technology, called NetApp Open Solution for Hadoop (NOSH), and Data Tactics’ software engineering expertise to bring advanced analytics to GEOINT. Data Tactics engineers developed tools for data extraction, link analysis and sophisticated search with geospatial capabilities. Link analysis is a type of data analytics used to define the relationships between network nodes, with uses in such areas as counterterrorism, computer security and fraud detection. The NetApp NOSH and Data Tactics solution is used for video analytics and a video library at NGA. “NetApp provided the hardware solution, and we are doing the data space architecture, data ingest and data management to facilitate the normalization of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. The combination of NetApp NOSH and Data Tactics’ Big Data Engine provides a turnkey hardware and software cloud computing solution, enabling the analyst to ingest data, run analytics and visualize the results,” said Lee Shabe, vice president, Data Tactics. A key factor in achieving real-time analytics is to bring data analytics out of the data center and into the user’s local environment. EMC’s Affinity NG platform provides this capability on handheld devices, laptops and desktops running Intel and ARM processors, Windows, OSX, various Linux, iOS and Android. Affinity NG captures, processes and stores structured and unstructured data at the edge, including streams of data from sensors, video, audio, emails and other types of data. Affinity NG reads data directly from sensors using various network protocols and processes the data using streaming operators. It detects complex events and stored rules. GEOINT analysts would like to merge more than ELTs and GIS. While spreadsheets and SQL databases contain plenty of structured data, the untapped expanse of unstructured data could yield valuable GEOINT—if analysts knew where to search for it and it was filtered in customizable searches before it arrived and available as shared services in cloud infrastructures. Integrating SQL with NoSQL databases, structured with unstructured data and intelligence behind interactive maps, significantly expands the access to data sources and the possibilities for geospatial analytics. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) or Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) standard APIs are essential for linking SQL and NoSQL databases as well as for answering the multi-dimensional analytical queries in online analytical processing. “The main goal of analytics is to pull multiple sources together, to layer over the top multiple systems that traditionally have not been put together with an octopus of APIs that have tentacles into all these different sources of intelligence, for the freshest data possible,” said Rich Campbell, chief technologist, EMC Federal.
Signals and Noise One of the most persistent problems with big-data analytics is the need to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of useful to useless data. “GEOINT analysts either don’t have access to data or have too much data,” noted Lee Shabe, Data Tactics vice president. “They need to find signal from the noise.” A prolific source of big data for geospatial analytics is highdefinition full motion video (FMV) as it is collected en masse by www.GIF-kmi.com
sensors on drones and satellites. To ease access to large volumes of data, Pixia Corp. provides standards-based technology that filters signal from noise. “Big-data analytics is an extremely complex process with many layers and hierarchies,” said Rahul Thakkar, Pixia vice president of technology. “When an analytics algorithm requests data in a format of its choice, we are able to saturate it with the appropriate data and only that much data—nothing more.” Pixia’s HiperWatch offers software as a service applications and standardized access to big FMV data using RESTful web services. Representative State Transfer (REST), a software architecture for distributed systems, is the predominant web API model on the Internet. It was designed in parallel with Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Pixia HiperWatch transforms feeds into MPEG-compliant transport streams and sends only the relevant data from disks to applications, thereby providing near real-time access to data during capture and analysis. Pixia wrote the OGC specification designating a set of web services for the dissemination of Wide Area Motion Imagery products. Pixia’s HiperStare is a traditional big-data wide area surveillance solution within a cloud-based architecture. For nearly a decade, statistical analysis software such as that from SAS has been operating over a bridge to ArcGIS. To expand statistical analysis, Esri built connectors to MicroStrategy, another prominent business intelligence software
ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF FUNDING AND INTEROPERABILITY June 24–26, 2013 | Washington, DC Metro Area Highlights of GIS for Government 2013: • Learn from an exclusive lineup of the TOP experts in the field of GIS, as well as leading authorities from a full spectrum of government representation: from the Federal, State, and County levels • Gain unparalleled insight into varied GIS applications, while addressing the need for analysis-oriented and standards compliant systems • Delve into the development and integration of GIS, strengthening your knowledge of LiDAR technology, WebGIS, ArcGIS, and much more Top Priorities: • Explore emerging initiatives and ongoing programs and projects, as well as address the challenges of funding • Analyze existing systems and issues of interoperability and standardization within geospatial software • Reveal advances in GIS development, and the integration and implementation across various applications
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