 Welcome to lesson one of the Geospatial Revolution and Geospatial Intelligence. Happy to have you here. My name is Todd Bacchisto. I'm going to lead you through this course for the next few weeks. So in this lesson, we'll do a couple things. Actually, it's three things. We're going to define G-Win. I'm going to discuss really what's unique about this and other parts of the lesson. We're going to give you some examples of what G-Win. You can watch videos at your leisure. Let's begin by examining the individual terms of geospatial and intelligence. Geospatial pertains to things on the surface of the earth and particularly looks at the relative position of those things. You think about it, everything's located on earth someplace and there are things around that. That's what we're looking at. Intelligence? Well, we're not talking about smarts here. We're talking about something else. What we're talking about is processing information that provides insights about human activity. Keyword here is human activity that serves the information needs of a decision maker. Let's put the two terms together. Geospatial about the earth and intelligence information that helps the decision makers. We're talking about geospatial things on the earth that we talk about that help the decision maker make decisions or provide them insights. In the United States, we actually have a legal definition of geospatial intelligence or GEOINT. Sort of unique. Maybe if you know of another country that has one, I haven't been able to find it. I'm interested in knowing it. Now, I'm not going to read this definition, but let me say this. This is a definition helped form something called U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency or as abbreviated NGA. This was obviously derived as a definition in order to fit that agency between other agencies. So understand it was politically negotiated. Although it's a good definition and it really explains a lot. I want to get past that. Let's really understand what geospatial intelligence is so we can explore the discipline a little deeper. Let's go perhaps a more encompassing definition of what GEOINT is. It's three things. It's actionable knowledge. It's a process and it's a profession. First is actionable knowledge. It's the ability to discover, describe, understand and anticipate the human impact on an event or action within a spatio-temporal environment or a space-time environment. I want to say actionable. That means you can take that information and actually apply it to do something. If I want to buy a house, it's telling me where I might want to buy a house or begin to look for a house. It's something I can act upon. As a process, it's the ability to identify, collect, store and manipulate data to create insights using a tradecraft. Now, this tradecraft thing sounds a little bit like a spy. Okay, maybe it is to a degree. But really what we're talking about is a process here of how we go through and do this. We'll talk much more about tradecraft a little later in this lesson, but also in lesson four. Finally, it's the ability to present knowledge in a way that is appropriate to the decision-making environment. This is the professional component of this. It is the wise professional that understands what information and how they present it to someone that had the impact. It's actually quite important because you can do the best collection, the best analysis, but if you don't present it in the right way, you're ineffective. So a question I'm often asked, how does G.O.N.T differ from, say, a student using GIS to find out where someone may want to buy a house? There are differences. In a way, really what you're asking is, what's unique about G.O.N.T? Let me explore that topic a little bit. While not totally unique to G.O.N.T, a key concept is that it provides a decision advantage resulting from insights gained through place and time, and involves the integration of geographic information, science, and technology, or this thing we like to call GIS and T. Finally, it involves this thing I mentioned before, the intelligence tradecraft. Now the intelligence tradecraft will talk about a little more in this lesson, also talk about much more in lesson four. Let me go and delve into this idea of a decision advantage. What is a decision advantage? Well, it helps me do something better than someone else. In some ways, that sounds unfair, doesn't it? Well, if you think about it, sports teams do that. They want to execute a sport, their plays better than someone, whether you're soccer, football, whatever sport you have. The decision advantage is important. That decision advantage can disappear if you give your insights to your competitor. Therefore, Juin explicitly deals with this idea of secrecy, how we may want to keep this information secret, collect information secrecy, have methods that are secret, and to hold that information back. Contrast this with an academic endeavor or environment where we freely share our information. And in fact, in academia, you could probably say what we do is we request to collect the information before we collect it. We tell everybody how we're gonna process it, and then we give it away in publications. That is different within the intelligence trade craft. But that's not totally different from, say, business. If I'm a business, I'm not going to tell everybody what I'm going to do in business. I like to come out with new products. If you think about it, all the major corporations launch products in secret or develop them in secret, and then launch them. So what about this idea of place? Place, location and place are not the same. Places have physical and human attributes. If you think about where your home is. There's a physical quality to your home. There's also a human quality to your home. The people around it, your neighbors, the type of neighbors you have. Place emphasizes this idea of integration of understanding of both of these factors. And that's really what Juint is about. Juint is about place. It's about that integration of the physical and the human qualities. These insights often take the form of a narrative or story when we do our analysis. That story may be where you might find something. What is at this place? How does this place differ from another place? How does my town or my city differ from your city? How does a region differ from another city? How have places changed? Could be economically. How has this place changed? And how places interact with others? The movement of people, the movement of goods, the movement of thought. Let's talk a little bit about this thing called Geographic Information Science and Technology, or GIS&T, and how it interacts with the intelligence trade craft. It's sort of give and take, actually. You have the Geographic Information Science. We have the technology. We also have the trade craft. They sort of work together, in a way. Geographic Information Science is actually that science behind the technology. It's the theory. It's the concepts that allow us to build the technology. It's all those things that enable the technology. A lot of it's academic. A lot of it has come out of academia. Geographic Information Technology is actually the implementation of that. It's your cell phone that has a GPS in it. It's those satellite flying around, collecting imagery. It is all the technology that works. The Juin trade craft, however, is unique. It is that work that produces geospatial intelligence. It's cognitive work. It's thinking work. It's hard work. Trade craft teaches the principles, the tools, and the standards of the rigor that the analyst thinks. Now, that sounds sort of strange, but it's not. Trade craft is really, it's that culture around which the intelligence is developed. We just use the word trade craft because it makes it seem a little bit more mysterious and it gives it mystique. But really, that's what trade craft is. Principles, tools, standards, and rigor of the analyst thinking. Neek the other forms of geographic analysis. If you go back and look at the example I gave, the Juin professional may be required to operate in secrecy and contend with something that normally you wouldn't deal with in academia. And that's contend with deliberately deceptive information. Sort of important. Anyway, welcome to lesson one. Welcome aboard. I hope you enjoy the course.