Track: Defense and Intelligence
Geodata Study
Lt. Col. Mats SoderbergThe use of digital maps in the Swedish Armed Forces is rapidly increasing. This increase includes a wide variety of systems from integrated weapon platforms and different types of simulators to planning systems primarily intended to use in an office environment. There is also a development trend toward integration of different types of positioning systems such as GPS or inertial positioning systems with some type of digital map display. However, the increasing use of digital geographic data also raises new demands on management, modification, and distribution of the data to the military end user. Within the Geodata Study (GDS), the Swedish Armed Forces is trying to develop methods and concepts to meet those demands in the long-term perspective. The GDS was initiated in 1995 with the following overall purposes: - Ensure that well-defined procedures are used and an organization is established for the provision of digital geographic data. - Define and develop routines and methods for describing user/system needs of geographic data that could be integrated within the requirements analysis and design of C3I systems. - Provide adequate metadata. - Facilitate cooperation between the Swedish Armed Forces and other agencies. In order to achieve the above goals the study was organized in a number of working groups, each composed of experts from different organizations. Some examples of completed work are - Description of evolving standards - Metadata parameters for general description of digital geographic data - Production and documentation of test data sets On-going work includes the definition for a military data provision agency. The main advantages of such an agency are - Vendors have a single source for technical requirements. - Users and system developers have one channel for questions and requirements. - Personnel and resources are better utilized for managing spatial databases. The data provision agency should be able to offer the following services - Delivery of data with documented quality and revisions to C3I and weapon systems. - Provide up-to-date metadata about available databases. - Data conversion methods and adoption of various systems.
Lt. Col. Mats Soderberg
Swedish Armed Forces
Stockholm,
SWEDEN
Telephone: 46 8 788 7945
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