Abstract

Social Media Mapping: Unstructured Data Indexing & Geospatial Search
Track: Defense and Intelligence
Authors: Harley Parks

All Partners Access Network (APAN) is a social media website for information sharing and collaboration between U.S. Military, U.S. Interagency, foreign military, international organizations, nongovernment organizations, medical community, and civilian authorities. During the Haiti Earthquake HA/DR and International response to 2011 Japan Disaster, APAN demonstrates an open and secure network capability supporting critical humanitarian missions, exercises, and operations which require explicit geospatial incident awareness and assessment information. APAN augments the Defense Information Systems Agency responsibility for the Department of Defense Unclassified Information Sharing Service in support of all Combatant Commands and mission partners in the respective Area of Responsibility. APAN clients establish profiles, join online communities, write blogs, participate in forums, post/view media, schedule events, glean knowledge in wikis, and find information through multi-faceted search capability. APAN's GIS strategy embraces security policies, harvest unstructured geographic data sources, utilize crowd sourcing, establish partnerships, and propose strategic directions while supporting daily operations.