Civil Air Patrol operates a fleet of 555 single-engine aircraft and 2,250 small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) and performs about 90% of all search and rescue operations within the contiguous United States as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. Often using innovative cellphone forensics and radar analysis software, CAP was credited by the AFRCC with saving 108 lives last year. CAP’s 56,000 members also perform homeland security, disaster relief and drug interdiction missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. As a nonprofit organization, CAP plays a leading role in aerospace education using national academic standards-based STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education resources.

Scott Kaplan sat down with us to discuss what CAP’s role is in the geospatial industry dating back to World War 2. He then went on to explain the coordination between NGA and CAP in regards to search and rescue operations. Along with talking about recent news for the organization and his favorite new technology that he saw at the symposium.

Universal Systems Information Consulting, LLC offers a wide range of consulting services with the necessary tools and expertise to help government agencies and commercial entities. They partner with our clients from start to finish, focusing on their needs while producing new ideas, developing effective strategies and designing high quality and scalable solutions.

Rodney Saffold, the President and CEO of USIC LLC, describes the challenges he solves for his customers and his unique propositions his company provides. He describes the most interesting trends he’s observed at the symposium and how he sees them affecting the industry in the near future. He also elaborates on the hurdles the industry still faces in regards to acquisitions and small businesses.

To stay ahead of climate change, geopolitical risk, and other major crises and issues, we need a global understanding of what is changing, where, and how fast. Umbra is built around the idea that by providing easy access to the highest quality commercial satellite data available, they can become an indispensable tool for the growing number of organizations monitoring the Earth. They empower their customers with the ability to create the solutions that inform, inspire, and address our planet’s most pressing needs. They’re helping to create a brand new industry that has never meaningfully existed before.

Umbra Space’s Vice President of Commercial Products, Joe Morrison, discusses their unique business model and propositions to customers. Their Creative Comments Licensing is a source of curiosity and he explains how it works for their customers and why is makes more sense than legacy licensing. He also shares his perspective of the overall satellite imagery industry and the shifts he hopes to see.

Google’s services helps governments and companies build a more prosperous and sustainable future for their organization with a comprehensive platform for geospatial workloads and applications that only Google can deliver.

Jeff Spugnardi and Brady Allred, with Google, walk us through and discuss their Google Earth Engine analytic tool. They explained the expansion of the tool from humanitarian use cases to now enterprise use cases as well. With over 50 petabytes worth of imagery, Earth Engine tries to reduce the time collecting data and allow analysts to spend more time finding the answers they’re looking for.

Anyone who sails a ship, flies an aircraft, goes into harm’s way, makes national policy decisions, responds to disasters, or navigates with a cellphone, all rely on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. NGA delivers world-class geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, that provides a decisive advantage to warfighters, policymakers, intelligence professionals and first responders. Both an intelligence agency and a combat support agency, NGA fulfills the president’s national security priorities in partnership with the intelligence community and Department of Defense.

Kathy Wever, Director of the Talent Development Office with the NGA, explains the skill sets and interests the agency is looking for in recent college graduates. She also elaborated on some academia partnerships that are making strides in diversifying the GEOINT community and getting more people interested in the field. And she even shared a personal story about working with youth to inspire the next generation of GEOINT professionals.

Phase One is the world’s leader in open-platform, high-end medium format camera systems and solutions. Their products are known for their quality, flexibility and speed enabling pro photographers to shoot in a wide range of formats. With the Phase One XF Camera System they have pushed the limits of what the world's best photography is made of! Their Capture One and Media Pro imaging software help streamline capture and post-production processes for both medium format and DSLR cameras.

Dana Brow, with Phase One, discusses their camera systems and their geospatial applications. He walks us through several mapping systems that are able to go airborne and take aerial images. Their able to take images are varying altitudes for specific tasks and even create 3D maps of cities. He explains how they mitigate the logistical challenges that come with the need for capturing images at a high frame rate at high speeds.

Founded in 2016, Edgybees provides accurate geo-registration and augmented reality of aerial video in real time, enabling defense, public safety and critical infrastructure command centers to accomplish life-saving missions. To date, the referencing and positioning of streamed video from aerial sources has been inaccurate, often with dangerous consequences. Edgybees’ Visual Intelligence Platform, a software-only solution based on Computer Vision and Machine Learning technologies, delivers highly accurate geo-mapping and tagging of aerial video in real time. This unique approach allows for rapid decision-making by visually augmenting roads, key landmarks and other mission-critical data on top of live video feeds – via its own platform or by integrating with third-party systems. Edgybees’ operational perspective dramatically reduces time-to-target and enhances team collaboration, situational awareness and mission effectiveness.

