AFCEC shapes GeoBase program into widely adopted force multiplier

  • Published
  • By Amanda Pagan
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas --  During the past few decades, a powerful technology has transformed the way people access, interpret and use information on a daily basis. By integrating location-based data to identify relationships, patterns and trends, geospatial technology has become an important decision making tool, from allowing the average user to find local businesses based on location or reviews, to enabling the nation's military services to coordinate mission operations.

Over the past 15 years, the Air Force has developed geospatial assets, like Geographic Information System, or GIS, as a means for collecting, controlling, maintaining and exploiting information in a way that leads to increased operational effectiveness and decision superiority. While this cross-functional technology plays a strategic role across all Air Force missions, the Air Force GeoBase program has taken steps to restructure in order to improve collaborative efficiency and program awareness amongst the service and across the Department of Defense.

In October 2014, the Air Force Installation Geospatial and Services designated the Air Force Civil Engineer Center as the lead for this effort, tasked with improving and centralizing the Air Force GeoBase program into a single source of accurate, reliable and meaningful installation geospatial data. This summer, AFCEC expanded its GeoBase support staff and was able to begin executing strategies on a daily basis.

"The plan is to establish geospatial standards across installation support functions and then, as we mature, establish a centralized geospatial business system, solid education and training, and a geospatial center of excellence at some point in the future," said Scott Ensign, the Air Force GeoBase program manager. "Half of our work right now is standards development because they are the foundation for data integration, interoperability, visualization and being able to do enterprise-wide analysis--everything has to be the same; you've got to compare apples to apples."

The historically decentralized approach to managing geospatial data and systems has resulted in operational duplications, costing both unnecessary time and money, while making it difficult or impossible to share useful data with other installations and services. To address this problem, the DOD, through the Defense Installations Spatial Data Infrastructure group, established a family of information technology standards known as spatial data standards for facilities, infrastructure and environment.

"We're developing a new standard and reestablishing our baseline as we work with DISDI to establish the new DOD baseline," Ensign said. "So ideally the Air Force will not only be able to share information beyond a single platform and with other parts of the Air Force easily, but DOD service components will be able to share information because we will be on the same standard."

In addition to adapting the new standardized Air Force model to include the necessary level of detail to meet mission requirements, a large part of the process will involve migrating data manually or with automated tools from the independently developed old models, said Gregory Czerniak, the Air Force SDSFIE adaption project officer.

"Because the 'legacy' models have existed for years in the Air Force, there are just too many schema modifications that exist that we can't account for. Therefore, the automated tool will only take you so far," Czerniak said. "The actual migration to the new data model will be a group effort or collaboration between our office, major commands, detachments and installations. All will be required to assist each other where we can."

Setting standards and implementing a model that is compatible for sharing data is only part of the equation. While many Air Force installations and organizations turn to tools like GIS to improve in their respective mission datasets by making spatial and temporal comparisons, this cross-functional technology is still being developed and understood.

"One of the core efforts we want to accomplish is to make the program not rely on any one passionate individual or group. We want it to be recognized as a program that is widely adopted and a force multiplier," Ensign said. "There's just a lot of potential out there for it."

As part of this outreach effort, the Air Force GeoBase program will be holding a GIS Day Expo Nov. 18 at AFCEC in San Antonio, Texas. The event will feature short presentations, demonstrations and booths from both internal and external organizations providing an opportunity to see how geospatial technology has become a decision making tool for everyone from the everyday user to complex organizations. 

For questions or additional information on the event or the Air Force GeoBase program, contact AFCEC.GIO.Workflow@us.af.mil.