Community data: Providing clarity on the situation in South Sudan
By Jonathan Stack, NGA Office of Corporate Communications
Surrounded by hostile or unstable neighbors on nearly all sides, the newest country in the world is struggling to survive. The Republic of South Sudan separated from Sudan in July 2011 and plummeted from hopeful independence to brutal civil war in just over two years. Now wracked by corruption and ethnic violence, the fledgling nation has lost tens of thousands of its citizens to famine and targeted killings of civilians. More than 3.8 million South Sudanese, or approximately one-third of the nation’s current population, have fled their homes.
To understand the implications of that kind of disruption for a country’s national security, consider if one-third of the U.S. population was dislocated and homeless. It would be roughly equivalent to every person who lives in the east-coast states, from the tip of New York to the tip of Florida, and Washington, D.C. Massive economic, political and social unrest would ensue for no other reason than the percentage of citizens involved.
Myriad issues arise from any significant population dislocation, but conditions worsen when civil war is involved, as is the case in South Sudan. While intelligence officers routinely track migration and other trends related to movement, such as where conflict occurs, those who focus on Africa very often operate at the nexus between traditional intelligence and humanitarian response.
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency analysts are finalizing an innovative approach to make it easier for agency customers and partners to monitor ongoing conflicts and humanitarian issues in South Sudan and neighboring Sudan. The NGA South Sudan Unclassified Damage Assessment Environment is a password-protected unclassified website for official use by analysts and U.S. government aid providers operating in that area. The project was inspired by NGA Analysis Director Susan Kalweit.
“She learned we were creating unclassified data as part of our classified mission, and she challenged us to develop an automated process for safely getting that unclassified data down to the unclassified network, where many of our customers work,” said Terry Wilcox, head of the NGA Africa division, which is designing the new geoportal.
By providing data at the unclassified/ for official use only level, the geoportal will enable customers, whether they are on the policy side or the humanitarian assistance side, to perform their missions faster and more effectively. It will also allow them to access the data in a forum and on a system they are already familiar with, according to Wilcox.
A case study in potential
NGA developed the South Sudan geoportal with the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development in mind. USAID has provided humanitarian assistance and conflict mitigation assistance in the South Sudan region for decades.
“We believe the product we are creating will be of interest and of use to any [of our mission partners] interested in Sudan and South Sudan, though,” Wilcox said. “Several foreign partners and other elements of the Defense Department have also expressed interest.”
The new geoportal is expected to be ready for use by the end of summer 2017. Once fully launched, the portal will enable customers to log on whenever they need to see the latest information on conflict and humanitarian issues in the Sudans and to use that information to inform their analysis and decision-making.
Customers will be able to interact with the data, download it and combine it with their own data to suit their unique mission needs, according to Kalweit. In its current demonstration phase, NGA is hosting more than 30,000 data points on the platform, accessible to any NGA customer with an internet connection and a web browser.
“Not every person monitoring the Sudans has access to our classified networks or even the data we create,” said Kalweit. “Before we created this new platform, they either would not be able to get this data at all or would be seeing it only in finished reporting.”
Sudan and South Sudan were chosen for the project because many of the issues facing the regions provide a living case study for looking at avenues to provide intelligence at the unclassified/FOUO level, according to Wilcox. “Our agency is not unfamiliar with operating at the unclassified level; it is just that traditionally this kind of data would have been provided on an ad hoc, request basis,” Wilcox said. “Now, because of this project, we will be able to provide support on a consistent weekly basis, and even on demand, should the need arise.”
NGA is focusing on supporting its customers who help formulate U.S. policy for the Sudans every day, said Wilcox. The new platform and the data being provided through it will help not only with conflict monitoring for foreign policy reasons but can also be useful for humanitarian missions. For instance, it will help customers such as USAID identify areas with increased need for assistance.
NGA personnel have long recognized that data created for intelligence purposes and hosted on classified networks also has high value and impact for humanitarian purposes that rely on unclassified data. For instance, the agency’s office of the Americas and disaster preparedness provides geospatial-intelligence support to humanitarian assistance and disaster-relief activities when requested by other federal agency partners, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of State and even the Department of Homeland Security. By carefully protecting classified elements but making unclassified elements available to partners who need it for their missions, geoportals such as the one for South Sudan hold tremendous potential for NGA to contribute more easily to federal humanitarian efforts when requested to do so.
Other parts of NGA with a mission focus in Africa are also looking at how they can integrate this customer-service model and adapt some of the processes being worked on.
