Project Geospatial

Anyone who sails a ship, flies an aircraft, goes into harm’s way, makes national policy decisions, responds to disasters, or navigates with a cellphone, all rely on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. NGA delivers world-class geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, that provides a decisive advantage to warfighters, policymakers, intelligence professionals and first responders. Both an intelligence agency and a combat support agency, NGA fulfills the president’s national security priorities in partnership with the intelligence community and Department of Defense.  

Gary Dunow, the Associate Director of Enterprise at the NGA, discusses the agency’s priorities and what he would like to see be the focus for the coming five years. The three main targets he explains are an interoperable GEOINT environment, sensor to effect capabilities, and GEOINT superiority from space. And he went on to elaborate on how he plans to coordinate with NGA’s industry partners to achieve their goals.

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Spire Global is a space-to-cloud analytics company that owns and operates the largest multi-purpose constellation of satellites. Its proprietary data and algorithms provide the most advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking in the world. In addition to its constellation, Spire’s data infrastructure includes a global ground station network and 24/7 operations that provide real-time global coverage of every point on Earth.  

Iain Goodridge with Spire, discusses the new directions for Spire beyond AIS. Their space services, including constellation-as-a-service demonstrates their new capabilities as a company and their shift in focus. He also discusses the new opportunities in RF specifically.

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To stay ahead of climate change, geopolitical risk, and other major crises and issues, we need a global understanding of what is changing, where, and how fast. Umbra is built around the idea that by providing easy access to the highest quality commercial satellite data available, they can become an indispensable tool for the growing number of organizations monitoring the Earth. They empower their customers with the ability to create the solutions that inform, inspire, and address our planet’s most pressing needs. They’re helping to create a brand new industry that has never meaningfully existed before.  

Umbra Space’s Vice President of Commercial Products, Joe Morrison, discusses their unique business model and propositions to customers. Their Creative Comments Licensing is a source of curiosity and he explains how it works for their customers and why is makes more sense than legacy licensing. He also shares his perspective of the overall satellite imagery industry and the shifts he hopes to see.

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Cognitive Space is an AI-driven solution for near real-time dynamic mission management, collection planning & optimization, and revenue/performance capacity forecasting. Through space, we can monitor a changing planet, protect national interests, provide real-time communications, and enable a web of globally connected devices. It also offers the means for human civilization to scale beyond the bounds of our planet. For the vision of space to reach its fullest potential, the traditional approach of operating satellites individually will not suffice; they must be orchestrated at scale. By leveraging modern AI, cloud, and blockchain technology, Cognitive Space will orchestrate this new space domain to bring about the future we envision.  

Scott Herman, with Cognitive Space, describes the problems and challenges they solve for their customers including mission management, collection planning, order management, and more. He describes the benefits of starting with Moonshot Labs and the process of participating in various other accelerators. Scott then goes on to discuss what is around the corner for Cognitive Space and the future challenges of machine orchestration.

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Founded in 2016, Edgybees provides accurate geo-registration and augmented reality of aerial video in real time, enabling defense, public safety and critical infrastructure command centers to accomplish life-saving missions. To date, the referencing and positioning of streamed video from aerial sources has been inaccurate, often with dangerous consequences. Edgybees’ Visual Intelligence Platform, a software-only solution based on Computer Vision and Machine Learning technologies, delivers highly accurate geo-mapping and tagging of aerial video in real time. This unique approach allows for rapid decision-making by visually augmenting roads, key landmarks and other mission-critical data on top of live video feeds – via its own platform or by integrating with third-party systems. Edgybees’ operational perspective dramatically reduces time-to-target and enhances team collaboration, situational awareness and mission effectiveness.   

Craig Brower, the President of Edgybees Inc, discusses the importance of georegistration and demonstrates their software tool that makes video accurate within one meter, in real time. He also describes the other services the users are able to access including overlays for full context. He also is able to demonstrate their satellite imagery correction software that makes georegistration possible within seconds.

THIS EPISODE WAS RECORDED FOR VISUAL VIEWERS IN MIND. 

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PAR Government is the recognized expert in mobile situational awareness and geospatial technology including full-motion video. Their goal is to help users best manage their information in any type of dynamic environment, whether that be military assets, first responders, local government, or international allies.  

