The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) provides agencies with critical and often- classified intelligence. NGA is trying to share and collaborate on geodata in the open and has expanded its transparency efforts with the release of seven open-source tools on GitHub.
The seven open source tools are-
1.DigitalGlobe Reader – This is a C++ class loading TIFF imagery and associated XML metadata files along with images obtained from Digital Globe’s World View 3 satellite.
2.SWIR signal detection – This tool runs a spectral signature comparison between the provided spectral library file and a signature provided by the user.
3.Social media picture explorer – This along with its user interface utilises machine learning techniques for assiting users explore social media by combining similar images and offering instant object recognition.
4.Nounalyzer – This tool categorizes the nouns and entities in a RSS feed and displays the results through visualisations for analysts to distill information faster.
5.Wordpress revision slider – This tool modifies a WordPress theme for interactively showing a post’s revisions and getting readers comfortable with consuming stories written with version control.
6.Rational polynomial coefficients mapper – This tool maps an object’s latitude, longitude and altitude to a two-dimensional point.
7.Spectral library reader – This tool reads files in the splib06a spectral reflectance database so that users can graph out the spectral reflectances of the materials in a multiband image.
The GEOINT Pathfinder project was launched in August 2015 and assists NGA in navigating the competitive world of commercial geospatial intelligence in an unclassified setting. As per NGA, the project endeavours to answer research questions via unclassified tools, data, information technology and services available from public, or open sources.
