identify Volunteers mapped gas shortages. But efforts since have more than 1,400 resources, been ad hoc and haphazard. including medical facilities, That changed last year, starting food drop-off and distri- with the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). bution centers, shelters, “During Hurricane Harvey, two animal hospitals, and more. [USCG Academy] cadets, under their Thousands of Harvey own initiative, began combing social survivors, rescuers, and media looking for reports of people in volunteers likely benefited distress. The cadets then created heat from Decker’s Fulcrum map maps to show areas of high impact and and other crowdsourced sent updates three times per day to resources, such as Digital- search and rescue coordinators in New Globe’s Tomnod. Orleans. These products … supported “Tomnod is an the more traditional methods used extremely effective tool by search and rescue coordinators to in crisis response,” said locate people in distress,” said USCG Bullock, adding Tom- spokesperson Lt. Amy Midgett. nod has a community of The grassroots effort—which approximately one million marked the first time the USCG used

PHOTO BY U.S. COAST GUARD PETTY OFFICER 3RD CLASS JOHANNA STRICKLAND GUARD U.S. COAST BY PHOTO registered users. “By dis- crowdsourced social media for disaster persing millions of chips response—was supported by Standby of images to thousands of Task Force and another crisis mapping people, we’re able to very organization called Humanity Road. quickly crawl through The cadets ultimately mapped 1,000 imagery and do a damage search-and-rescue cases involving assessment.” 5,200 people. Like other federal efforts before it, BRINGING the campaign was informal, finite, and GRASSROOTS TO fleeting. Nevertheless, it was a catalyst for GOVERNMENT significant change, according to FEMA Crowdsourcing can be just Geospatial Information Officer Christo- as vital during domestic pher Vaughan, who used it as inspiration disasters as international for his own, more official operation. ones. But the Americans “They were doing a really innova- who most need the crowd’s tive thing, and we wanted to sponsor help during a domestic or encourage it. But it was their show,” crisis—federal responders— said Vaughan, who saw an opportunity have been slow to accept it. to carry the USCG’s baton when Harvey “Especially when it gave way to Irma. “I talked to our comes to sudden onset senior leadership about using crowd- PHOTO COURTESY OF HUMANITY ROAD COURTESY PHOTO Coast Guard Academy Cadet Evan Twarog shows a heat map in the academy’s disasters, the need for sourcing and … their response back to GIS lab on Sept. 1, 2017. collaboration between me was, ‘If not now, when?’”

16 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 health and business via- EMERGENCY bility, and business age/ ECONOMICS maturity. “It is our hope People’s lives aren’t the only that this economic situa- things that must be saved during tional awareness baseline a disaster. Their livelihoods also data helps the emergency must be rescued. management commu- GEOINT can help, according to nity prioritize access business intelligence firm Dun & and re-entry activity, Bradstreet. prioritize infrastructure “When a disaster occurs, repairs and construction, Dun & Bradstreet provides understand the types of geo-located data that enables businesses that make up situational awareness on the eco- the impacted local econ- nomic activity in the forecasted omy, calculate and justify recovery “Before 2017, we published impacted location or the actual funds, and ultimately ensure that our economic situational aware- impacted location,” explained Dun the financial assistance programs ness to our website and our & Bradstreet Director of Predictive that result from a disaster situa- commercial customers digested Analytics Adrianna Rockford, who tion reach the right businesses.” that information to make better- said examples of economic situ- Dun & Bradstreet began informed decisions,” Rockford ational awareness data include providing data to state and local said. “Only since the end of 2016 geo-coded data on business Emergency Operations Centers, through 2017 have our data, counts, jobs, annual sales, busi- as well as the Federal Emergency analytics, and econometrics been ness size distributions, industry Management Agency, for the first actively used by the emergency codes, measures of financial time in 2017. management community.”

