The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) office released a draft solicitation for innovative solutions for automated broad-area search, monitoring, and analysis of anthropogenic activities – those related to human activity – within its Space-based Machine Automated Recognition Technique (SMART) program.
The SMART program aims to develop tools to execute broad-area searches over diverse geographic areas and environments, and detect construction while using time-series spectral imagery. Technologies that support end-to-end flow and provenance of 5V Big Data dimensions – known as volume, velocity, veracity, value, and variety – are required by the geospatial intelligence community so that its decision makers can understand and evaluate courses of action provided by that data.
“The SMART program recognizes that changes on the Earth’s surface result from complex interactions among its natural components (i.e., atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere) and anthropogenic activities,” the draft solicitation states.
A systems approach is necessary to “understand linkages, life cycles, dependencies, and interactions among the components,” but two issues arise from a single-sensor system:
- An inability to extract temporal life cycle events due to frequency of sensor revisit rates, site conditions, and various environmental parameters; and
- A single-sensor system may not exist on a spaceborne platform at the time of interest.
Interested parties must be able to address the limitations of traditional single-sensor analysis. The response date for the solicitation is May 10.
