Destinations | June 2008
GXP participates in Korean Defense User Group meeting
Eric Bruce, GXP field sales, and Thao Duong, GXP support, participated in the 2008 Korea Defense User Group (KDUG) meeting at Yongsan AB in Seoul, Korea, April 17 – 18. The KDUG is a two-day event organized by ESRI®, featuring GIS presentations, workshops, and an overview of GIS use in the Korean Peninsula. Approximately 100 attendees from all areas of the Korean defense industry, including the Republic of Korea, Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and other organizations participated in the conference. The event included briefings by ESRI and partners, as well as GIS workshops and demonstrations hosted by commercial vendors.
Eric Bruce delivered a briefing, Imagery Processing and GIS Integration, prefaced by the Tales from the war front video, which emphasized how important it is for commercial vendors to be aware of how their tools are being used not only in the U.S., but in deployed operations as well. Bruce explained that while defense contractors are normally given a list of requirements to satisfy, it is up to commercial vendors such as ESRI and BAE Systems to work with users to define requirements for software releases that provide near-real-time solutions to the war fighter. He acknowledged the importance of these types of joint partnerships that yield new technology, such as Spatially Enabled Exploitation (SEE), the SOCET GXP module that provides direct access to the ESRI geodatabase, and SOCET for ArcGIS® (SFA), the SOCET SET module that allows the ArcGIS community to exploit stereo imagery for the collection and editing of features and attributes in the familiar ArcMap® environment. These tools provide defense customers with solutions never seen before in the image analysis community.
Bruce’s briefing, and complementary workshop, focused on the merging of image analysis and geospatial analysis — a trend that was recognized by the audience — as he witnessed many heads nodding in agreement. Apparently, commands are doing more and more geospatial analysis these days, and are looking for a versatile tool they can learn easily to help them achieve many tasks in one shot.