Artificial Intelligence's Role in Advancing the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA).

摘要

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential within the next 30 years to make major impacts on the imagery and geospatial intelligence tradecrafts and the U.S. Imagery and Geospatial Systems (USIGS) infrastructure. This paper seeks to determine whether NIMA is positioning the agency and USIGS community to take advantage of AI in its mission areas, how well are they doing, and where might they improve. This will be assessed through an examination of current relevant AI technologies, ongoing NIMA technologies and NIMA research and development (R&D) programs. Findings show that NIMA has been involved in AI related areas, especially over the past three years and are expanding those programs in their transformation efforts. However, most of their technology is focused on near term. Recent programs are looking at the mid-to-long term technologies that leverage off of core AI technologies. While there are programs for R&D in these far horizon areas, current funding profiles are limited and do not match the intent or purpose of the research effort. There is also an investment shortfall in the infrastructure to make the new technologies work. Artificial Intelligence R&D programs have the potential to revolutionize NIMA's industry and disciplines; it also has a crucial global role in advancing the use of imagery and geospatial products, data and services.