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Tuesday, December 16, 2008


Challenges of uniting Intelligence with a GIS

The purpose of this document is to discuss the convergence of GIS and intelligence and to describe the state of its utility in the industry of Defense Intelligence. GIS is the primary technological driver in the rapid and constantly evolving arena of geospatial science and information. However, GIS as a whole cannot be clearly defined with a simple articulated statement. One of the many reasons for this is due to the nature of the output – the intangible knowledge that is discovered as a result from using a GIS. Given any analysis done using a GIS, the output is never merely just map production or geoprocessed tables and statistics; the true value of the output is the knowledge that expands or enhances the user’s perspective and improved comprehension and understanding of the subject matter. Being that the information gained from using GIS cannot be reduced to a single function, structure and utility, the definition of a GIS is ever-changing with each and every use.

All of these aforementioned truths can be transcended to the concept of intelligence. Each member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC) struggles to find words to encapsulate the full-fledged idea of intelligence into the exactness of a single definition. The community fails to come to a consensus of an interagency definition, even after sixty-one years of reworking the idea among themselves. As Michael Warner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) History Staff states, “The term [intelligence] is defined anew by each author who addresses it, and these definitions rarely refer to one another or build off what has been written before.” (Warner, 2007) Despite the lack of conciseness and clarity of describing what intelligence truly is, the truth remains that the value of intelligence is intangible and invaluable to the professionals among the community of Defense.

For the sake of simplicity and brevity, continuing forward I will use the term ‘Intelligence’ broadly defined as information about things. Intelligence can be knowledge or material things natural or anthropological in nature; it can be related to foreign or domestic adversaries; it can be obtained through investigation, analysis, observation, concatenation of understanding or interpretations; it can be simply knowledge and foreknowledge of the world around us (Warner, 2007). However difficult it is to maximize succinctness while relaxing particular characteristics about different intelligence types that would make it unique in some way, the critical component of intelligence can be rather straight forwardly put - it is what is done with it.

Again, the primary purpose of this document is to discuss the convergence of GIS and Intelligence and to describe the state its utility in the industry of Defense of Intelligence. As it has already been established, unfortunately, it is impractical to avoid speaking on these topics without certain vagueness, especially when referring to intelligence across agencies and administrations. Despite these great challenges the topics of GIS and intelligence pose, this document will attempt to put forth a description of the IC and some of their responsibilities, discuss different intelligence types and present common GIS solutions that are already in place.

The IC is self-defined as, ". . . a federation of executive branch agencies and organization that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the United States." (United States Intelligence Community, 1992). Each member of the group is distinct in responsibility, objective and overall mission. It is because of these differences that each member also has different needs and requirements for and of different data and intelligence types. Broadly speaking there are five fundamental types of intelligence and specific agencies within the IC are responsible for their domain:
  • Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is technical intelligence information derived from the exploitation of foreign electronic emissions which is comprised either individually or in combination of Communications Intelligence (COMINT), Electronic Intelligence (ELINT), and Foreign Instrumentation Signals Intelligence (FISINT) (National Security Agency, 2006). The primary responsibility of producing this type of intelligence falls to the National Security Agency (NSA).

  • Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is a category of intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources (NATO, 2006). This kind of intelligence type is primarily the responsibility of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

  • Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) is the technical, geographic and intelligence information derived through the interpretation or analysis of imagery and collateral materials. (Defense technical information center, 2001). This responsibility for this intelligence type belongs to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

  • Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) is intelligence obtained by quantitative and qualitative analysis of data (metric, angle, spatial, wavelength, time dependence, modulation, plasma, and hydromagnetic) derived from specific technical sensors for the purpose of identifying any distinctive features associated with the emitter or sender, and to facilitate subsequent identification and/or measurement of the same. (Defense technical information center, 2001). MASINT is largely managed by the DIA.

  • Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) means the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the earth (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 2006). This intelligence type is primarily handled by the NGA.