Vaughan recruited U.S. Geological “This was a very significant event for FEMA and crowd- Survey (USGS) Innovation Specialist Dr. sourcing,” said Russell Deffner, a project manager and crisis Sophia Liu, who under a FEMA mission mapping lead for HOT. “It was a great collaboration and an assignment stood up the organization’s eye-opener for the U.S. government to see crowdsourcing as first-ever crowdsourcing desk. a potential resource.” “It’s the most official we’ve ever Now that they can taken crowdsourcing,” continued appreciate the crowd, Deff- Vaughan, who said the desk reached ner and Vaughan agree, the peak performance when Maria made feds must determine how landfall in Puerto Rico. “Power and to institutionalize it. communications were out, our stream “There has been a per- gauge sensors weren’t working as well spective change,” Vaughan as they could have been, and there was said. “There is now accep- persistent cloud cover. So we didn’t tance and openness toward have our normal sources of information using these tools in what coming off the island, such as impacts has traditionally been a to roads, bridges, and hospitals. That’s very rigid system.” when we turned to crowdsourcing and Advancing that goal ramped up our efforts.” is a fledgling effort to Under Liu’s direction, more than develop a “Crowdsourcing 5,000 digital volunteers converged Playbook” that will stan- from HOT, Standby Task Force, and dardize when, how, and others. Collectively, they converted toward what end FEMA tens of thousands of images from will use crowdsouring. the Civil Air Patrol into actionable “If there’s an event insights. we’re needed for, we’re “That gave us some of the earliest going to activate no matter pictures we had of impacts, and faster what,” Deffner said. “What than we would have had them if we’d FEMA has realized is that waited for the power to come back on if we’re going to activate and for traditional information to start anyway, they might as well flowing again,” Vaughan said. “It was direct us so that we can amazing.” contribute what they The volunteers thought it was need the most in order to amazing, too. save people.” THE DIGITAL DILEMMA request, NGA sent two analysts—Michelle The value of crowdsourcing Nichols and Grant Eaton—to Puerto is obvious: More people yield Rico to provide onsite GEOINT support. more data, and more data yields Upon arrival, they found as much digital better emergency response. But disarray as physical destruction. there’s a potential downside, “When we got there, FEMA was too: Without the right gover- stretched pretty thin; it was a huge oper- nance in place, data can obscure ation with very little geospatial support,” instead of illuminate. explained Nichols, who said there was “More and more infor- a “disconnect in data”—an abundance mation is coming at us, and of data, but a deficit of governance to we’ve got to do a better job of exploit it. Responders lacked a common organizing it and structuring it operating picture, which caused ineffi- so people can actually consume ciencies like duplicate deliveries; while it,” Vaughan said. some survivors received extra provisions, To make sure it can leverage others received none. data effectively, FEMA has spent To bring focus to a blurry land- the last three years standard- scape, Nichols and Eaton served as izing its geospatial products data conduits that standardized, orga- around six themes: hazard nized, and disseminated geospatial identification, resource needs, information. population impacts, build- “Having very good data organizers ing impacts, transportation is really important from the get-go,” impacts, and infrastructure Noel said. “If you walk into a disaster, threats. In the wake of a disaster, and you have a lot of people there who it now delivers 21 standard are providing data, you need people to products derived from those six catalog it and organize it and make it themes. The result, according usable to folks when they finally need to Vaughan, is a template it. That’s what Michelle and Grant were IMAGE COURTESY OF NGA COURTESY IMAGE approach to GEOINT produc- able to do, and moving forward we’re Preliminary damage assessments tion that increases speed and efficiency, which gives FEMA working with FEMA to ensure there are of St. Martin from Sept. 9, 2017. The yellow, orange, red, and more capacity to ingest information. a lot more people like that available to purple areas mark damage levels “As I reflect on 2017, I think our dedicated focus on actually manage the data.” as affected, minor, major, and standardization was the seminal thing that carried the day,” FEMA is also pursuing efficiencies destroyed, respectively. Vaughan said. with the help of technology, starting An outcome of standardization was more mature data with dissemination. The sheer number models with which to conduct damage assessments, which of data sources available makes it have reduced FEMA’s reliance on external partners. difficult to discover them. FEMA has “We’ve built our own internal capabilities such that launched a data repository—disasters. we’re able to stand on our own two feet,” Vaughan said. geoplatform.gov—where it will curate “Where we traditionally relied on NGA for their analysis, authoritative apps, services, datasets, we’re now able to do that ourselves.” and APIs from the public and private NGA’s Noel said the organization has welcomed the change. sector to give responders a one-stop- “Last year was a banner year for disasters, but it also rep- shop for data discovery. resented a big change for NGA in terms of how we support One of the apps currently available our domestic partners,” Noel said. “In fact, Harvey was one is Hurricane Incident Journal, which of the first times that there was no request from FEMA for speaks to another FEMA strategy: NGA analytical support.” automation. Whenever the National Most NGA analysts are devoted to intelligence problems. Hurricane Center announces a hur- Fewer FEMA requests means those who work on disaster ricane advisory, Hurricane Incident analysis can devote their time to more sophisticated ana- Journal automatically captures data lytic pursuits. and flows it into pre-made models that “That doesn’t mean NGA is off the hook,” Vaughan said. generate standard mapping products “As I reflect on “In fact, we have a very positive relationship with NGA, and inside the application. 2017, I think our they’re still very much supporting our mission” by supplying “Eventually, my dream is that we’ve dedicated focus on all the foundation imagery on which FEMA’s models run. got everything set up in such a way “That’s where the future for NGA is really going to be,” that as an incident starts to unfold, the standardization was echoed Noel. “It’s about providing the data.” analytics will start to roll out without the seminal thing Although the role of “data steward” sounds peripheral, it’s any human intervention at all. It will actually critical. Consider, for example, NGA’s work in Puerto be like a very complex domino set that carried the day.” Rico in the aftermath of Maria. While FEMA did not request where one workflow kicks off another — CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN, FEMA analytic assistance from NGA during Harvey or Irma, the workflow,” said Vaughan. “I don’t think stress of a third storm necessitated reinforcements. At FEMA’s we’re very far away from that.”

18 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3

As technology advances, legislatures and courts lag behind

20 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 GEOINT BY ROB PEGORARO law+policy is a poorly mapped and expanding

frontierEACH YEAR, the reach of our electronic senses extends further beyond that of our physical senses—and the law isn’t keeping up. The resulting gap between what geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) can achieve and what the law prohibits isn’t uniform either. While federal lawmakers stall, many state legislatures are passing restrictions of their own—and actions by the European Union and the developers of mobile app platforms are establishing additional limits. In short, with no map to follow, geospatial law and policy is proving increasingly difficult to navigate.>>

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 21 LOST ABOUT LOCATION DATA “A cell tower might have been five miles from you,” Lynch “The law is many steps behind,” said Jennifer Lynch, a said. “But now if you go to a city, there are so many towers, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Founda- the technology can place you in front of a building.” tion. And that’s especially the case, she added, in the realm The discovery in May that LocationSmart, a geo-data of geo-location. aggregator in Carlsbad, Calif., had not only been purchasing Instead of broad federal standards, the United States cell-site data but inadvertently leaking it via a bug on its site has laws that predate the concept of GEOINT by decades, dramatized the risks of this rising tide of cell-site information. plus more recent court rulings that don’t always offer Smartphone-based techniques can be far more precise. At much guidance. its I/O developer conference in May, Google showed how its Telecommunications carriers have long been prohibited software will be able to geo-locate a user within a meter or two, by section 222 of the Communications Act of 1934 from indoors and out, by referencing precise time stamps from com- selling proprietary customer information, a provision that patible WiFi access points or matching a phone camera’s view clearly covers location history. with the company’s enormous Street View database. No such law, however, covers the commercial use of Congress doesn’t have to wait on the Supreme Court to location data collected by a smartphone’s operating system set limits on law enforcement use of this data, but it has or apps. chosen to do so—the legislative branch has spent nearly a Law enforcement agencies, meanwhile, are free to decade failing to pass any reform to the outdated Electronics request location history without a warrant under the “third- Communications Privacy Act of 1986. party doctrine” which says once customers provide such As a result, some states have grown tired of waiting. In data to a company, the authorities no longer need to 2013, Montana enacted a law requiring law enforcement to secure their permission to search that information. obtain a search warrant before requesting a suspect’s loca- “If you build The closest the Supreme Court has come to tion history. Three years later, California followed suit. visiting this issue came in 2012, when Justice Sonia “I think we will continue to see more movement at the the toll road, Sotomayor wrote in a concurring opinion that state level. This Congress can’t seem to pass anything, and you get to location data offers “such a substantial quantum certainly not anything related to privacy,” Lynch said. decide what of intimate information about any person” that “it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an THE CAMERA EYE the toll gate individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy In addition to location information, remote sensing data looks like, in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties.” has also marched well past existing legal norms. But the case at stake, U.S. v. Jones, covered a much When satellite and aerial imagery amounted to photog- what the road more aggressive form of location tracking: Police raphy from a few hundred feet or miles up, there was little to is made of, surreptitiously attached a Global Positioning System worry about—nothing personal was visible. tracker to a suspect’s vehicle for months. “Those sorts of uses of geographic data don’t raise any and how fast It’s taken another six years for the court to deal privacy concerns because they’re not being associated with people get to directly with access to location history. In Carpenter individuals,” explained Kurt Wimmer, a partner with Cov- v. U.S., a ruling as to whether police violated a sus- ington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. drive. And pect’s rights by acquiring 127 days of his cellphone But cameras have grown smaller, sharper, and more that is going location data without securing a warrant will come widespread. And in some situations, courts have held that sometime before the end of June. there’s such a thing as too close. In 2001, the Supreme Court to impact ruled in Kyllo v. U.S. that police use of an infrared camera innovation.” SOME STATES GO THEIR OWN WAY from the street to peer inside a house’s walls constituted an Meanwhile, location data keeps advancing—even the illegal search. — GERRY STEGMAIER, REEDSMITH crudest sort derived by calculating a phone’s posi- Similarly, courts have allowed law enforcement use of tion based on signals from nearby cell towers. aerial surveillance because flight safety principles alone ensure any such flights occur well above an individual’s backyard—at least 400 feet away. Cellphone antennas in midtown Manhattan. A set of 1980s Supreme Court rulings on helicop- ter-based surveillance permitted that practice but offer little insight on drone use; Lynch described them as “really bad case law” in the context of unmanned aerial vehicles. In one of those older rulings, Florida v. Riley, however, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote a prescient concurring opinion: “Imagine a helicopter capable of hovering just above an enclosed courtyard or patio without generating any noise, wind, or dust at all—and, for good measure, without posing any threat of injury.” Today, cameras can also document the threshold of a private residence from a motor vehicle—as Google’s Street View photography demonstrates. Since roads and sidewalks are public thoroughfares, there hasn’t been much debate surrounding Google’s right to collect these images. In 2010, Google agreed to pay a token settlement of one dollar to two Pennsylvania

