National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - Activities

Activities

• 9/11 aftermath: After the September 11, 2001 attacks, NIMA partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey to survey the World Trade Center site and determine the extent of the destruction.
• Olympic support: In 2002, NIMA partnered with Federal organizations to provide geospatial assistance to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. NGA also helped support the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
• Space Shuttle Columbia disaster: While the Space Shuttle Columbia was in orbit during STS-107, NIMA purportedly offered to image the shuttle and its suspected damage from falling debris during takeoff. NASA declined this offer (see Space Shuttle Columbia disaster), but has since forged an interagency agreement with NGA to collect imagery for all future space shuttle flights.
• Hurricane Katrina: The NGA supported Hurricane Katrina relief efforts by "providing geospatial information about the affected areas based on imagery from commercial and U.S. government satellites, and from airborne platforms, to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government agencies. NGA's Earth website is a central source of these efforts.
• Microsoft partnership: Microsoft Corp. and the NGA have signed a letter of understanding to advance the design and delivery of geospatial information applications to customers. NGA will continue to use the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform (as it did for Katrina relief) to provide geospatial support for humanitarian, peacekeeping, and national-security efforts. The Virtual Earth platform is a set of online mapping and search services that deliver imagery through an API.
• Social Software Training: Several agencies in the Intelligence community, most notably CIA and NGA, have developed training programs to provide time to integrate social software tools into analysts' daily work habits. These classes generally focus on the use of Intellipedia to capture and manage knowledge, but they also use other social software tools, such as blogs, RSS, and social bookmarking. The courses stress immersion in these tools, and instructors encourage participants to work on a specific project in Intellipedia. The courses expose participants to social media technologies on the Internet.