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The National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence
Introduction
On 1st December 2019, the National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence (NCGI) formed as a 1-star commanded organisation. That brought all of Defence Intelligence specialist geospatial organisations under one dedicated geospatial command for the first time. The author gave a speech in January at DGI20 in London, and this article follows from the address. The speech explained some of the detailed developments underway that will take NCGI from the current levels of expertise to the next level as a modern, world-leading, data-centric national centre for geospatial intelligence. While there are many world-class experts and organisations in specific areas, one of the key tenets of NCGI’s development plan is to draw these elements closer together by placing data at the centre of the organisation as a whole.
The Challenge Work and Weekends
The comparative challenges faced is that, away from work, we are location-enabled all the time, mostly unconsciously and without any specialist training. In short, developments over the last 10-15 years have democratised the digital geospatial world way beyond what we thought possible and have somewhat outpaced the capability progression inside the military.
Figure 1
The primary descriptors ‘at weekends’ include global geographic information seamlessly integrated into apps and location-based services hosted on the cloud and accessed through simple mobile devices over almost omnipresent network connectivity, Fig 1. It is service-based, not product-based, adjust seamlessly between large scale (including inside some buildings) through to small scale and has a single enterprise search capability for a multitude of data sources as its access point. The ‘unseen’ element powering this ubiquitous, user-friendly service is the integration of the geospatial framework and spatial data enriched with multiple data types and categories that have been contextualised and spatially enabled.
Colonel Richard Blunt: Assistant Chief of Staff J5 Plans and Commander Royal Engineers Geographic at UK Ministry of Defence
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