22 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 full page_CTC_Trajectory Magazine 2018.indd 1 5/21/2018 2:34:21 PM Google Street View, John Hancock Center, Chicago. can influence the use of geospatial data. In particular, the rules of Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store might as well be the law when it comes to mobile apps. “For the more routine types of geo-location data that we’re all familiar with, the real driver has been the Apple and Android developer terms, which require true opt-in consent prior to collection of specific geo-location data,” said Wimmer. “Because this data is far more valuable on devices that are running iOS or Android, the gatekeeping function of these operating systems has been the ‘law’ that has created a prior consent requirement.” In May, for instance, Apple removed a round of appli- cations from its App Store—a death sentence for the app providers since iPhones allow no other way for customers to install these apps—because they shared location data with third parties without first acquiring user permission. As Stegmaier put it: “If you build the toll road, you get to decide what the toll gate looks like, what the road is made of, and how fast people get to drive. And that is going to impact innovation.” Across the Atlantic, the European Union’s General Data “The real homeowners—but only because its Street View car Protection Regulation (GDPR), a sweeping bundle of restric- went down their driveway. tions on corporate use of data, may compel further changes driver has Not long after launching Street View in 2008, in U.S. apps that deal in geo-location data. As Google found been the however, Google began blurring out faces and license with Street View, it’s often easier to maintain the same set of plates in Street View. features worldwide. Apple and “Initially they didn’t blur out anything,” said Gerry Android Stegmaier, a partner with ReedSmith in Washington, WHAT’S NEXT? D.C., whose then-employer Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Privacy advocates point to the advent of facial recognition developer and Rosati has long represented Google. But, he technology as the most alarming application of sensors to terms, which added, most of the credit for this move comes from identify and track people—dubbing the technology far more outside the U.S. “The real pressure came from Europe, intrusive than using cameras to spot license plates on a car require and it was just easier to have it work one way.” that could be driven by any of a few people in a household. true opt-in A decade later, automatic license plate readers have “Facial recognition allows for the identification of indi- become commonplace tools for police departments— viduals without their consent,” said Jeramie D. Scott, national consent prior but laws governing their use are not. In April, Virginia’s security counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, to collection Supreme Court suggested in a ruling that while merely adding that this “poses a special risk to the [U.S.] First Amend- recording a plate number in a database could be per- ment rights of free association and free expression.” of specific missible under state laws, the actual images collected But technology vendors are moving quickly to build this geo-location “of the vehicle, its license plate, and the vehicle’s imme- feature into law enforcement gear—both because such U.S. diate surroundings” required a lower court to revisit agencies as the Department of Homeland Security want to data.” an earlier ruling approving the Fairfax County police deploy it in airports and at borders, and because countries — KURT WIMMER, department’s use of this technology. such as Russia and China are even more keen on applying COVINGTON & It remains rare for a company or government to this technology. BURLING LLP work upfront to minimize the personal data har- When these facial recognition cameras operate in public, vested from public sensors. But in Toronto, Google’s opting out becomes tricky if you don’t want to look like Sidewalk Labs smart-city project—an ambitious plan to you’re about to rob a bank. As Scott observed, “Participation transform a section of the city’s waterfront—is championing in society generally involves exposing one’s face.” the principle of data minimization. Lynch voiced a wish for more transparency. EFF and “Our goal has been to ensure that any data that are col- others support state laws requiring, as she said, “that all of lected from sensors or IoT or whatever are de-identified at the purchasing be conducted out in the open, and that law source,” said Ann Cavoukian, a Google enforcement agencies have strict auditing requirements and Sidewalk advisor and former Ontario reporting requirements.” Interested in learning privacy commissioner, in May at a Maybe enough states will step in. Maybe the Supreme more about GEOINT Law and conference in Toronto. She added this Court will counteract Congressional inertia. Maybe the next Policy? Get involved with USGIF’s would, “render the risk of re-identifi- Congress will change course—with some tech-industry lead- Geospatial and Remote Sensing cation to less than .03 percent.” ers like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff now calling for a U.S. Law Working Group! The group equivalent of the GDPR, the political climate is changing. aims to educate its members on OUTSIDE FACTORS: APPLE But without thoughtful and concerted oversight at the legal issues and developments AND GOOGLE’S RULES AND federal level, the risk for the entire U.S. is the same as for indi- related to geospatial information. vidual users who install a new location tracking app on their Email [email protected] to EU REGULATIONS learn more. In the absence of clear guidance from smartphones: Putting a technology into service first and asking federal or state laws, other stakeholders questions later can lead down paths without a U-turn.

