HOME


Track: Defense and Intelligence

John Dwyer
Command Technologies, Inc.
1030 S. Highway AIA
HQ AFCEE/TTR
Patrick AFB, FL 32925


Telephone: 407-494-7665
Fax: (407) 494-2274
E-mail: jdwyer@rayleigh.tt.aftac.gov



Mark Woods, Suzanne Leonard

The Integration of GIS in the United States National Data Center at the Air Force Center for Technical Applications

Under the recent United Nations Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), signatory nations agree not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosions. In order to monitor compliance, the CTBT requires that an International Monitoring System (IMS) be deployed worldwide and an international data center (IDC) be created to collect and distribute this information to interested nations. The United States is a signatory nation to the CTBT and will assist in installing portions of the IMS and in providing data to the IDC. In addition, the United States is developing its own National Data Center (NDC), located at the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. The United States NDC will serve to collect U.S.-related IMS data and pass the data through to the IDC, as well as providing the United States with its own CTBT monitoring capability. For monitoring the CTBT treaty, large amounts of spatially oriented global data must be processed in a routine manner, and select portions of the data must additionally be processed in the context of more detailed regional or local data. In light of these requirements, the NDC plan calls for commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) geographic information system tools to be involved at the various stages of data processing. Preliminary investigations indicate that the range of GIS tools provided by Esri will allow the appropriate level of processing at each stage. For the automated, near real-time data-processing pipeline, the Esri Spatial Database Engine can meet the rapid response and limited spatial processing required. For standard analyst review of data, ArcView can be used to provide an easy-to-use GUI interface to standard background data and databases. Finally, for detailed spatial analysis, reporting, and quality control/spatial data management, ArcInfo can provide the full GIS functionality required.



Copyright 1997 Environmental Systems Research Institute