Army establishes standard for geospatial data storage

The Army is working to establish a data content standard for geospatial-intelligence used by ground forces that would improve management and sharing of featured data generated by intelligence agencies, the Army, and the Marine Corps, the service announced Sept. 24.

The Ground-Warfighter Geospatial Data Model (GGDM) will serve as one of the core components of the Army Geospatial Enterprise, the Army said. The purpose of the effort is to reduce stovepipes, lower costs, simplify acquisition and accelerate transition of technology as part of a standard and shareable geospatial foundation.

To facilitate the effort, the Army will establish a roadmap for transitioning its ground-warfighter systems and geospatial data to the GGDM. The Army Geospatial Center's  geospatial datasets, the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) and other Army and Marine Corps systems that use geospatial feature data, will be moved to the data model.

Future versions of the GGDM might include additional ground forces enterprise content, such as high-resolution urban information, additional aeronautical information, modeling and simulation, tactical information and updates based on common geospatial data requirements across ground forces components, the Army said.