24 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3

Experts at SXSW 2018 discuss upcoming hurdles for AI as well as the looming singularity, machine ethics, and the future of work the state of

AIBY KRISTIN QUINN

26 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 SPECIAL REPORT: AI at SXSW

“HUMANS TEND TO overestimate technology in the short term but underestimate it in the long term,” said Tom Foster, editor at large for Inc. magazine, during a panel he moderated on innovations in machine learning at South by Southwest (SXSW) in March. Artificial intelligence (AI) was a recurring theme across panels at SXSW 2018’s Interactive Conference held in Austin, Texas. The topic was particularly popular in tracks titled “Intelligent Future” and “Startup & Tech Sectors.”

Many AI experts marveled at behalf—arranging your travel and hotel, what you will wear, the state recent advances in the technology what gift you will bring. while pondering its future. “It will be a paradigm more important than web and “I’ve been working in AI for now mobile and at a scale where every connected human and more than 30 years and in the past business will be transformed—and we’re this close.” eight years there are things that have occurred that I never thought would NARROW VS. GENERAL AI happen in my lifetime,” said Adam Though Cheyer posits AI’s competence in application areas Cheyer, co-founder of Viv Labs, during (narrow AI) will have the power to change lives, he said a discussion on innovations in AI. general AI has made slight progress, but “nothing beyond He gave as examples IBM’s Watson that of what any two-year-old can do.” supercomputer answering Jeopardy! A panel exploring the power of narrow AI, also called questions in natural language and the vertical AI, outlined the differences. ability for AI to recognize objects in an Amir Husain, founder and CEO of SparkCognition and image then synthesize the meaning of author of The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial that image. Intelligence, said all of the investment going into AI today According to Cheyer, who is also would be “paid back manifold” by vertical applications. known as one of the co-founders of Vertical AI is the ability to perform a specific task at the Apple’s Siri, we’re on the brink of a human level of performance or better, such as classification, new paradigm. He noted the way peo- image processing, speech recognition, and finding patterns ple interact with computers changes in data. Conversely, artificial general intelligence, sometimes roughly every 10 years—beginning referred to as AGI, is the ability to perform more complex tasks with the PC, then the web browser, such as playing chess, composing a song, or arguing a lawsuit. followed by the smartphone—and pre- “When an app can look at a cancer diagnosis and provide dicted the next evolution would be in results better than a human doctor, when an autonomous the advancement of artificially intelli- car can … control a car in a safer way than a human, when a gent assistants such as Alexa and Siri. weapon system is able to guide itself without the aid of the He also described today’s assistants pilot—when it can only do that one task with reliability and as utilities that can’t do everything accuracy—that is narrow AI,” Husain said. “Today, that is the web or an app can, but anticipates where we are poised. That is not to say we aren’t going toward this will soon change as companies more generalized AI.” pour billions of dollars into creating a According to Husain, current achievements center scalable ecosystem. around the ability of AI to effectively perceive—recognizing “I believe within the next two to an image and the objects within it, making sense of text, three years you will use an assistant converting sound into text, and so forth. But, he continued, for everything you use the web and progress will occur when this automated perception is apps for and it will be better than woven with other AI applications to evolve from observa- either of them,” Cheyer said, giving tion to decision, simulation, and action. traveling to a wedding as an example. “Are you interested in just pulling in some data from Imagine an AI assistant that knows a database and seeing a fancy chart that says, ‘I think this your preferences and can engage in is an anomaly?’ Come on, that’s so 1979,” he said. “What’s complex task coordination on your really interesting is how you start reasoning and how you

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 27 start to build a case for action, and then enable that action “We need to have a machine learning paradigm that is in a way that’s explainable.” able to learn from a small number of examples and also to John Price, CEO of vast.com, said success is about more transfer learning from domain to domain,” she said. “Both than “just spinning up a great vertical AI app.” He outlined of these are very nascent.” the importance of knowing where you’re going to get qual- ity data, developing an effective and scalable business plan, INTELLIGENCE VS. CONSCIOUSNESS and knowing how users will interact with the AI and how it Another panel directly addressed the notion of conscious- will present information. ness, particularly the difference between consciousness and “Users don’t want information from the AI, they want to intelligence. be told what to do,” he concluded. David Chalmers, co-director of NYU’s Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, described intelligence as “sophis- HOW CLOSE IS THE SINGULARITY, REALLY? ticated, goal-directed behavior.” In addition, intelligence can Though AI technology has barely transitioned beyond be measured externally, such as one’s ability to play chess or vertical applications, and consumers worldwide would navigate a new city. surely admit to occasionally yelling at their Alexa devices in Consciousness, on the other hand, is more difficult to frustration, multiple panelists referenced the singularity— define, but is commonly considered a subjective experience often defined as the point of no return at which artificial from the first-person point of view, or a stream of emotion intelligence surpasses human intelligence, or at which and thought. humans and machines merge, or both. SpaceX’s Elon Musk With regard to the question of whether machines can and Google’s Larry Page, who believe AI is a great threat to be intelligent, Chalmers said AI developers have been the world, and that it has the power to change the world for working on this a lot as they aim to leap from narrow to good, respectively, were general AI that can achieve a number of goals. The notion referenced multiple of whether machines can be conscious, he said, is a very times as examples of different question for which the answer is “no” among extreme perspectives many experts. concerning the tech- Susan Schneider, a philosopher with the cognitive science nology’s future. While program at the University of Connecticut, is writing a book some believe Musk’s called Future Minds in which she takes a practical, “wait-and- hesitation could stifle see approach” to the notion of machine consciousness. progress, others fear The quest to recreate consciousness is a way of investi- Page’s total embrace of gating whether it transcends the brain, Schneider said. AI goes too far. “Evolution did the first wave of mind creation,” she said. Famed physicist “Businesses like Google and Facebook may be doing the sec- Steven Hawking shared ond. So, we should get involved. We don’t just want to leave Musk’s skepticism, and it to economic interests.” wrote in 2014: “If a Many scientists are racing to “hack the human brain” superior alien civilisa- and to uncover the mysteries of consciousness for reasons