Craig Brower, the President of Edgybees Inc, discusses the importance of georegistration and demonstrates their software tool that makes video accurate within one meter, in real time. He also describes the other services the users are able to access including overlays for full context. He also is able to demonstrate their satellite imagery correction software that makes georegistration possible within seconds.

Magadia Consulting is dedicated to providing a level of service that is unparalleled in todays' demanding technological marketplace. Their teams of specialists help businesses stay ahead of the curve by overcoming their IT challenges, delivering flexible & project-based managed solutions, and staff augmentation services. One of Magadia's founding principles is to deliver quality systems quickly. They achieve this through a commitment to excellence that is shared by every Magadia professional.

From Magadia Consulting Inc we spoke with Debra Wickert, Leroy Burney, and Mark David Jones to discuss their speciality in consulting on IT work and their own unique experiences that bring to their customers. They reviewed their favorite technology from the symposium and new positive trends they’ve noticed along with the obstacles they see coming around the corner.

C3 AI provides over 40 turnkey Enterprise AI applications that meet the business-critical needs of global enterprises in manufacturing, financial services, government, utilities, oil and gas, chemicals, agribusiness, defense and intelligence, and more.

Andrew Hoeft, the Senior Director of Strategic Solutions for C3.ai discusses their products that work through entire data fusion lifecycle, from any source data to transformation. He explains how that can work with virtually any type of data from free text to full motion video and get that data into a state that AI models can be applied to. With many possible use cases, C3.ai can get a production environment spun up in a matter of weeks and begin making mission impact and adding value in a matter of weeks

Orbital Insight is the leader in geospatial analytics and location intelligence that helps organizations understand what’s happening on and to the Earth. Orbital Insight uses AI to answer their questions about supply chains, global commodities, geopolitical events, demographics and national security using multiple sources of geospatial data—including satellite images, mobile location, connected cars and other IoT data. Armed with this insight, organizations can anticipate future changes to avoid costly surprises and create new opportunities.

Kevin O’Brien, CEO of Orbital Insights, met up with us at GEOINT 2022 to discuss their subscription model analytics service. He elaborated on the importance of fusing sensors with the geospatial data. The aggregation of this data is key in crucial use cases for many different industries such as banking, agriculture, and energy companies. He also went on to explain the growth opportunities he sees coming for Orbital Insights and the industry as a whole in the next five years.

Pixxel is a space technology company working towards creating the world's highest resolution hyperspectral imaging satellite-imaging constellation. The images gathered by Pixxel's satellites will provide up-to-date information relevant to climate monitoring, crop yield prediction, urban planning, and disaster response.

Pixxel’s Aakash Parekh discusses the importance of hyperspectral data in the industry to unlock crucial information across the spectrum. Their 5 meter hyperspectral constellation aims to gain global coverage with a daily revisit. He explains their business model and how customers are able to gain access to their data. Aakash continued on to describe the critical use cases that hyperspectral data excels at compared to other sources.

ASTERRA (formerly) Utilis provides data-driven solutions for water utilities, government agencies and the greater infrastructure industry in the areas of roads, rails, dams, and mines. The company’s proprietary algorithms and highly educated scientists and engineers are the key to their mission, to deliver actionable intelligence to advance Earth’s resource resilience. Since 2017, ASTERRA technology has been used in over 59 countries, saving over 169,280 million gallons of potable water, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 108,339 metric tons, and saving 423,200 MWH of energy, all in support of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. ASTERRA is headquartered in Israel with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. Their innovative data solutions are used in multiple verticals around the globe. ASTERRA is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring their products to the next level.

Elly Perets, the CEO of ASTERRA, and James Perry, ASTERRA’s Executive Vice President for the America’s Region, describe how their company identifies infrastructure failures and how they plan to expand to other opportunities in various sectors. Elly discusses the urgent need for infrastructure failure detection and the short comings of the current solutions.

Rendered.ai is a platform-as-a-service for data scientists, data engineers, and developers who need to create and deploy unlimited, customized synthetic data generation for machine learning and artificial intelligence workflows, reducing expense, closing gaps, and overcoming bias, security, and privacy issues when compared with the use or acquisition of real-world data.

Nathan Kundtz, CEO of Rendered.ai, discusses the importance and need for synthetic data and the specific challenges it solves, particularly in the GEOINT community. He goes on to address the negative stereotypes of synthetic data and the successes that can be achieved with it. He describes the different types of imagery data they have been able to produce including SAR, infrared, and even hyperspectral. He also explores the obstacles the industry still needs to address in regards to AI and ML in the industry.

With plans to launch its first series of LEO constellations in 2023, HySpecIQ is positioned to become the world’s leading provider of airborne quality hyperspectral imagery and analytics from space. Their vision is to empower the most prominent intelligence, defense, and industry decision makers with insights and analytics to make safer, smarter, stronger, and more sustainable decisions.

