Company will be prime contractor for developing more consistent approach to geospatial data
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has contracted HP Enterprise Services to help develop its Defence Geospatial Services (DGS) programme.
Under an £8.5 million deal the company will act as prime contractor and system integrator and work with geospatial software specialist Envitia to deliver the first phase of the programme.
It is aimed at enabling military personnel and civilian employees to use geospatial intelligence – on human activities that can be referenced to a particular location – in dealing with defence and humanitarian incidents. The MoD has been aiming for the forces and its own teams to take a consistent approach to using spatial data to provide better results and support scaling up.
Simon Fovargue, vice president for defence and enterprise security at HP, said it would ensure that all users are “fighting off the same map”.
DII accessibility
The system will be accessible from any terminal within the Defence Information Infrastructure, and provide a foundation for the MoD’s Spatial Data Infrastructure(SDI) to be expanded in the future.
An operations centre based on HP infrastructure with secure data storage will managed the MoD’s maps and connect primary geospatial production centres, while the Envita software will manage large datasets to support decision-making.
The SDI is a framework of components to support spatial data projects for the air, land, maritime and joint defence activities. It includes policy, standards, data and services.
Image from MoD under Open Government Licence v1.0