PHOTO BY KRISTIN QUINN KRISTIN BY PHOTO tion sent us a message including and reaching far beyond AI. But, according to saying, ‘We’ll arrive in Koller, comparing AI to human intelligence may prove to be From left to right, a few decades,’ would we just reply, ‘OK, call us when you a false dichotomy. Daphne Koller of get here. We’ll leave the lights on?’ Probably not—but this is “There is no reason to believe the fastest path to machine Calico Labs, Adam Cheyer of Viv Labs, more or less what is happening with AI.” intelligence is replicating the path evolution led us on in Nell Watson of But, realistically, how pressing are concerns about the terms of creating natural intelligence,” she said. “The obvi- Singularity Univer- sity, and Loic Le future of humanity in the age of AI? Some experts antic- ous analogy is flight. Airplanes work nothing like birds. All Meur of Leade.rs ipate the singularity is closer than most realize, such as of the attempts to replicate flight that is birdlike have failed.” participate in a futurist Ray Kurzweil, who pinpoints the year of singularity SXSW discussion on “Exploring as early as 2045. Other experts, such as Cheyer, think that ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS Innovations in AI.” date is still roughly 1,000 years out. Even at its current state, AI is yielding ethical and policy “The real fear is [if] sentience emerges. I’m [an advisor to] concerns among myriad groups, from civil rights advocates a company called Sentient, and I can tell you we do not know and philosophers to lawmakers and small business owners. how to do sentience,” Cheyer said, describing sentience as Jeff Chow, vice president of product, consumer experi- the ability to think, reason, feel, and scheme. “We don’t even ence at TripAdvisor, said it’s important to recognize and know what consciousness is. I haven’t seen any work that work through bias to ensure AI tools represent the popula- is leading in that path … I think most in AI take that view, tion at large. For example, facial recognition has proven to which is quite different than what the media blows up.” work best on lighter skinned faces while voice recognition is Daphne Koller, chief computing officer at Calico Labs, more in tune with deep voices—a reflection of mostly white, said the singularity might not be as far off as 1,000 years, male developers. but agrees major advancements would need to be achieved Finale Doshi-Velez, an assistant professor of computer before that point is reached. Currently, she elaborated, science at Harvard University, pointed to the unintended achievements in AI rely on very large data sets. For example, consequences of skewed data sets. For instance, if a hospital while a child can learn the word “dog” after being shown has a lot of data on a certain class of people that frequent the animal three or four times, an AI system may require the facility, its AI may only yield results on how to treat that thousands of examples to recognize a specific animal. class of patients.

28 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 She said some of the most popular verticals for AI, AI is not a high-ranking issue among her col- including healthcare, banking, and insurance, present many leagues, and expressed concern that the digital “It will be a ethical questions. divide is already vast in rural areas. paradigm more As a broad but important example, how should health- “I have parts of my district that still have care providers make decisions about people’s health with a dial-up [internet],” the Congresswoman said. “So important machine? Which decisions should be tasked to machines in rolling out broadband as part of an infrastructure than web and the first place? strategy [is] huge. …It is imperative that we focus “There are a set of human values that we as a society more on the future of work and all of these great mobile and at have to decide on,” Doshi-Velez said. “And those values innovations and technologies that are coming our a scale where could include an individual level of choice.” way. …No one wants to slow down innovation. every connected An example of individual choice could be determining But huge swaths of my district are already behind, how one’s autonomous vehicle will or won’t react in I can only imagine they will get further behind.” human and certain situations. Sarah Holland with Google’s Washington, business will be In insurance, actuaries are already using AI to make D.C.-based public policy team, said all stakehold- decisions that impact lives. Financial institutions are ers—policymakers, academia, everyday citizens, transformed— increasingly applying algorithms to assess loan risk. and advocates—need to weigh in to determine and we’re “We need to gather data about how our values are being how AI is going to land in society, from the eco- met or not met by whatever technologies or tools we have,” nomic impacts to the social. this close.” Doshi-Velez said. “…This is not something that’s happen- “The convening power of government should — ADAM CHEYER, VIV LABS ing in the future. It’s happening now. Data is affecting our be highlighted,” Holland said. “And finding ways lives very easily, and millions of people are impacted by the to help educate people that this is coming, and it’s decisions of software.” coming fast, and finding ways we can help it work for them.” She emphasized that AI value systems should be decided Holland and Lyons both pointed to the power of open upon by society “and not the engineer trying to make a data to help level the AI playing field. decision by 5 p.m.” “AI is very asymmetric. Some companies are way ahead,” Chris Jones, vice president of technology at iRobot, Lyons said. “Open data is a way the government can lean warned that it’s important to consider application specifics in hard and help equip smaller organizations with the data when making such determinations. and tools necessary to train models the way they might “[Regulating AI] is a very generic term,” Jones said. “If you need to compete. Facilitating multi-sector conversations is want to talk about regulating AI and its use in automobiles… critical to that because without crosscutting discussion it is it’s going to be a very different conversation than regulating far more likely that large tech companies are less tuned into for healthcare. I’ve seen some of the comments being so the needs of citizens more generally.” generic in nature and so far-ranging that it’s not actionable.” Nell Watson, an AI and robotics faculty member at REWRITING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Singularity University, which aims to prepare global leaders According to Husain, there are two schools of thought with and organizations for the future, said there is an emerging regard to AI and the future of work: the first—AI will take discipline called machine ethics, which incorporates philos- away nearly all human jobs; and the second—AI won’t be ophy, logic, math, psychology, and social science. able to perform most human jobs and instead the nature “It’s about the art and the engineering of loading values of work will evolve. For example, when society transitioned into the machines or helping machines make decisions from agrarian to industrial, new jobs emerged that hadn’t that are more in line with our hopes and expectations, even been conceived of yet. But, Husain said, he sees many and, ideally, human flourishing,” said Watson, who is also problems with the second camp’s thinking. co-founder of a group called EthicsNet, which aims to create “When the Industrial Revolution hit, what we had a dataset to teach machines to act in a socialized manner. replicated was the human muscle. …After that, the input of the human muscle in almost every economic endeavor AI AND THE FUTURE OF WORK diminished,” he said. “Today, what we are talking about is Another major area of AI-related ethical and policy concern replicating, if not all of the generality of the power of the is the future of work. One panel highlighted the “disconnect” human mind, enough of the capabilities that would allow between Washington, D.C., and AI technology. economic endeavors across a broad array of activities to be Terah Lyons is executive director of the Partnership on carried out by these replicated machine minds. And if that’s AI, which studies and forms best practices on AI technol- the case what else do we have? We are mind and machine.” ogies and works to advance public understanding of the Husain emphasized the need for policymakers to avoid technology. She also worked on AI issues for the White comforting platitudes. House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the “The point is, [will] machines just on the current tra- Obama administration. jectory without AGI … create a society with 50-70 percent “It’s become incredibly clear that AI will have outsized unemployment unless we redo the social contract?” he said. impacts potentially on communities that currently are not “You’re losing time to have a proper discourse around how represented in the technology to the extent that they should the social contract needs to change.” be, and that the diversity and inclusion aspect is a real Price said there’s room to both manage AI responsibly as problem,” Lyons said. well as to take advantage of its potential to help solve global Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, agreed and problems such as disease and climate change. voiced concern for the technologically underserved. Sewell, “We have to be responsible with AI,” he concluded. “That a proponent of the Future of AI Act and the AI Jobs Act, said said, I think it’s the greatest opportunity in the world.”

