stats from Geospatial Intelligence

.

Our prof from Geospatial Intelligence kindly gave us some stats.  I thought they might be of interest:

Out of over 21,000 registrants, 13,000 were active in the class at some point. 1170 passed the course (528 with Distinction and 642 Normal).


We  haven't gotten our final scores from Coursera yet, but I believe I should be amongst the 1170 who passed.

.

watching war crimes from space?

.

Here's something else that's GEOINT related -- an article on watching war crimes (or war itself, or preparation for war) from space.

We learned about ways information is gathered, and about how important it is to get information from more than one source (and how important it is to consider the biases of the people who collect, analyze, and report information.....).............

Reading the article linked above was more interesting to me, having taken Geospatial Intelligence.....

.

project for Geospatial Intelligence -- site an Ebola treatment center

.

Our big project for Geospatial Intelligence was to propose a site for a new Ebola treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia.

Liberia is where the west coast of Africa transitions from mostly north/south to mostly west/east.  (I believe it's ok to use Google maps on blogs, as long as we leave the Google logo on them.)

I know a lot more about Monrovia than I ever imagined knowing.....

If you are interested in knowing the locations of the Ebola cases in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, click through to this page from the BBC and scroll down to the map.....



For the Geospatial Intelligence project, we looked at maps of Monrovia, taking various sorts of into into consideration.  The lay of the land.  The human activity (commercial, medical, recreational, roads, transportation available, location of police stations, etc.).  The locations of the existing Ebola treatment centers (ETCs) in Monrovia.

We had a list of criteria for the new ETC, and three proposed locations. We hunted up info we were not given, weighed the factors, examined and defined our assumptions, and made recommendations.

This was a very good assignment.  We got a glimpse at the sort of work a geospatial intelligence analyst might actually do, in the real world.  Pretty cool, to get enough of a look into the GEOINT world to give us a glimmering of what it might be like to do that work!

.

GEOINT

.

Here are two quotes from one of the articles that is part of GEOINT [geospatial intelligence]:

At this point you may be asking, “How is GEOINT different as a discipline and unique from other geospatial analytic activities?” GEOINT is a sub-discipline of geography and is unique from other forms of geospatial analysis because of its tradecraft. Specifically, GEOINT delivers insights gained from place and time for a decision advantage by integrating Geographic Information Science (GIScience), Geographic Information Technology, and its unique tradecraft.

and

Place is fundamental to geography and perhaps the most important concept in GEOINT. At first glance, location and place might seem to be similar terms; however, places have physical and human attributes that make them what they are.



The following two quotes are part of discussion of the difference between "location" and "place," and are from an article published by Dr. George Van Otten in the April-June 2014 Issue of the Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin.

Although places are unique expressions of human occupancy in time and space, most are also interdependent.

and

In some places, people are resilient and open to change, while in others, people are tradition-bound and resist even the mildest cultural, social, economic or political changes. Moreover, such resistance sometimes results in conflict, violence, and even war. Understanding the degree to which a people are committed to preserving the status quo relative to the places in which they live should be a fundamental part of the IPB process [intelligence preparation of the battlefield], because conflict (even low intensity conflict), nation building efforts, and peace-keeping missions all involve changing the nature of the places in which they occur.





So interesting, I think.  These are ideas which make sense once I hear (or read) them, but which I had never considered before..... 

.

another really cool use of GEOINT -- cyber tracking

.

Tools made for traditional trackers (in Africa, in the video) who cannot read or write, to help them keep track of, and map the location of, animals and plants in their territories, to help them with land rights, and to help science keep track of those animals and plants, and change in same over time.

Again, if you click through the above link, you should be able to see a video.  I like the nice peaceful music in the background......

Really cool!

.

using GEOINT to bring peace to Bosnia

.

Now this is really cool -- use of GEOINT (and some pretty cool software) to help bring peace to Bosnia.

If you click through the link above, you should be able to watch a video on that topic.....

.

CIA documents

.

O my.

The very next thing, after the video in the previous post, is a link to a CIA document on geographic intelligence.

Not only is this the only CIA document I've ever looked at, it's the only government document with redacted words and/or phrases............

Kinda creepy....

And kinda interesting....  There is a lot of discussion of problems with data collection.  Most of which, I bet, have pretty much become obsolete, now that there are satellites and high-flying planes, and drones, and all that stuff........

.

the power of GEOINT

.

This is the first video I've watched for a MOOC that has an official "ok to show this to the public" US Government release number on it. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's the only video I've ever watched, period, with such a release number.....

Kinda weird.................




.