Geographic Information & Services (GIS)

What has the Army done? What does the Army have planned? Why is this important? Read more about it.

What is it?

The Army Installation Geospatial Information & Services (IGI&S) program provides a unified approach for the creation, maintenance and management of installation geospatial data. The program is established to consolidate and focus Army efforts in utilizing that information, including its associated systems and resources, to improve accountability and increase the level of credibility of geospatial information and its originating sources. The Army IGI&S program constitutes the Installations, Energy & Environment (IE&E) domain of the Army Geospatial Enterprise (AGE).

Usage of both Geographic Information System (GIS) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) technologies are widespread across the Army and heavily relied upon in planning and installation, energy and environmental management. Geospatial information shows the precise relationship between the installation (for example, the natural, cultural, administrative, and infrastructure characteristics of an installation’s sites and their surrounding area) and management activities. Installations use GIS and geospatially-enabled CAD for integrated planning, command and control (for example, National Environmental Policy Act analysis, relocation and move management, space management, noise management, site selection, permitting, and environmental management). Other uses are operations and management, emergency management and operations (fire, police, medical), emergency preparedness planning, analysis and mapping support, communications and briefing support, dig permitting, military training, land navigation training, the daily maintenance of infrastructure, as well as integration with business (tabular data) systems. Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA) uses GIS and geospatially-enabled CAD for re-stationing, asset lifecycle management, mapping analysis and support, integration efforts with business systems, and impact analysis of policies.

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What has the Army done?

The Spatial Data Standards for Facilities, Infrastructure, and Environment (SDSFIE) is the single Department of Defense (DoD) spatial standard that supports common implementation and maximizes interoperability for Installation, Environment, and Civil Works Missions. It is published as a Logical Data Model (LDM), intended to represent business requirements, entities and relationships. The Army IGI&S Program has adopted the DISDI SDSFIE standard (Version 2.6) for installation geospatial data.

The Office of the Chief of Staff for Installation Management (OACSIM) Operations Division (DAIM-OD) and Environmental Division (DAIM-ISE) have published a series of Quality Assurance Plans (QAPs) for data layers with a required business case. The purpose of developing these QAPs was to comply with the OACSIM and G3 memorandum, “US Army Installation Geospatial Information & Services Data Proponency, Common Installation Picture, and Quality Assurance Plans (QAP),” and to specify required attributes, reduce variances, prescribe acceptable values with examples, identify acceptable sources of data, minimize redundant data collection, and identify the authoritative data sources that already contain the data elements.

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What does the Army have planned?

A new SDSFIE (Version 3.x) is being developed using a platform-independent logical data model (LDM) that promotes interoperability and follows accepted industry practices. The IGI&S Program is in the process of developing the SDSFIE 3.0 Army Adaptation and will publish it as a Physical Data Model. The SDSFIE 3.0 Army Adaptation will be the foundation of the Official Records database for the enterprise system and will be used in whole or in part by installations. Installations will be required to develop, at a minimum, a subset of the SDSFIE entity types known as the Common Installation Picture (CIP). The entities that currently represent the CIP are defined in the Memorandum distributed on August 15, 2008 titled US Army Installation Geospatial Information and Services (IGI&S) Data Proponency, Common Installation Picture, and Quality Assurance Plans (QAPs). The CIP serves as the core data component of the system. Due to its commonality among installations, CIP layers standards are to be strictly followed. The CIP is currently being expanded to be inclusive of most commonly required data elements. The Official Record – currently named Record and Archive (R&A) – data model will be streamlined to the CIP to improve flexibility and usability for installations to provide data, to enable cost savings for servers, data storage, system resources, licenses, and personnel support, and to improve data quality and system performance on the Official Record database.

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Why is this important?

With the SDSFIE data structure and QAP data standards and methodologies in place it is possible to create an Army-wide set of installation geospatial data that can be leveraged to solve the many complex and interrelated issues faced by its Commands and organizations. Having this sort of situational awareness of the installation is critical in supporting the Army installation management mission. Factors such as day-to-day installation management operations, transformation initiatives, base realignment and closure (BRAC), homeland security, and mission support mandate that the Army has access to the best possible contextual information about an installation’s sites and their surroundings. Geospatial information - globally referenced digital representations of installation features, including road networks, building footprints, as-built drawings, utilities, environmental resources and constraints, and surrounding areas - must be readily available in standardized formats and consolidated in an authoritative data source (ADS). This information is utilized by echelons up to Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA) offices to support installation management business processes, inform force protection, respond to encroachment issues, meet regulatory requirements, enable optimum use of facilities, and enhance installation, energy and environmental management in order to support mission needs.

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Geographic Information & Services (GIS)