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 29 membershippulse WHO WE ARE

Caption China is building islands and establishing military bases throughout the South China Sea in an effort to claim territory also claimed by other nations. AGI’s Systems Tool Kit can model, simulate, and analyze the performance of the systems involved in this contested multi-domain environment. IMAGE COURTESY OF AGI COURTESY IMAGE AGI: The Need for Speed Q&A with Dave Peters, director, Intelligence Community Business Development

What is AGI’s role in the How do you keep pace with imperative, and makes the data so Q GEOINT Community? Q the constantly changing face much more valuable to our community AGI is a commercial-off-the-shelf of intelligence? and our customers who need data to (COTS) software company serving both We release new versions of our software feed STK. Hopefully new multi-level industry and government. We provide multiple times a year and constantly security and identity management game-changing tools that model, ana- add new functionalities based primarily solutions will allow the right data to lyze, and visualize objects in space and on user feedback. We listen closely to get to the right users securely. time with unprecedented accuracy. the difficulties expressed by our users STK, or Systems Tool Kit, is our core to make sure our software addresses How is open-source product. It’s a desktop app for model- emerging challenges. We also have tre- Q data important to national ing and analyzing satellite and aircraft mendous subject matter experts sitting security? systems. We save our customers time by beside our software developers to make There are lots of great new capabilities providing quick answers to questions sure we’re pushing new technology, new being presented through open-source like, “Where are my assets over time?” or phenomenology, new ways to model projects. But programs need to be sure “What targets are visible to my sensors?” systems, and new systems themselves. they’re not taking open-source code and We also offer our Space Situational creating their own stovepipe version Awareness suite, which provides tools What advice do you have for of an application, which is ultimately like quick maneuver detection to provide Q companies seeking to trans- going to raise maintenance costs. Even a picture of what you do and don’t need form their data management and so, the opportunity for open source to to worry about in space. We also provide security practice? rapidly propel missions is fantastic. all STK algorithms in a development Securing data is of course a first-level Our open-source product, Cesium, environment called STK Components. priority, but making it sharable is provides a time-dynamic globe in a

30 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 web browser. A lot of programs use it as a replacement to Google Earth “We made a concerted Enterprise. Users in the IC, DoD, and ManTech: Securing effort a long time ago to industry often use Cesium in ways we didn’t even think about until we saw the Future build and acquire the it at a conference. That’s the beauty of Q&A with Damian DiPippa, capabilities to become a open source. senior vice president and leader in cybersecurity. general manager, Mission What differentiates AGI soft- and Intelligence Solutions We continue to invest Q ware from competitors? Business Unit in our people and Our software is ready to use imme- diately, as opposed to software technology to stay ahead development efforts that often fall What products and services of evolving threats.” behind schedule or run over bud- Q does ManTech offer? get. Additionally, keeping up with ManTech offers a wide variety of solu- — DAMIAN DIPIPPA, MANTECH community needs means adding new tions to the intelligence, defense, and functionality all the time. We help federal civilian communities based anyone involved with space systems, on our core capabilities in cyber, data manned and unmanned aerial systems, collection and analytics, enterprise IT, How has ManTech evolved to and ballistic systems. Our users are and systems and software engineering. Q keep pace with the explosion able to monitor many different types For example, our work at the National of geospatial data throughout the of sensors—onboard systems, tracking Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is last decade? sensors, GEOINT/SIGINT, and more. primarily focused on cybersecurity Our cyber defense and insider threat Having the breadth of capabilities we and network and IT service manage- teams work around the clock to ensure offer out of the box saves our custom- ment. We have key qualifications the security and integrity of NGA’s data ers time and money, and that’s a big for other Intelligence Community and networks. We made a concerted differentiator. customers in areas like DevOps, cloud effort a long time ago to build and migration, and intelligence analysis acquire the capabilities to become a What emerging trends is AGI and operations. We serve multiple leader in cybersecurity. We continue to Q most excited about? intelligence agencies—CIA, NRO, DIA, invest in our people and technology to We see increasing complexity in NSA—as well as DoD and military stay ahead of evolving threats. GEOINT. It’s multi-domain, and mixed intelligence programs. between government and commercial. What should federal agencies That’s exciting, but creates a need for Given ManTech’s history Q know about implementing system orchestration along the lines of Q of federal contracting, do successful cybersecurity all the capabilities previously men- you have any advice for partner- initiatives? tioned. Problems are getting harder, ing effectively with government I’ll refer to the adage: “Once you build a people need analytical results faster, agencies? better mousetrap, along comes a better and legacy tools and methods used in ManTech is proudly celebrating its mouse,” which sums up the current the past will be hard to use in this new, 50th anniversary this year. Our goal cybersecurity environment. Agencies rapidly changing environment. is to be the trusted advisor to federal can’t let their guard down. Threats government customers in offering and are constantly evolving, and they’re How have you personally implementing solutions and executing growing more concerning every day. Q benefitted from USGIF and enhancing their specific missions. It’s critical that we all stay abreast of membership? We’ve had that from day one. Under- technology and tradecraft standards to USGIF membership has given me tre- standing and delivering on customer maintain security. mendous opportunities to advance my missions has been part of our culture ManTech is focused on evolving career. Attending large events like the for the last five decades, and it has led ahead of those threats. One GEOINT Symposium and smaller gath- to ManTech’s success. great example of this com- erings like GEOINTeraction Tuesday We communicate clearly and mitment is our Advanced has helped expand my understand- frequently with customers and we Cyber Range Environment ing of the many aspects of GEOINT, find ways to rapidly integrate state- (ACRE). This provides a Damian get a chance to speak with and learn of-the-market technology to support physical and virtual envi- DiPippa from leaders in our community, and their unique missions. That’s the ronment to test and model helped expand my network, all of level of involvement and mission the security posture of an which makes me better at my job and focus required for any company existing network against increases the value of AGI’s contribu- wanting a long-term position in the real-world threats— tions to the community. federal space. performed

USGIF.ORG TRAJECTORY 31 in a safe environment on a precise replication of that network. We offer This oblique aerial photo monitoring the status of Antonio Juarbe Pol this across security domain levels. Airport in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, was We’re also one of the top insider threat taken in September 2017 during Hurricane Maria response efforts. companies working with the federal government today.

