CASE STUDY

Delivering Interactive On-Demand Mapbooks to Military and Public Safety Personnel

Quick Summary

The U.S. Army Geospatial Center’s (AGC) mission is to coordinate, integrate and synchronize geospatial information requirements and standards across the Army and the Department of Defense (DoD). The AGC creates and manages geospatial intelligence resources, including the maps and imagery of more than 140 countries for use by the Army, DoD branches and coalition partners. The AGC also manages maps and imagery for all U.S. states and territories for use by public safety and disaster management personnel, as well as first responders.

The Challenge

The AGC was facing increased demand from its large constituency to provide quick and easy access to near real-time maps and imagery to support different missions and needed a way to provide its users with quick and easy access to the vast geospatial information it managed — without impacting network performance. Warfighters and commanders needed to distribute maps and mapbooks to the field more quickly to improve on-the-ground operations. In addition, non-GIS trained users needed access to this information for improved situational awareness and disaster response.

The Solution

The AGC worked with the TerraGo Services Team to develop an electronic index server that is used to create and make multi-layer, digital mapbooks widely available for easy sharing with GIS and non-GIS trained users. These multi-layer mapbooks are rich with intelligence that can be built into thematic layers that can be included or excluded based on the field requirements. Additionally, once accessed in the field, military personnel can update and augment the mapbooks with on-the-ground intelligence and route this updated data back to the main system. In addition to developing this solution with the AGC, TerraGo provided project management, on-site implementation services, end-user training and supporting documentation.

The Results

The electronic index server greatly simplifies map selection and accelerates mapbook production by acting as a navigation, data retrieval and integration tool for the geospatial library. The technology saves the AGC significant amounts of time, both in fulfilling requests and in shortening delivery intervals for its users, who can now browse, select and automatically assemble GeoPDF® maps and imagery for specific missions on a self- service basis. With this new capability, the demand for the AGC’s geospatial information has increased, reinforcing its role as a leading source of GEOINT for the Army and DoD and in turn enhancing the return on investment of its geospatial enterprise assets. Additionally, with this electronic index server, the AGC can now provide County Area Coverage DVD sets to its customers, support the U.S. National Guard domestically and mitigate bandwidth issues that come with sharing geospatial products across the Army enterprise. Future upgrades will help the AGC enable users to add WMS layers to the browser, incorporate the latest release of the TerraGo SDK, support multiple map templates for specific scales, as well as support 3D GeoPDF content.