Sponsored: High Volume, Rapid Production of Maps and Charts for Ministries of Defense

Across the globe, ministries of defense are continually challenged with meeting the demands of armed forces who need access to the right intelligence products to protect citizens, defend borders and support humanitarian missions.

While the need for rapid decision-making has never been greater, decision makers often lack the timely information required to inform their choices. In dynamic military environments, situations and plans change quickly and intelligence can become outdated. The problem becomes even more complex during joint and multinational operations.

To best advance these strategic initiatives, and manage today’s complex military issues, ministries of defense have an opportunity to take advantage of the rapid development of maps and charts—for providing enhanced decision-making and support for effective operations.

Cloud-Based, Rapid Map Development

Being able to rapidly respond to a national security issue is critical to every country’s ability to advance overall citizen safety. As such, defense ministries around the world are seeing the need to move from delivering pre-built maps to providing web services that allow users in the field to generate the most accurate and recent maps on the fly.

This is where new cloud-based automated map finishing solutions come into play. These offerings can fully automate next-generation digital cartographic products in a very accurate and timely manner, and then deliver them to the battlefield customized for that action or plan. The troops are fully armed with the intelligence they need, and leadership has a comprehensive view of the data being shared with warfighters.

Because these solutions are web-based, they are fully scalable to meet mission requirements when and where necessary. In fact, it’s possible to produce and distribute a lightweight cartographic product to the warfighter in the field in less than 10 minutes.

Better Mapping Collaboration

To enhance collaboration across the globe, and reduce mapping development duplication efforts, these types of Geospatial Intelligence Production Solutions (GIPS) support the Multinational Geospatial Co-Production Program (MGCP), as well as other large-scale programs.

Ultimately, this enables the collaboration and exchange of mapping data among countries, mapping agencies and contractors. Being commercial off-the-shelf solutions (COTS), these offerings incorporate open standard technologies, which enable national, regional and military mapping agencies to meet their goals and accomplish their missions.

In addition, since this is a COTS-based solution, it is easy to develop a standardized mapping tool that offers completely uniform intelligence for sharing with all partner nations.

The United States is already leveraging this type of solution. For example, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) uses Cartographic Web Service from Hexagon US Federal for producing series-based maps at the national mapping agency level. 

Supporting Any Mission

With an emerging need for rapid map development to respond to these types of situations, the solutions support any type of mission domain, including topographic, navigation planning, hydrographic and aeronautical data, and much more.

As nations aim to unify their efforts to enhance overall defense capabilities, collaborative mapping strategies can help advance decision-making in ways that support mission goals and save lives.

Being able to move away from using cumbersome and time-consuming pre-built maps is paramount to this effort. Thankfully, there are solutions that ministries of defense can leverage that will get the mapping and cartographic intelligence in the right hands, at the right place and at the right time.

For more information, go to https://www.hexagongeospatial.com/industries/defense.

Wolfgang Richter is vice president, EMEA, of Hexagon’s Geospatial division.