Last week I attended an event with the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) intended to showcase various cloud-based technologies for the GEOINT (geospatial intelligence) market, with speakers from HumanGeo, Agilex, DigitalGlobe, and more. The objective was to give quick lightning talks on cloud-based platforms enabling GEOINT capabilities, as part of the USGIF Innovation Task Force series.
The GEOINT community frequently overuses buzzwords and discusses technology, often with handwaving and claims of vaporware. Joining others to showcase real tools that work today provided a refreshing and practical change. Advancements in cloud computing and data management technologies now enable the development and deployment of these actionable tools.
How Fulcrum fits into USGIF innovation
I briefly discussed how our users deploy Fulcrum worldwide for various field data applications in different industries. Instead of diving deeply into the many features available on the Fulcrum platform, I focused on active use cases. I highlighted the cost savings and geospatial context our field tools provide, enabling improved decision-making for our customers.
While much of my presentation focused on commercial applications, government organizations could learn valuable lessons from industry practices. By optimizing data management workflows, governments can address limitations in personnel, funding, and scalability more effectively. Companies using Fulcrum for fieldwork report a rapid return on investment, seeing significant improvements almost immediately.
Fulcrum’s ability to provide quick results tightens the feedback loop, connecting mobile staff seamlessly back to their offices. The integration of Amazon AWS as a cloud resource allows our development team to prioritize building better software tools. This integration simplifies managing servers, replication, hosting, storage, and distribution, enabling faster and more efficient operations for all users.
Abe Usher, CTO of HumanGeo kicks off the USGIF Innovation Task Force talks
Other presenters
Several others were in attendance, with a diverse set of technologies to talk about. DigitalGlobe showcased some of the latest work they’re doing with spatial analytics on top of imagery from their recently-launched WorldView-3 commercial satellite platform. Agilex highlighted what they’re doing to implement agile software development and deployment methods on top of the Amazon GovCloud platform, helping organizations make better use of the cloud to actually get their tools deployed and managed on cloud infrastructure. HumanGeo talked about tools they’re building to harness cloud services for social media mining, text analysis, and spatial data visualization.
It’s great to get a chance to show how cloud technology is being used in the real world, and we enjoyed the opportunity to get to showcase some of the awesome work our users are doing in data collection.