NGA, DigitalGlobe application a boon to raster data storage, processing

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced January 13 that it recently released an application that will allow the public to benefit from the agency’s collaboration with DigitalGlobe on a project that simplifies and economizes the storage and processing of large-scale raster data, reducing the time it takes analysts to search, download, preprocess and format data for analysis.

MapReduce Geo, or MrGeo, is a geospatial toolkit designed to provide raster-based geospatial capabilities performable at scale by leveraging the power and functionality of cloud-based architecture.

“The project demonstrates how public-private partnerships can create innovative solutions,” said Tony Frazier, senior vice president of DigitalGlobe U.S. Government Solutions.

“Available to the public through NGA’s GitHub account, the software can be useful in many situations,” said Chris Rasmussen, NGA’s public software development lead. “Sharing it with the public gives users at all levels another tool to help solve geospatial problems. For example, first responders could use it to plan the best ways in and out of dangerous areas taking into account terrain, land use, and changes in weather.”

Releasing MrGeo helps further the agency’s goal of increasing and streamlining co-creation efforts in software and unclassified data, said Rasmussen. Sharing the application with the open source community helps accelerate its potential to become the standard for storing, enriching and analyzing massive amounts of raster data in a distributed cloud environment.

“DigitalGlobe feels the open source community can drive innovation that helps us better mine our imagery and derived information layers to support emerging defense and intelligence mission requirements,” said Frazier.

MrGeo is available at: https://github.com/ngageoint/mrgeo. The software use, modification, and distribution rights are stipulated within the Apache 2.0 license.

Source: NGA