The Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) is charged with providing mapping, charting, and geodetic geospatial information for use by the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Intelligence agencies, as well as for use in maritime navigation worldwide. Its products are used in a wide variety of activities, including strategic, regional, and tactical planning; mission planning and rehearsal; modeling for weapon system development and performance testing; cockpit moving-map display; and onboard navigation. Many of these products are becoming available to the general public, providing an ideal base of geographic information for use in geographic information systems.
Increasingly, geospatial information is being produced in digital form. DMA provides most digital geospatial products in two standard data formats: Vector Product Format (VPF) and Raster Product Format (RPF). These standards are optimized to support the use of application software that can directly access the information efficiently regardless of variation in data content. They are specialized implementations of larger national and international standards. This presentation will address the status of these standards and the products that implement them.
David M. Danko*
DMAHQ
Technology and Information Directorate
8613 Lee Highway
Fairfax, VA 22031-2138
Telephone: 703-285-9238
Fax: 703-285-9397