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INTRODUCTION
The mission of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is to provide timely, relevant, and accurate imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information—collectively known as geospatial intelligence—in support of national security. To help carry out its mission, NGA sponsors research aimed at building the scientific foundation for geospatial intelligence and reinforcing the academic base, which provides new approaches to solving difficult analytical problems and also trains the next generation of NGA analysts.
Historically, NGA has supported research in five core areas:
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photogrammetry and geomatics
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remote sensing and imagery science
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geodesy and geophysics
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cartographic science
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geographic information systems (GIS) and geospatial analysis
Some of these areas have been used for defense and intelligence purposes for decades and even centuries (Box 1.1) and ongoing technological and scientific advances continue to make them useful today. For example, digital photogrammetry and digital imaging have completely replaced and substantially improved upon hardcopy photography and mechanical image rectification. Other recent advances that could improve geospatial intelligence draw on disciplines and approaches not traditionally supported by NGA. For example, efforts to wage a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan have highlighted the need for intelligence that integrates characteristics of the physical environment with information on the people, including the local economics, identity of landowners, and incentives for obtaining cooperation from powerbrokers and villagers (Flynn et al., 2010). This evolution of disciplines and new approaches for producing geospatial intelligence also affects the future workforce available to NGA.
Within this context, H. Gregory Smith, NGA Chief Scientist, asked the National Research Council to convene a workshop to explore the evolution of the five core areas and to identify emerging disciplines that may improve the quality of geospatial intelligence over the next fifteen years. This report summarizes the discussions at the workshop.
BOX 1.1 Milestones in NGA Core Areas for Defense and Intelligence Purposes
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NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
NGA is one of sixteen federal agencies responsible for national intelligence. Its focus is the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. Issues that have a component of “where” or “when” potentially fall under the purview of NGA.
Most of NGA’s efforts are devoted to the provision of data, intelligence and services to users now and in the near future. Positioning the NGA for future capabilities is the responsibility of the InnoVision Directorate, which analyzes intelligence trends, technological advances, and emerging approaches to forecast possible environments and identify future needs. Demands for
new kinds of information and the development of new capabilities for data collection have led to explosive growth in the quantity, diversity, and complexity of information, and placed new and more exacting requirements on information analysts. Future global developments—such as climate change, water scarcity, the spread of infectious disease, global financial and economic activities, warfare, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation—will further increase the complexity of geospatial intelligence by requiring the collection and analysis of new data on environmental and human factors and how they interconnect.
Future challenges facing NGA are both computational and scientific. A 2006 National Research Council (NRC) report focused on the former, identifying twelve “hard problems” in data collection, processing, and integration; speed of analysis; use of imagery; and data sharing that must be surmounted to improve geospatial intelligence (NRC, 2006). This workshop report discusses the science disciplines that form the foundation for solving these and other geospatial intelligence problems.
OVERVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP
Planning Committee
An NRC committee was established to organize the workshop and write a report. Committee members were selected for their expertise in the earth, geospatial, and computational sciences that are or are likely to become important to NGA, or for their experience with the intelligence community. The committee met in February 2010 to plan the workshop and again immediately following the workshop to begin writing the report.
The committee was asked to look ahead fifteen years without regard to NGA’s immediate research needs, which are partially classified. In addition to the five core areas identified by NGA, the committee selected five cross-cutting themes that are likely to become increasingly important for GEOINT: beyond fusion, forecasting, human terrain, participatory sensing, and visual analytics. These were chosen based on their linkages with the core areas, on their utility in addressing the hard problems in geospatial science identified in the previous NRC report (NRC, 2006), and on the general needs of the intelligence community, as understood by the committee. The research areas discussed at the workshop are defined in Box S.1.
Structure of the Workshop
The workshop was held in Washington, D.C., on May 17-19, 2010. The first day of the workshop focused on the NGA’s five core areas. White papers written for the workshop traced the evolution of the core areas over the past few decades. Workshop presentations and working group discussions looked forward, focusing on new opportunities and challenges in these areas for NGA. On the second day, workshop participants discussed the five cross-cutting themes. Background journal articles and presentations provided an overview of the state of the science, and the working group discussions focused on the usefulness of the cross-cutting themes for geospatial intelligence. On the third day of the workshop, participants focused the results of the earlier discussions into a short list of promising research directions for the NGA. Some
participants also identified potential implications of implementing these research directions for the future workforce and other aspects of the scientific infrastructure. None of the material discussed or presented at the workshop was classified.
Workshop participants included twenty-nine researchers drawn from a wide range of disciplines, with special emphasis on the core areas and cross-cutting issues. In addition, five observers from NGA and other parts of the intelligence community participated in the discussions. Altogether, forty-eight participants attended the workshop, including NRC staff.
ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
This report is the committee’s summary of what transpired at the workshop. It reflects only those topics emphasized during workshop presentations, discussions, and background papers, and is not intended as a comprehensive summary of all topics and issues relevant to the research underlying the production of geospatial intelligence. Moreover, this report does not contain any consensus recommendations or conclusions. The documented observations or views contained in this report are those of individual participants or groups of participants and do not necessarily represent the consensus of the workshop participants or the committee.
Chapter 2 summarizes the presentations and working group results on NGA’s core areas and the cross-cutting themes, respectively. Chapter 3 presents the short list of new research directions selected by workshop participants and discusses some implications of implementing them on the research infrastructure. Biographical sketches of committee members are given in Appendix A. Appendix B lists the white papers written for the workshop as well as the key note talks presented at the workshop. The workshop participants and agenda are given in Appendixes C and D, respectively. Additional notes from the workshop breakout sessions are provided in Appendix E.