ARTICLE: D&I SOLUTIONS
It Starts with a Good Defense (and Intelligence) The technology and solutions that the D&I community spearheads provide value to several other domains, such as aviation, emergency management and response, smart cities, telecommunications, transport and logistics, among others. By Melisa Harder
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efense and Intelligence (D&I) as a domain has long been evolving as a leading force in technological innovation. This is because the technology and solutions that the D&I community spearheads not only allow collaborative ways to share, extract, store and grow data, but also provide value to several other domains, such as aviation, emergency management and response, smart cities, telecommunications, transport and logistics, among others. There is a long history of innovative technologies being developed across the D&I domain that go beyond operations and into our everyday lives. For instance, superglue and microwaves to
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canned food and digital cameras. Even the Internet, which is the cornerstone of modern society, was brought to the world via D&I. Great strides in the D&I community have brought a similar, cyclical trend concerning location-based technologies. 2D maps on traditional paper have evolved to modern 3D data visualization through digital twins, optimized use of the Cloud, and much more to help better inform the D&I community. These developments have led to benefits for other domains like agriculture, Space and smart cities. Within the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), we have been able to harness the community behind several standards
and other R&D developments, starting with sponsorship from organizations inside of the D&I community, and subsequently applied for broader use: GeoPackage – a portable database for sharing and displaying geospatial data that is optimized for use on mobile mapping systems. What started out as a way to deliver geospatial data to troops in remote locations is now guiding first responders, humanitarian efforts and hikers as they make their way through areas with limited to no mobile/cell coverage. CDB – a standardized model and structure for a single, ‘versionable’, virtual representation of the Earth. This Standard has become well-integrated with