For any data to be used in a GIS, it must be spatial or convertible from a quasi-spatial state. By the very characterizations of intelligence put forth by the NGA, incorporating or combining a geographic context with any other intelligence type inherently results in a product of GEOINT (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 2006). In other words, GEOINT is the culmination of various different intelligence types (SIGINT, HUMINT, IMINT and MASINT) and the layering of other data that can be joined or represented spatially within a coordinate or georeferencing system. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, GEOINT largely uses time and the geometric attributes and spatial relationships of features to characterize the subject matter (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 2003).

The spatial and temporal aspect of GEOINT make for a visual understanding of the physical and cultural environment and allows for information to be derived that would otherwise be obfuscated. NGA affirms that, "Geospatial intelligence provides unique knowledge not available by other means that is critical for informed national security decisions" (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 2003). By being able to fuse this kind of intelligence with the powerful tools that a GIS allows, the information produced by a geospatial intelligence analyst is better, faster and more accurately detailed.

The digital processing capabilities of GIS have revolutionized the best practices of geospatial intelligence analyst operations. Prior to digital automation, tedious tasks such as feature extraction, pattern recognition, change detection and even simple querying required a lot of effort and was much more susceptible to human error. The analytic assets available now provide intelligence products that are much more worthy of confidence and has since caused a paradigmatic shift towards a network-centric perspective of collecting intelligence, driven by data integration. This shift has allowed for more intelligence products to be incorporated and combined with ease and has created a new world with new intelligence products never thought possible.

The data-sharing between intelligence types inevitably bears the need for interagency sharing within a common spatial data infrastructure. From this need, breeds a new technology - the enterprise GIS. The concept of an enterprise GIS is to provide a platform for connecting a defense-wide infrastructure of intelligence and multiple spatial database management systems that are interoperable (ESRI, 2008). The core objective of setting up such a platform encourages the dissemination of intelligence between agencies and administrations of the IC and broadens the perspective of intelligence assessments. This breathes new possibilities of bettering our knowledge base as a whole for making key decisions on policy and defense.

One of the better-known leading businesses for the development of enterprise GIS technology is the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), with their product ArcGIS. Going forward throughout the remaining portion of this document ArcGIS will serve as a prime example of GIS technology tools and all references to GIS will be specific to ArcGIS capabilities.

ArcGIS supports defense and military needs in a variety of ways, encompassing most, if not all, conceivable aspects of managing spatial data. Military operations may be developed within Arc, which can aid in operations and analysis of

  • surveillance and reconnaissance,
  • command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I)
  • and precision engagement. (ESRI, 2008)

Arc is also capable of acting as a "skeleton" for which developers may write their own programs using various scripting languages for carrying out activities that aren't already present within the GIS. This allows for the flexibility of creating customized applications and provides a method for contorting the GIS to do what you want it to do. Much like an open-source application, ArcGIS can be "reinvented" to perform in ways that it wasn't originally designed to do. In a technologically network-centric environment, common users even outside of the realm of defense and intelligence may contribute to a public pool of tools for manipulating data in news ways without ever having interacted.

Many times, remote military installations and units operational in the field in foreign lands must depend on themselves for subsistence without the convenience of linking to already established facilities and utilities. Users of the defense and intelligence industry may make use of GIS for managing the logistics of survival autonomously outside of their home country, sometimes for long periods of time. In this case, Arc can provide solutions to problems in a timely and accurate manner by supporting:

  • Disease surveillance and epidemiology
  • Occupational and environmental health
  • Disaster management
  • Logistics and asset tracking
  • Bed and facilities management (ESRI, 2008)

It should be noted too that ArcGIS has developed a suite of tools specifically for people in the defense and intelligence industry. These tools were designed to carry out common tasks regularly performed by personnel in the industry and packaged together into three products - 1) Military Analyst Extension, 2) Military Overlay Editor (MOLE), 3) Grid Manager. (ESRI, 2008)

