Big Data in the Maritime Battlespace

The chapter hosted the one-day Big Data in the Maritime Battlespace Symposium in October at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in North Charleston, South Carolina. The three key speakers for the day included Dr. Marv Langston of Langston Associates, who posed the question, “With the Navy making 100 terabytes a day of data, how do you move it?” Cloud computing makes handling big data possible, and big data and the cloud all come down to three things: capability, agility and life cycle cost. Terry Simpson, chief technology officer, headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, led the first panel and wrapped up as the final keynote speaker. He brought a point of view from his extensive work around the Marine Corps. A key issue he presented is the need to standardize and build out infrastructure, and he stated that the Navy needs an integrated set of capabilities across the board to include its mission partners. Michele Weslander Quaid of Google also gave a presentation. She says the collection of data really has not made anyone smarter—it's a question of how you analyze it. Google recently uploaded 40 years of geographic open source information from dusty government shelves to create the Google Earth Engine. Quaid was one of several folks on the day that identified culture as an obstacle, even beyond policy and technology. More information on the event can be found on the chapter's website.

Event Photographs: