Scientific Visualization

submitted by Karen Walker

In the past two years, NGA has responded to a series of natural disasters at home and abroad. Whether providing support to emergency response teams working the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Japan or tornadoes and floods in the United States, NGA employees worldwide have demonstrated the critical role of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in answering the call for help.

Our humanitarian assistance/disaster response work, among all the roles and responsibilities that come with managing the nation’s GEOINT capabilities, brings us closest to the people and communities in need during times of crisis. Our GEOINT tools and analyses save lives by helping our mission partners determine where help is needed most, by enabling the right people to be at the right place at the right time, and by anticipating what might happen next.

 . . . "the most valuable currency of the World Bank isn’t its money — it is its information" . . .

 . . . "The bank, he says, is essentially widening the circle of people it can brainstorm with." . . .

 . . . "Having created models for open-sourcing and crowd-sourcing, the bank is now moving toward mash-ups. A new Mapping for Results program offers interactive maps pinpointing locations of almost 3,000 bank projects in more than 16,000 places worldwide. Links open up pages with information about each project, and users can add overlays that show, say, where infant mortality is highest to see whether the bank’s work in those areas matches the need.

The program is sensitive because it involves releasing data provided by client governments and others, but the hope is that it will prompt these parties to link their own data on economic and social development to the site or otherwise make it available." . . .

World Bank Is Opening Its Treasure Chest of Data

HeraldTribune.com - Stephanie Strom - July 3, 2011