Dr. Katie Salvaggio, with HySpecIq, explains the value of hyperspectral imagery as compared to other spectral imagery. She explains what drew her to work with hyperspectral imagery in particular and the unique proposition their data will provide to their customers.

At the core of Cesium’s mission is to advance 3D geospatial through openness, community, and collaborations. Cesium is an open platform for creating 3D applications that are fast, flexible, and based on real-world geospatial data.

Brady Moore, Director of Mission Support with Cesium, describes their applications for geospatial visualization. He demonstrates their 3D Tiles Next software and how it helps expose metadata at runtime. Brady also discusses the specific use cases that this software can enhance. Their other demonstration of CesiumJS shows the software’s ability to create virtual 3D models from open source data.

The interagency Civil Applications Committee (CAC) facilitates the appropriate civil uses of overhead remote sensing technologies and data collected by military and intelligence capabilities, including from commercial sources. The CAC is operated and staffed by the U.S. Geological Survey on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior and its interagency partners. The director of the U.S. Geological Survey is the chair of the committee, and the vice-chair is a non-Department of the Interior senior official. The CAC ensures certain Federal civil agencies have access to these remotely sensed assets to meet their statutory missions in ways that do not threaten the civil rights, civil liberties, and personal privacy of U.S. citizens. To meets its mandate, the CAC hosts various working groups and communities of interest including those focused on thermal issues (wildland fires and volcanoes), environmental security, and historical satellite imagery.

Dan Opstal and Scott Kaplan, with the Civil Applications Committee, discuss the importance of CAC and why having an organization such as this is so important to the community as a whole. They also describe how they are educating individuals and their partners about how CAC can help in their particular missions. Dan also explains some of the challenges in the industry they are trying to mitigate in the industry such as accessibility to data. Scott also went on to elaborate on the need for improved communication between disciplines and how CAC is trying to help with that.

Anyone who sails a ship, flies an aircraft, goes into harm’s way, makes national policy decisions, responds to disasters, or navigates with a cellphone, all rely on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. NGA delivers world-class geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, that provides a decisive advantage to warfighters, policymakers, intelligence professionals and first responders. Both an intelligence agency and a combat support agency, NGA fulfills the president’s national security priorities in partnership with the intelligence community and Department of Defense.

Rob Shields, the Director of Analytic Technologies at the NGA, talks about the technology they develop to support the analysts. As part of the office that provides the needs and prioritizes the solutions they need from providers, he discusses the types of tools that analysts prefer. He also describes the change he’s seen in the culture with the recent emphasis placed on the collaboration and innovation at the Moonshot Labs.

Descartes Labs is a technology company that automates the analysis of geospatial data to help organizations answer key questions about the physical world. Through our SaaS platform, they enable the analysis of earth observation data at scale, providing services and solutions across commodity sourcing and forecasting, resource exploration, and climate resilience, while also supporting diverse federal government efforts to gather, analyze, and provide actionable insights from geospatial data.

Descartes Labs Government’s President, Janie Robinson, describes the value of Descartes Labs’ government subsidiary and the work they do. She explains the new products and services they are offering, including helping the government utilize open source and commercially available data. Their ability to work with a variety of data types and run analytics is highly impactful and works to solve the hurdles in trusting machine learning in the industry.

Satellogic is a leading provider of high resolution satellite imagery. They drive real outcomes for our customers with daily, actionable, planetary-scale insights you can trust. Their low-Earth-orbit satellite constellation and product platform deliver geospatial data at the right cost, making Earth Observation data accessible and affordable to enable better global decision-making. With more than 200 satellite engineers, operators and product specialists, they are on a mission to deliver a fundamentally better picture of our planet and the many forces that reshape it every day. They bring space down to earth for large enterprises and governments of all sizes who need to see for themselves how our world is changing.

Ryan McKinney, Vice President and General Manager for Satellogic North America, and Thomas VanMatre, Vice President of Global Business Development, discuss what products and services they provide including their multispectral and hyperspectral data. They also discuss how their business model works towards their goal of democratizing access to imagery.

Anyone who sails a ship, flies an aircraft, goes into harm’s way, makes national policy decisions, responds to disasters, or navigates with a cellphone, all rely on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. NGA delivers world-class geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, that provides a decisive advantage to warfighters, policymakers, intelligence professionals and first responders. Both an intelligence agency and a combat support agency, NGA fulfills the president’s national security priorities in partnership with the intelligence community and Department of Defense.

Tim Clayton, Director of Acquisition Oversight at the NGA, and Rick Myllenbeck, Industry Engagement Advisor at the NGA, discuss industry engagement and the procurement workflow at the agency. They touch on the best way for industry to work with government and the major mistakes the companies often make when working with government. Diving deeper, they explain the best way for small business to engage with the NGA and their relationship of with the Small Business Office.