The U.S. Defense Department is building a repository of commercial-imagery-based products that focuses on major U.S. defense installations. The aim is to generate a georeference, common installation picture to aid the military in its ongoing transformation activities.
The U.S. Air Force’s GeoBase program is serving to coordinate this departmentwide broad mapping effort, which also includes the U.S. Army’s geospatial information system (GIS)-repository (GIS-R) and the U.S. Navy’s GeoReadiness programs. These service efforts are overlaying legal base boundaries, noise contours, accident potential zones, explosive safety arcs for ranges, floodplains and wetlands features on top of imagery. Combining these many features on actual base imagery allows leaders to view and understand virtually all aspects of an installation environment.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has tapped Space Imaging (
www.spaceimaging.com) to provide the remote sensing imagery to underpin the installation visualization effort. The commercial firm is supplying its Precision 1-meter IKONOS imagery to cover more than 300 defense sites, mostly in the United States and Guam. Much of the needed imagery came from the company’s existing inventory of installation images in its archive.
The GIS imagery product can serve a number of functions. Local installation officials can use the multilayered GIS product to plan additional security measures to deal with new terrorist threats. These local officials also can examine infrastructure issues, such as expansion or return of land to civilian use, in the context of the effects these changes would have in a variety of environmental areas. And, Defense Department officials can consider all of these factors in determining base realignment or closure.
The GeoBase approach that this departmentwide initiative builds on produces a common installation picture, or CIP. The CIP is designed to serve as a single source of GIS installation data. More than two dozen map layers can be added to the original remote sensing image. The commercial 1-meter imagery is registered to local ground control points.
GeoBase presents a view of the military installation along the lines of a battlefield situational awareness picture. As with battlefield situational awareness, users of GeoBase can visualize mission assets—their bases—in a shared, intuitive, cross-functional manner. The CIP is organized by spatial data standards for facilities, infrastructure and environment.
The initial phase of the Defense Department base visualization effort concludes this year.
