Indian Defence Review

National security implies protecting a nation’s population, economy, critical infrastructure, borders and prosperity in general. In order to implement national security, there is therefore a need to coordinate action and exchange information between various agencies which include National Intelligence, Defence, Law enforcement, Disaster Management, First responders and selected private sector enterprises. In order to share this critical information, there is a requirement to create an enterprise wide Geographical Information System (GIS) with the necessary tools. While the Forest Survey of India has recently made a welcome announcement on the implementation of a GIS based Decision Support System, this important facility has to be extended across many other agencies at the earliest.

Moreover, the recent tragic floods in J&K and Assam have once again proved the might of nature. However, while man cannot stop the initiation and the fury of nature, it can certainly use technology to prevent and reduce the loss to life and property. Just look at how important the weather broadcasts have become around the world and how successfully people are being evacuated time and again from impending natural disasters such as Hudhud and Phailin. In fact the most important technology for this purpose again revolves around Geospatial Technology and GIS.

If we had a system to continuously monitor the rise in water levels (cm accuracy as of today) and predict the flooding pattern (which is a standard feature of all GIS), then a large number of lives in J&K and Assam could have been saved, as also the relief effort prioritised based on the time criticality of the threat. The lack of a suitably digitised data base of maps for this purpose adds to our problems. Alas, while we rightfully dream of a Digital India, our efforts at the national and subordinate levels related to efficient utilisation of GIS for National Security, including Disaster management,are woefully lacking in their implementation.

WebGIS

This is where WebGIS comes in to provide distributed geospatial services to all the stakeholders implementing the National Security mission. The available data with the collecting and analysing agencies is now shared and converted into actionable intelligence which is further utilised for planning and conduct of operations.  Such applications have been robustly developed by various GIS firms like Esri and BAE Systems, and are being effectively used by many countries. India had made a good start by creating the National Spatial Data Infrastructure and the NationalGIS,but the process seems to have been mired in procedural tangles and got unduly delayed. A need to coordinate the development across various ministries is the need of the hour and any delay in this direction will be at a cost to human lives.

Big Data Analytics

The large number of smart device users in the internationally networked scenario have led to the so called information overload. This data, which largely comprises of unstructured data of dynamic nature, is often a warehouse of intelligence information. Big data analytics refers to firstly finding the dots and then connecting them to create a multisource fusion of intelligence. The data is sourced from various enterprises, social media, sensor networks and human geography inputs. The threat vector is now examined based on geospatial, temporal, behavioural and pattern recognition techniques. The analytics now can be shared amongst users to create a shared situational awareness for undertaking preventive action.

Human Geography

Human Geography is the creation of the human footprint through the fusion of map locations and human related data, and differs from Physical Geography in that it takes into account about a dozen themes related to people and maps the same. This data is structured based on the core themes of Human Geography which include Demographics, Transportation, Communication, Economy, Education, Religion, Ethnicity, Health, Political Groupings, Language, Land and Water. This new subject has recently grown into prominence in view of the large amounts of data available from social media and other surveys and the need to provide actionable intelligence from the same.

An example of Human Geography can be taken from a recent case study of Algeria which is subject to regular terrorist attacks and extremist activity. Locations of neighbourhoods and sentiments of populations where violence and extremism can occur are critical knowledge for searching and finding radicalisation before it starts. This is where foundational geospatial data like Human Geography Information Surveys (HGIS) assists in gathering critical data which later helps to identify causal factors. The approach adopted by them to tackle this issue was to use a macro to micro approach and thereby identify regions where radicalised sentiments were occurring. This was done by conducting geospatial analysis models to determine where future radical sentiments would occur.

A similar approach was also followed in narrowing down the search area for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. The use of Predictive Analytical tools thus help analysts to anticipate risk and identify opportunities for key leaders and decision makers to focus their limited resources.

Imagery Analysis

In view of technological advances in electro-optical devices, there has been a paradigm shift in imagery from aerial platforms such as satellites and UAVs. The latest imagery satellite named WorldView3 which was launched in August 2014 provides a resolution of 31 cms. This comes at a time when the US has also agreed to provide imagery upto 25 cm resolution to other countries. Thus imagery capture and analysis quickly fills up the voids in digitised map data. While the earlier generations of satellites focused on spatial resolution, accuracy and speed of data transfer, the new generation of satellites are catering for analytics wherein damage assessment, sub-surface mapping and  threat responses are also being factored in image analysis.

What Needs To Be Done

The way forward is to follow a two pronged approach comprising of internal and external measures. The internal measures would be aimed at creating the desired work culture by adopting new automated processes based on geospatial tools. This would also involve the procurement of hardware and software by the different departments of the government. External measures would be aimed at establishing the data networks between the different stakeholders of National Security. The need to lay down various policies of standardisation by a central coordinating agency such as the NGIS is imperative at this stage.

We all admire the use of google maps and online services which assist us in our daily lives. However, while the tools are readily available, government processes in our country are still not taking advantage of this extremely potent technology which provides immense benefits for eGovernance and National Security. In order to establish the who-where-what-when of intelligence, the use of GIS is inescapable. The time for the government to act is NOW!