How are AI and automation Q being integrated into ManTech’s offerings? Artificial intelligence and machine learning are natural evolutions of our software, DevOps, and analytic capabilities. Intel analysts deal in immense volumes of data and spend a considerable amount of time working to ascertain which portions of that data are most important. Our goal is to automate those routine and exploratory tasks and point the analyst to key changes or areas that require human analysis. We want to minimize the amount of data analysts have to touch so they can focus on the refined,

actionable intelligence essential to PHOTO BY MAJ. DAYLE ROBINSON, CIVIL AIR PATROL making important decisions. Aeronautical University. During his programs, but we’re trying to pro- What differentiates ManTech senior year, Desmarais landed a posi- vide commercial, off-the-shelf, easily Q from similar companies? tion with CAP’s cadet programs office. importable imagery for folks to use for ManTech does so much more than just He eventually moved to the operations emergency response. IT and data management. We recently side, and has been climbing the ladder changed our tagline to “securing the ever since, including eight years spent How important is open data future.” That’s rooted in our DNA. as deputy director of operations, and Q sharing with regard to CAP’s Every single person in the company six (so far) as director. In 1996, Desma- emergency response efforts along- contributes to the safety, security, and rais founded the National Emergency side federal agencies? protection of our nation, our war- Services Academy, which educates Part of the reason CAP is successful is fighters, and our allies. Our 50-year nearly 500 students each summer. because we make our data so easily history of dedication to customer accessible. We don’t want to be the missions and our understanding of What is your advice for young keepers of imagery. We don’t have tons how to implement new and emerging Q GEOINT professionals? of money to put into data storage and solutions—that’s what really differen- Never stop learning. The technology we management. When you collect large- tiates us. use day to day is constantly changing, scale imagery and video, you’re talking and in many cases, amazingly, getting about huge volumes of data. less expensive. CAP is a nonprofit, so Years ago, we used to host imag- Individual Member we don’t have millions of dollars to ery as part of our systems. We had a throw at problems, but we can cost- publically viewable website, as well as Spotlight: Aviation, effectively take on new missions by secure sites for sensitive data. In the GIS, and Continuous paying attention to industry and stay- big picture, though, we weren’t the Learning ing abreast of new technology. People best option for the maintenance of John Desmarais, director of see you continuing your education and that imagery. We had to operations, Civil Air Patrol staying in tune with current trends, purge it quickly and and that allows you to progress. couldn’t maintain it long-term. The first time John Desmarais got How does CAP employ We worked with into the cockpit of an airplane, he was Q geospatial data to support FEMA who now hooked. Desmarais joined the Civil its numerous missions? hosts all of our publi- Air Patrol (CAP) in 1987, and shortly We do a lot of airborne imagery col- cally available thereafter began pursuing his under- lection for state and local emergency imagery graduate degree in aviation business management agencies and FEMA. as part and safety of flight at Embry-Riddle We’re not necessarily managing GIS of their John Desmarais

32 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 GEOPlatform. We pretty good imagery of just about any How has “USGIF has took close to half a event. For applications like emergency Q USGIF million photos for response, GIS workers are starting to Membership also allowed hurricane season look at whatever imagery is immedi- helped your alone last year. All of ately available. Lots of organizations career me to provide it is hosted by FEMA. and government agencies are begin- development? opportunities They even host our ning to incorporate unconventional CAP was introduced training imagery. imagery when there is a starving need to USGIF through to some of for it immediately after an incident. NGA and FEMA. my folks How import- We’ve worked closely with FEMA on What helped me through Q ant are crowdsourcing capabilities employed most is visibility civilian volunteers during recent hurricane responses, into what every- training or to your mission? which allows people to rate pictures body else in the long-term CAP is unique in that and help us direct resources. industry is doing so volunteers conduct we can do our due strategic the vast majority of What excites you most about diligence to keep planning.” our missions. We’ve Q the future of GEOINT? up. I’m not a GIS only got about 150 Accessibility. I’ve been in the industry professional; I’m an — JOHN DESMARAIS, CIVIL AIR PATROL paid staffers. There a long time, and I’ve seen expensive aviation profes- are lots of things sensor systems do great things. Now sional who uses GIS volunteers could do in that costs have gone down and devices tools. It’s helpful to an increased capacity are smaller, they’re a lot more accessi- see how all levels of government are for agencies, and I ble and easier to employ in new ways. acting because the landscape changes think some agencies We did an RFI a few years ago for every day. USGIF has also allowed me are starting to realize aerial imagery sensors. Systems that to provide opportunities to some of the significance of the cost millions of dollars per sensor then my folks through training or long-term volunteer population. cost half a million dollars now, and strategic planning. It’s been a guide for Everybody has an iPhone or smart prices keep dropping. There’s an over- how we should support our role in the device with which they can collect whelming need for these tools. community. READING LIST

Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine By Tom Koch Esri Press presents a new, expanded edition of this book, which is an investigation of the relationships among populations, places, and medical maladies. Beginning with the plague maps of the 1600s, the book charts the history of spatial science’s role in the fight against dangerous viruses and bacteria. The new edition features corrections and information updates, as well as new chapters on the 2014 Ebola epidemic and cartography’s role in its containment.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World By Peter Frankopan Frankopan’s vision of history sets the Central Asian Silk Roads as the undeniable center of The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly commerce, transportation, and Mapped the World geopolitics. This book examines By John Davies and Alexander J. Kent the trade network’s influence in This book offers a view of the western world the establishment and advance- through the lens of the Soviet Union’s secret spies, ment of major cities in the Eastern scouts, and surveyors. During the Cold War, the hemisphere, and considers it as a Soviet army launched the most comprehensive conduit for goods, diseases, and mapping mission of its time, piecing together intri- troops. The scope of the author’s cately detailed, to-scale maps of the entire world investigation is wide, and peers using both early remote sensing technology and over the horizon to assess how the intelligence agents on the ground. The maps are future of major metropolitan areas astonishingly detailed and diverse, ranging from rests on the well-being of the trade canal depths and bridge capacity to road widths patterns established by the historic and building heights. Silk Roads.

USGIF EVENTS CALENDAR

SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER NOVEMBER 11 19-20 28-29 16-18 10-16 17 GEOINTeraction trajectoryXyzt GeoAcademic Tech GEOINT GEOGala Tuesday Sana Monica, Summit Showcase Community Week McLean, Va. Hosted by Vricon Calif. Herndon, Va. West Northern Virginia McLean, Va. St. Louis, Mo.

