GEOINT 2004 to Showcase Geospatial Intelligence Interoperability

September 20, 2004

OAK HILL, Va. – The United States Geospatial Intelligence
Foundation (USGIF) today announced that its GEOINT 2004 Symposium will feature a real-time demonstration of numerous, interoperable systems that together serve as a unified,
Internet-based platform for communications, research, and dissemination of geospatial information. This collaborative Geospatial Intelligence Interoperability Demonstration (GIID) will show how users can obtain and use data, technology and services from a wide variety of sources and vendors to meet their information and intelligence support needs.

The GIID will involve some 34 different exhibitors in the USGIF booth at GEOINT 2004, which will take place October 12-14, 2004, in New Orleans. The demonstration will be built around a hypothetical scenario involving finding, accessing and using geospatial intelligence in identifying potential staging sites in an urban area.

“The GIID brings to light not only the collective capabilities of the geospatial intelligence community, but the extent to which the members of this community endeavor
to deliver products and services that can operate with and among each other,” said K. Stuart Shea, chairman of the board of directors, USGIF. “In a very real sense, much of the future
of National and Homeland Security will be built upon a foundation of interoperable systems, such as we will demonstrate at this year’s symposium.”

Future geospatial intelligence systems will need to support multiple purposes by providing both a common operating picture and an unlimited number of user-defined operating pictures. This balance of commonality and user-defined specificity will allow each individual organization to accomplish its respective mission while supporting the ability of other organizations to accomplish their equally important but different missions. Because such systems will be based on consensus standards and commercial-off-the-shelf geospatial tools, users of the data, technologies, and services will have what they need, even as they meet the needs of other users, all by way of desktop computers using Internet technology and Web browsers.

“The geospatial intelligence community is making dramatic progress toward an unprecedented level of interoperability,” said Shea. “We look forward to illustrating to GEOINT 2004 participants this progress and its National and Homeland security value.”

The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation is a Virginia-based nonstock, not-for-profit corporation. The Foundation is dedicated to promoting the geospatial intelligence tradecraft and developing a stronger community of interest between government, industry, academic and professional organizations and individuals who share a mission focus around the development and application of geospatial intelligence data and geo-processing resources to address national security objectives. For more information on the Foundation, visit www.usgif.org.

The USGIF will host a national GEOINT 2004 symposium October 12-14 in New Orleans, at which key members of the geospatial intelligence community are expected to attend and exhibit. The symposium will assess how geospatial technologies can further the national security agenda. For more information on GEOINT 2004, visit www.geoint2004.com.

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