By Brian Beveridge, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Steve Panzer, ObjectFX Corporation

Published in Pathfinder, November/December 2006 

Working with NGA’s Geospatial-Intelligence Advancement Testbed (GIAT), ObjectFX is integrating analytics and automated reporting with the latest geographic visualization systems.

When ObjectFX approached NGA seven years ago to explore a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), it was already in the commercial market for geographic information systems. The Minneapolis-based company provides a Java-based software platform called SpatialFX that enables the integration into enterprise applications of location-based services like vehicle routing and address geocoding.

The problem was that this small business lacked experience with the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Communities (IC), and the specific needs of the military and intelligence users. The solution was to enter into a CRADA where the goal is to create a technology partnership that benefits NGA’s customer base while making the commercial partner’s technology more attuned to the unique requirements of DoD and the IC.

In the resulting CRADA—“Interactive Mapping on the Web through the use of Java Geospatial Components”—ObjectFX added support for NGA geospatial data types and military standard symbology to its suite of tools. This year the CRADA was renewed to incorporate ObjectFX’s new spatiotemporal rules capability into advanced Web-based prototypes.

Working with NGA’s Geospatial-Intelligence Advancement Testbed (GIAT), ObjectFX is integrating analytics and automated reporting with the latest geographic visualization systems for enhanced usability. In addition to the CRADA, ObjectFX has participated with NGA’s Industry Interaction (II) Panel, which has allowed the company’s technology solutions in the area of spatiotemporal rule processing to be introduced to a  broad cross-section of NGA’s technology leadership. (See the related article, “What Does NGA Need from Industry?” in this issue.)

Participation in these NGA outreach programs has provided ObjectFX with insight into the needs of the NGA community and has allowed the company to better target their research-and- development funds to be responsive to the needs of the DoD and IC. Because of this participation ObjectFX technology was selected for a variety of NGA-fielded programs like the Imagery Exploitation Support System. ObjectFX was also selected as a subcontractor to Rosettex in the National Technology Alliance program sponsored by NGA. These successes would not have been possible without the partnership that was created through the CRADA and II programs.