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Maxar’s Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (G-EGD) Mission Support Team hosted representatives from various U.S. federal agencies and the Armed Forces Nov. 18 during a webinar in recognition of GIS Day.

GIS Day is an annual international celebration of geographic information systems (GIS) and related technology.

Maxar’s G-EGD program enables the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to provide U.S. government (USG) users with online and offline, on-demand access to the world’s highest resolution geospatial imagery from Maxar and other commercial data providers in support of operational planning, emergency response and situational awareness.

During the GIS Day webinar, Maxar subject matter experts shared how G-EGD integrates and interoperates with some of the company's other critical geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) products and programs, including:

• Geospatial Human Imagery Verification Effort (GeoHIVE): This Maxar crowdsourcing platform is run by geospatial analysts and developers who interact with a vetted crowd of online users to validate, discover or annotate features of interest in satellite imagery.
• The National System for Geospatial Intelligence Open Mapping Enclave (NOME): NOME, which is developed and supported by Maxar, enables a community of approved USG users to create and update geospatial features in a crowdsourced “living map.” NOME was initially developed to support NGA’s foundation mapping mission, but the platform emerged as a powerful tool to perform unclassified mission support remotely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Increasingly, users leverage the platform to train artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) models.
• Crow’s Nest Maritime Monitoring and Security: This Maxar product suite provides insight to help users quickly identify maritime traffic and monitor activity within their areas of interest. Crow’s Nest leverages space-based optical and radar imagery as well as advanced ML to provide analyst-ready data for broad-area surveillance.
• Maxar 3D: Maxar is a global leader in 3D data for defense and intelligence customers and the prime contractor for the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain (OWT) program. In addition to its use for training, Maxar 3D offers a foundation for a variety of tactical missions and can help decision-makers prepare for nonlinear conflicts and anti-access/area denial scenarios. This capability transforms 2D satellite imagery into 3D, providing more information to intelligence analysts and more geolocation accuracy to warfighters.

“Maxar’s G-EGD team recognizes these products and programs as essential to deliver quality insight across the National System for Geospatial Intelligence,” said Jason Angeles, Senior Manager of Maxar’s G-EGD Mission Support Team. “Maxar’s industry-leading Earth observation constellation provides invaluable source data for a range of platforms and solutions, including G-EGD, that empower end users to develop and produce actionable insights. It is our responsibility to support the community by providing the right tool for the job to gain decision advantage anywhere in the world.”

Jorge Morales of the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC) Warfighter Support Directorate (WSD) also presented during the GIS Day webinar. Morales shared his story about the 412th Theater Engineer Command’s (TEC) Engineer Focused Intelligence Training (ENFIT) held in August. The WSD and Maxar’s G-EGD Mission Support team trained soldiers to locate standard and shareable geospatial foundation data on AGC’s online accessible webpages and provided familiarization training on the G-EGD platform.

GIS Day webinar attendees included more than 100 GEOINT end users from all U.S. military branches, NGA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the U.S. Departments of Education, Justice and Transportation.

The G-EGD Mission Support Team hosts a webinar on the third Thursday of every month to offer a deep dive on one or two G-EGD topics. If you support a USG mission and are interested in attending Maxar’s monthly webinars, email deftechsupport@maxar.com for more information.

In addition, the team recently released an introductory “101-style” training on the BlackBoard learning management system. The BlackBoard training, available to anyone with a USG BlackBoard account, offers a comprehensive overview of G-EGD and walks participants through the process of establishing a G-EGD account.