The Military Analyst Extension is complete with a set of tools with various functions, mostly related to the geodetic analysis and route-tracking. For example, this extension provides tools for querying the length of a route in a number of ways, using different distance calculation methods, and charting routes based upon input of elevation and terrain data. It also hosts a number of tools for calculating viewsheds, line-of-sight analysis and other visualization analyses. (ESRI, 2008)

MOLE can be used for the annotation of features in a vector and/or raster environment with already established symbology, such as MIL-STD 2525B (ESRI, 2008). Much like a data dictionary, MOLE was designed for managing families of labels and annotations and is able to replicate and reproduce attribute information attached to symbols in an automated fashion. Within the defense and intelligence industry, there's a strong demand for being able to create point, line and polygon data within a GIS on the fly with minimal effort in a timely fashion and display that data uniformly with already established languages and symbols. MOLE provides an answer for this demand.

Lastly, because several map projections and arbitrary coordinate systems may be used for different accuracies throughout the world, ESRI offers Grid manager for the seamless display of data of different georeferencing types. The Grid manager helps mitigate issues regarding the long process of geoprocessing a lot of data to a single projection or coordinate system and allows for the distortion of such circumstances. In many cases, data must be fused in a display in a time sensitive manner and the Grid manager allows for that.

The roles that GIS can and will continue to play in the world of intelligence are nearly endless. Today, GIS plays a major part in workflow management, suitability analysis and the fusion of other intelligence types. But tomorrow, GIS may be a means for even collecting intelligence in the field as more and more devices become portable with more precise positioning. With the expansion of capabilities and no end in sight for the rapid advancement of GIS and GEOINT technology, the functions of these concepts will always remain beyond the scope any one definition.

Sources:

Defense Technical Information Center. "Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms." 2001. Joint Publication 1-02. 11 Dec. 2008 <
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf>


ESRI, Environmental Systems Research Institute. "GIS for Defense and Intelligence." 2008. 11 Dec 2008 <
http://www.esri.com/industries/defense/index.html>


NATO, North American Treaty Organization. "NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions (English and French)." 2006. NATO Standardization Agency. 11 Dec. 2008. <
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/other/nato2006.pdf>


National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. "Geospatial Intelligence Capstone Concept." 2003. National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). 11 Dec. 2008<
http://fas.org/irp/agency/nga/capstone2.pdf>


National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. "Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Basic Doctrine, Publication 1-0." 2006. Office of Geospatial-Intelligence Management. 11 Dec. 2008<
http://fas.org/irp/agency/nga/doctrine.pdf>


National Security Agency. "SIGINT Frequenty Asked Questions." 2008. Central Security Service. 11 Dec. 2008 <
http://www.nsa.gov/sigint/sigin00003.cfm>


United States Intelligence Community. "Definition of the Intelligence Community (IC)." 1992. 11 Dec. 2008 <
http://www.intelligence.gov/1-definition.shtml>


Warner, Michael. "Wanted: A Definition of 'Intelligence', Understanding our craft" 2007. Central Intelligence Agency. 11 Dec. 2008 <
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no3/article02.html#author1>

Monday, December 15, 2008

Publishing my own papers

Since the end of the semester is upon me again, I begin thinking about all the work that goes into papers and projects that eventually "die" and remain out of sight for the rest of their days. Hardcopies have days that are numbered, but digital works will hopefully stand the test of time (unless irresponsibility gets the best of me). It kind of hurts that I pour so much heart and effort into a paper or a project and that it doesn't seem to have any function after the semester is done.

Therefore, I think it would be a good idea to publish my own works on this blogger thingy. Hopefully then, it will be visible to the public and help expand science on the web. I feel like I can contribute in somewhat of a 'non-professional' way. Hell...maybe one of my works can be used as a resource for some kid surfing the web at 2 AM, trying to get his geography homework paper in on time the next day. Who knows...I'm just gonna lay it out there and the public can do what they will with it.

So this will be a project of mine going forward. I'll probably be starting from the most recent and what's on the 'top of the stack' of projects I plan to post. So stay tuned for more!