34 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 Woolpert announced the hiring of STEVE AMBROSE and Technology and Community Benefit Committee. as new program director of government solutions. O’Sullivan has more than 30 years of experience, Ambrose brings with him more than 40 years experience, including roles at the Office of Naval Intelligence, CIA, including positions with NOAA and the National and ODNI. Weather Service.

JOHN PEREIRA, intelligence industry leader for defense After completing its acquisition of CRSA, General PEER INTEL Dynamics established the leadership team at the and intelligence at IBM Global Business Services, was revamped General Dynamics Information Technology named an intelligence community fellow at the IBM branch. AMY GILLILAND remained president, BERNIE Center for The Business of Government. Pereira will GUERRY was appointed COO, ALISON HARBRECHT was direct thought leadership pertaining to intelligence named CFO, GEORGE BATSAKIS was designated chief in government. growth officer, andKRISTIE GRINNELL became CTO. The White House announced the nomination of LISA Dewberry promoted WENDY KORITKO to associate PORTER, In-Q-Tel’s executive VP and the director of IQT vice president in the firm’s Fairfax, Va., office. In her former role of controller, Koritko led financial reporting, Labs, to serve as deputy undersecretary for research budgeting, and external audits. and engineering at the Defense Department. Porter has significant experience in the federal space, including Hexagon US Federal appointed TAMMER OLIBAH leadership positions with IARPA, DARPA, and NASA. president and CEO. Olibah is a former IT and cyber executive at Booz Allen Hamilton with nearly 20 HawkEye 360 announced an expansion of its advisory years of experience innovating in federal and board to include two new members: THE HONORABLE commercial sectors. ROBERT O. WORK, who recently served as U.S. Deputy STEPHANIE O’SULLIVAN was elected to Battelle’s Secretary of Defense, and LT. GEN. (RET.) JOHN F. board of directors, where she’ll support STEM research MULHOLLAND JR., as well as the appointment of and education and serve on the organization’s Science LETITIA A. LONG as chairperson.

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Former DigitalGlobe CEO Jeff Tarr on the future of commercial remote sensing

Jeff Tarr is the former CEO of DigitalGlobe, where he served in that position from 2011 until the sale of the company to MDA to form Maxar Technologies in October 2017. Tarr is also a member of USGIF’s Board of Directors. industry understands the conver- been imagined. I’m excited about gence of these technologies, and our applications that offer the potential to You moderated a panel on the main stage at customers understand what GEOINT improve the state of the world. If you’re Q GEOINT 2018 on “The Future of Commercial can do for them. going to eradicate polio, you need Remote Sensing.” What were some takeaways from to know where people are that need that discussion? What can be done to help vaccines. If you’re going to ensure safe, First is the number of participants in the GEOINT industry. Q customers better under- clean water, you need to understand There are more than 30 companies operating Earth imaging stand the landscape? the state of water tables and distribu- satellites or that have announced intent to do so. And more USGIF plays an important educational tion and drainage systems. GEOINT than 100 companies are focused on helping customers role, whether it’s through the GEOINT is a killer technology with a lot of make sense of data. The large number of players raises the Symposium, trajectory magazine, or amazing applications. question of who will ultimately be successful. the new trajectoryXyzt event to be Second, panelists talked about the application of new held in Santa Monica this September. What does it take for a technologies to make sense of the vast and growing volume Then there’s the work USGIF is doing Q business in the GEOINT of remote sensing data, including AI, the IoT, and augmented with universities to educate students industry to be successful? and virtual reality. and support research in these fields. First, you have to know your market. Third is the breadth of business models. Operators are Long ago, GEOINT’s primary use cases It’s important because you can do so pushing beyond collection into analysis. At the same time, a were related to national security. many things with GEOINT. large number of players are emerging who neither own nor We’re far beyond that, which is one Second, data quality matters. operate assets in space but are buying and analyzing data to of the reasons I’m excited about the GEOINT is used to answer high-stakes serve specific verticals. commercial-facing trajectoryXyzt. It’s questions such as those that keep Finally, panelists spoke on the importance of GEOINT as a going to provide a forum for those who nations safe and inform life-or-death contributor to global issues. GEOINT is critical to addressing are interested in GEOINT and the art of decisions. The cost of high-quality data humanitarian challenges, ranging from combatting climate the possible to come together. is usually less than the value of getting change to eradicating polio, to human trafficking, to protect- the answer right. If higher quality ing the food supply and ensuring access to clean water. For all Do you think the “killer GEOINT is the difference between an of these, GEOINT promises to contribute substantially. Q app” for GEOINT has been autonomous vehicle getting safely discovered yet? If not, what do you from point A to point B, how much Even though geospatial intelligence has a predict it will be? more are you willing to spend? Q role in worldwide industries and challenges, Yes, there are killer apps today. Third, understand the trade space. it is still not a common term outside the realm of However, searching for one killer app There are always tradeoffs in collect- national security. How do you suggest the community may be the wrong way to look at it. ing and processing GEOINT. These addresses this? One killer app is the map: driving decisions must be informed by a deep Our energies should be focused on solving customer directions, traffic insights. We use it understanding of customer needs. problems, not on terminology. Remote sensing is charac- every day, every time we try to find the Finally, instill a sense of purpose in terized by a blurring of the lines between the digital and quickest route home or discover a new your workforce if you want to attract the physical as well as between once-distinct technologies. local business. Every time we check the talent and build customer trust. The term geospatial intelligence addresses that by encom- weather, we’re using GEOINT. And yet If you lose sight of any one of those passing a wide range another is precision agriculture. key drivers, you will find yourself in Visit trajectorymagazine. of related technologies. Will there be others? Certainly. trouble. It comes down to understand- com/perspective to read an But while the term Autonomous vehicles will not be pos- ing the customer, delivering better extended version of this interview. may be helpful, it’s sible without GEOINT. I’m sure there value, delivering a return, and leading more important our are applications that have not yet with purpose.

36 TRAJECTORYMAGAZINE.COM 2018 ISSUE 3 September 19-20, 2018 The Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, CA

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Dr. Martin Hofmann Dr. Walter Scott CTO of Maxar, and Founder CIO, Volkswagen AG SPEAKERS of DigitalGlobe

Bo Ewald Jeff Jonas Jackie Space President, D-Wave Founder and CEO of Senzing, and Co-founder of BMNT International Inc. former IBM Distinguished Fellow

Shahin Farshchi Kevin E. O’Brien Alyssa Wright Chief Business Officer, Business Development and Partner, Lux Capital Orbital Insight Partnerships, FOAM

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