Weekly GEOINT Community News

DigitalGlobe to Acquire The Radiant Group

DigitalGlobe announced it signed an agreement to acquire privately held The Radiant Group from Aston Capital for $140 million in cash. Radiant has built a strong and growing presence within the U.S. Intelligence Community and has contracts with the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and U.S. Special Operations Command. Upon completing the transaction, DigitalGlobe will strengthen its position as a commercial source of geospatial information and insight. Click here to read our recap of this morning’s conference call discussing the transaction.

NGA Launches Public Website in Response to Hurricane Matthew

NGA launched a public website to host unclassified geospatial intelligence data, products, and services for use in Hurricane Matthew response efforts. The website provides a single location for consolidated tools and situational awareness to help visualize the extent of damage caused by the storm and provide ready-to-use information and products for emergency responders. The site is hosted by Amazon Web Services and uses Esri’s ArcGIS online platform.

DigitalGlobe is also assisting in the hurricane disaster response by working with relief and disaster organizations to ensure they have the latest and most high quality imagery. The company also publicly released before and after imagery of the areas impacted, as well as crowdsourced data layers identifying damaged buildings, impassable roads, and other sites of destruction.

Accenture to Acquire Defense Point Security

Accenture Federal Services has entered into an agreement to acquire cybersecurity company Defense Point Security (DPS). According to Accenture’s press release, DPS’ detection, engineering, operations, and consulting services will strengthen Accenture’s ability to help federal agencies maximize cyber defense.

GDIT Awarded DIA Contract

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) won a $154.7 million Enterprise Communications Services 2 task order to support the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), reports Washington Technology. GDIT will support the operations and management functions of the Directorate for Information Management and Chief Information Officer. The task order was awarded under DIA’s Enhanced Solutions for the Information Technology Enterprise (E-SITE) contract.

Airbus’ WorldDEM Available Worldwide

Airbus Defence and Space announced customers can now access WorldDEM data for any point on Earth, including Antarctica, Arctic regions, and Pacific islands. WorldDEM is the first global, homogeneous, single-source, high-precision Digital Elevation Model.

Additionally, Airbus, The Forest Trust, and SarVision jointly developed a service that enables companies to provide evidence of how they are implementing “No Deforestation” commitments. Named Starling, the service uses a combination of high-resolution optical satellite and radar imagery to provide unbiased monitoring of forest cover change. After 14 months of development, Starling is now undergoing a pilot phase with Ferrero and Nestlé and will be available broadly in early 2017.

Peer Intel

MDA president and CEO Howard Lance will now also serve as chairman, president, and CEO of SSL MDA Holdings. Additionally, Donald Schaefer, formerly vice president of Noblis, was appointed president at MDA Information Systems. Along with these appointments, MDA appointed new board members in support of its U.S. Access Plan strategy, which seeks to pursue government contracts in order to provide information technology and communications services for classified space initiatives at NASA, the DoD, and within the IC.

Aaron Snow, executive director of the 18F digital services team, is stepping down, but plans to stay on as an adviser to the eventual new commissioner of GSA’s Technology Transformation Service, reports FedScoop.

Photo Credit: DigitalGlobe