Making Better Decisions

Intergraph Government Solutions introduces new geospatial cloud products at GEOINT 2015

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Intergraph Government Solutions (IGS) helps decision-makers in the United States federal government make rapid and intelligent decisions based on its geospatial solutions.

In 2010, IGS was formally established as an independent company within Intergraph Corp., a Hexagon company, to create a business focused on providing geospatial and other advanced solutions to the U.S. federal government. Though IGS is only five years old, it is backed by Intergraph’s more than 45 years of support to the defense and intelligence communities. Additionally, IGS has access to industry-leading technology from Hexagon Geospatial and other Hexagon companies, such as Hexagon Geosystems, formerly known as Leica Geosystems. IGS has grown to about 450 employees with headquarters in Huntsville, Ala., an office in Reston, Va., and many personnel based at government agencies and military bases both within the U.S. and overseas.

IGS provides a range of geospatial solutions that enable users to visualize complex, dynamic data in vivid and meaningful ways for more effective decision-making. Image courtesy of Leica Geosystems

Rob Mott, IGS vice president for geospatial solutions, said the company’s objective is to bring a range of solutions and services to the U.S. federal government with a strong focus on geospatial.

“IGS helps government customers transform their complex data from disparate sources into actionable intelligence. This enables those defense and intelligence agencies to carry out their missions more effectively by optimizing and streamlining their operational performance and protecting critical assets,” Mott said.

IGS’s primary customers include the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in support of its map production mission as well as the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard. IGS also serves a range of civilian federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, Department of the Interior, and Department of Agriculture.

Driving Image Analysis

IGS delivers Hexagon Geospatial’s ERDAS IMAGINE remote sensing and photogrammetry applications, which are used around the globe and include image processing, LiDAR, radar processing and analysis, and automated change detection features. Mott said ERDAS IMAGINE plays an essential role at organizations such as NGA by creating standard imagery and mapping output products from a broad range of imagery sources, as well as revealing environmental change detection through imagery analysis and many other critical functions.

The defense and intelligence communities use ERDAS IMAGINE to detect changes in adversarial regions such as the construction of military facilities. The application is also used in commercial markets such as energy, utilities, communications, and safety and security.

“The geospatial solutions division plays an important role at IGS because we provide continuous input back to Hexagon Geospatial, which builds those commercial off-the-shelf products,” Mott said. “We provide input regarding emerging requirements that enables future versions of those products to be more relevant and meaningful to our government customers.”

IGS also offers Cartographic Web Services (CWS), which automates the map finishing process and dramatically reduces the time to send current, on-demand maps to the warfighter.

A soldier approaching an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous area in the field, for example, can request information from CWS on his or her mobile device and receive an up-to-date map within minutes.

Migrating to the Cloud

At USGIF’s GEOINT 2015 Symposium in June, IGS highlighted its move into cloud-based solutions for GEOINT visualization, analysis, and processing. Mott said IGS’s cloud offerings support customers moving toward cloud-based geospatial computing and reflect the Intelligence Community’s priorities.

The cartographic web services solution from IGS accelerates map production with automated map-finishing processes. Image courtesy of Intergraph Government Solutions

“Moving into the cloud is a key strategy across the DoD and Intelligence Community—IC ITE [the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise] being an example of that,” Mott said.

At GEOINT 2015, the company introduced a trio of applications Mott described as capable of “heavy-lifting” in the cloud. Web GLT is a web-based electronic light table that provides imagery analysts a better way to assess large imagery and data sets.

“It’s completely on the cloud now and that’s something we haven’t seen anyone else in the industry do yet,” Mott said.

Another addition to IGS’s cloud product suite is Smart M.App. A play on the words “app” and “map,” Smart M.App is a mission-specific application that harnesses geospatial processes and business analytics.

“Smart M.App delivers more than just a static map,” Mott said. “It’s a dynamic graphical experience that delivers valuable information in a more meaningful way than ever before for making critical decisions. The benefit to customers is an exciting new way to bring GEOINT expertise to their constituents.”

The app includes the Smart M.App Studio option, which allows organizations to build and customize their own Smart M.Apps. Operating on a user-friendly wizard interface, customers without any web programming experience can drag, drop, resize components, and build a fully-functioning application. The end product is an interactive geospatial experience in which customers can collaborate with their business data. Mott said Smart M.App could be applied under a large umbrella of purposes, from helicopter landing zones to tracking wildfire outbreaks to much more.

“We’re hoping to lead the way, set some trends, and help organizations realize their missions by adopting our solutions,” Mott said.

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