TeamConnect-Sit(x) is a SaaS solution hosted in the FedRAMP compliant Amazon GovCloud that delivers next generation TAK Server capabilities. It supports federation with GOTS TAK Servers and provides an intuitive user experience allowing organizations to sign up and deploy in minutes. Situational Awareness (SA) provides knowledge of what is happening in the area of operation while gathering intelligence in real time. Their technology works with the Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK) to provide an SA solution to communicate, push data to others, and see other operators in real time. To put it into layman's terms, it provides you (the user) the ability to see others movements and actions within your group, and provides you with the ability to send data points and chat messages to those people.  

Here Mike Nelson, the President of PAR Government, explains the importance of mobile devices to provide crucial situational awareness to various groups and the increased communication and collaboration they are able to achieve with their system. Verne LaClair then walked us through a demonstration of their cutting edge software.

THIS EPISODE IS BEST WATCHED THROUGH VIDEO.

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Performing over 80 million locates annually, USIC is the most trusted name in underground utility damage prevention. USIC also provides a full suite of utility services throughout the United States and Canada. Their mission is to deliver quality, efficient, safe, and innovative solutions to protect our partners’ infrastructure and critical assets.  

Rodney Saffold, the President and CEO of USIC LLC, describes the challenges he solves for his customers and his unique propositions his company provides. He describes the most interesting trends he’s observed at the symposium and how he sees them affecting the industry in the near future. He also elaborates on the hurdles the industry still faces in regards to acquisitions and small businesses.

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ASTERRA (formerly Utilis) provides data-driven solutions for water utilities, government agencies and the greater infrastructure industry in the areas of roads, rails, dams, and mines. The company’s proprietary algorithms and highly educated scientists and engineers are the key to their mission, to deliver actionable intelligence to advance Earth’s resource resilience. Since 2017, ASTERRA technology has been used in over 59 countries, saving over 169,280 million gallons of potable water, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 108,339 metric tons, and saving 423,200 MWH of energy, all in support of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. ASTERRA is headquartered in Israel with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. Their innovative data solutions are used in multiple verticals around the globe. ASTERRA is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring their products to the next level.  

Elly Perets, the CEO of ASTERRA, and James Perry, ASTERRA’s Executive Vice President, describe how their company identifies infrastructure failures and how they plan to expand to other opportunities in various sectors. Elly discusses the urgent need for infrastructure failure detection and the short comings of the current solutions.

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The interagency Civil Applications Committee (CAC) facilitates the appropriate civil uses of overhead remote sensing technologies and data collected by military and intelligence capabilities, including from commercial sources. The CAC is operated and staffed by the U.S. Geological Survey on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior and its interagency partners. The director of the U.S. Geological Survey is the chair of the committee, and the vice-chair is a non-Department of the Interior senior official. The CAC ensures certain Federal civil agencies have access to these remotely sensed assets to meet their statutory missions in ways that do not threaten the civil rights, civil liberties, and personal privacy of U.S. citizens. To meets its mandate, the CAC hosts various working groups and communities of interest including those focused on thermal issues (wildland fires and volcanoes), environmental security, and historical satellite imagery.  

Dan Opstal and Scott Kaplan, with the Civil Applications Committee, discuss the importance of CAC and why having an organization such as this is so important to the community as a whole. They also describe how they are educating individuals and their partners about how CAC can help in their particular missions. Dan also explains some of the challenges in the industry they are trying to mitigate in the industry such as accessibility to data. Scott also went on to elaborate on the need for improved communication between disciplines and how CAC is trying to help with that.

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Orbital Insight is the leader in geospatial analytics and location intelligence that helps organizations understand what’s happening on and to the Earth. Orbital Insight uses AI to answer their questions about supply chains, global commodities, geopolitical events, demographics and national security using multiple sources of geospatial data—including satellite images, mobile location, connected cars and other IoT data. Armed with this insight, organizations can anticipate future changes to avoid costly surprises and create new opportunities.  

Kevin O’Brien, CEO of Orbital Insights, met up with us at GEOINT 2022 to discuss their subscription model analytics service. He elaborated on the importance of fusing sensors with the geospatial data. The aggregation of this data is key in crucial use cases for many different industries such as banking, agriculture, and energy companies. He also went on to explain the growth opportunities he sees coming for Orbital Insights and the industry as a whole in the next five years.

Watch or listen to more episodes by Project Geospatial at www.projectgeospatial.com