“We think the greatest benefit this project can provide to others in the agency will not necessarily come from copying exactly what we did, but instead from being inspired and empowered through our pathfinding, our process development and our lessons learned,” Wilcox said.
Collaborative platform
Wilcox said his group decided to use the Protected Internet Exchange for the South Sudan geoportal for a number of reasons. PiX is a DoD/State Department collaboration platform using the familiar Wikipedia format.
“First, the process of getting and managing accounts is relatively straightforward for those in the government or with the right accesses,” Wilcox said. “Second, PiX already came with technical and geographic information system support; they have a team who understands our vision and actively works with us to evolve our page in order to fit those needs.”
The third reason is that the platform is already used by many customers NGA wants to support with the data. A long-time agency goal has been to put GEOINT into the hands of users at whichever classification level they operate.
Kalweit said she hopes personnel working in other NGA mission areas ask themselves whether they are really making the agency’s GEOINT accessible to customers in the ways they need it. If not, she encourages them to follow the new geoportal example.
“We hope this project encourages other analysts and mission managers to break down some of the long-standing barriers the agency has built up around itself when it comes to producing GEOINT,” Kalweit said. As with any agile process, the NGA South Sudan Unclassified Damage Assessment Environment will continue to evolve after it is launched.
“We are still working on what is probably the most difficult part of the project and will have the largest agency impact — helping to push for a cross-domain, enterprise solution for seamlessly getting the data we create to the lowest level possible,”
Wilcox said. “If you create secret data, for example, we are working and advocating for creating an enterprise process that will automatically host that data on our secret-level systems and not just our top-secret systems.… It would be a big step for NGA and a massive boon for our customers.”
The overarching goal, said Wilcox, is to put community data straight into the tool most useful to that community.
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Crowdsourcing data for Yei
Within war-torn South Sudan, the city of Yei is one of the most desperate. A once-thriving trading hub approximately 100 miles from the capital of Juba, Yei has seen 60–70 percent of its population flee since July 2016, according to Reuters.
Because the volatility in Yei affects the overall stability of South Sudan, it is imperative that analysts and U.S. government aid providers maintain awareness of conditions within the region. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency personnel and several mission partners are making that easier through the use of the NSG Open Mapping Enclave, or NOME.
NOME is an online capability that enables National System for Geospatial Intelligence members — including NGA — and partners to add, edit and update foundational GEOINT content at any time. It is being developed as a means to use crowdsourcing techniques to produce timely and relevant foundation data within a resource-constrained environment.
“NOME’s suite of tools extends far beyond basic feature- extraction capabilities and provides enhanced utility allowing users to compare, conflate, query, export, import and store data,” said Brandon Shore, a GEOINT analyst on the NGA volunteered geographic information team.
“Providing VGI helps improve NGA’s foundation GEOINT through direct feedback from the community,” said Christopher Ocasio, another member of the NGA team. “Sharing content and edits among your peers in the community through this application ensures that everyone has immediate access to the content and tools within NOME.”
The VGI CORE team has been developing and improving the system and its capabilities since January 2016. As part of the process, NGA personnel teamed with partners from Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, plus other crowdsourcing with non-collocated partners. The team chose Yei for its case study because of its significance to overall awareness of the situation in South Sudan.
During the two-week campaign, the team acquired data covering an area of 38 square kilometers. The exercise resulted in the addition of 74,000 buildings, 760 kilometers of roads, 320 kilometers of walls and 76 map points to the cache of foundation data for Yei. That translated to a 500 percent increase in line features and a 229 percent increase in map features, according to William Mortenson, NGA VGI team lead.
The foundation data over Yei will provide situational awareness of geospatial data at a more current and greater granularity than any other known area source, he added, including OpenStreetMap, a collaborative project to create a free, editable map of the world.
“The responsive nature of NOME data to this dynamic crisis multiplies the value of GEOINT to partners and decision- makers,” Mortenson said.
The Yei campaign proved NOME to be very effective, according to Mortenson, allowing warfighters, government agencies and international partners to contribute expert knowledge to map overlays of the area.
“It opens up geospatial data to GEOINT producers and consumers who in the past relied on their own limited collection resources and proprietary technologies,” said Mortenson.
NOME is a tool for all members and partners of the NSG, Allied System for Geospatial Intelligence, Multinational Geospatial Co-production Program partners, as well as additional countries not contained within the aforementioned groups who are approved and vetted by NGA. It is being developed for use in any part of the world where timely unclassified GEOINT is needed.
