Eagle Vision: The Hawai'i Air National Guard takes a hands-on approach to geomapping with the SE7EN application from Telos.
SE7EN: Geomapping lets HIANG personnel access, manipulate and share geospatial information from Eagle Vision 5.
The U.S. Air Force’s Eagle Vision program provides detailed global satellite images and geospatial data for display, manipulation, reporting and analysis. It was originally conceived as a wartime asset to assist in planning and tracking battlefield movements, assessing targets and managing logistics.
Today, Eagle Vision is also a valuable resource for emergency response and operations as well as wartime operations. Eagle Vision has played a critical role in a number of significant disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, California wildfires, flooding in the Midwest and the Haiti earthquake.
This short video gives a high-level "flyover" look at the
latest features of SE7EN: Geomapping for Eagle Vision.
The Hawai'i Air National Guard (HIANG) is responsible for Eagle Vision 5, one of five Eagle Vision units operating worldwide. And HIANG is now using Telos’ SE7EN: Geomapping application to literally give them hands-on tools for working with the information Eagle Vision provides.
Using SE7EN Geomapping on the Microsoft Surface™ and Windows 7 platforms, Guard personnel use natural hand gestures to manipulate and customize visible layers of image information, review selected report results on a map, and drill down to retrieve details on map items. The application serves as an image catalog management system to keep track of all images in inventory as well as image metadata such as satellite used, latitude-longitude, date and time stamp, and other information.
Working with real-time data, Guard personnel can use before-and-after images to assess in detail the damage wrought by a natural disaster, and can track the course of typhoons and other evolving disasters as they happen. The application leverages geospatial data to describe, assess and depict physical features and geographically referenced activity.
Continuing application development efforts will let users add shapefiles over specific areas of interest while Keyhole Markup Language (KML) will let users overlay geographic features in mapping applications, allowing them to view maps by panning, scrolling, and zooming in a three-dimensional globe interface. Users will also be able to select existing images in inventory for purchase and identify new areas of interest they would like to capture.
The Guard will use the application to share data with Pacific Rim allies and facilitate mission planning support. Its networking capabilities allow users to collaborate and share information among Microsoft Surface units, laptops, and tablet devices.
According to Col. Joe Garnett, commander of HIANG’s 201st Combat Communications Group, SE7EN Geomapping will allow HIANG to more effectively leverage the large, detailed geomapping data views offered by Eagle Vision. “The collaborative nature of the multi-touch, multi-user platform will greatly enhance our ability to share information in support of the Guard’s mission,” he said.
