ARLINGTON, Va. — The National Guard Bureau's Joint Intelligence Directorate was recently highlighted for its role in developing a program giving Guard members and local authorities' greater situational awareness while responding to emergencies, natural disasters and large scale events.
The directorate was awarded the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation's Government Achievement Award in recognition of the Domestic Operations Awareness and Assessment Response Tool, or DAART, developed in partnership with the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command.
"I kinda feel like a proud dad," said Thomas Merrill, head of the NGB's Joint Intelligence Plans and Policy Branch. "[The award] says to me that I've got a really great team who was working on it."
The DAART is a web-based program that pulls together geospatial intelligence assets from a variety of sources, including terrain and mapping information from the U.S. Geologic Survey as well as video feeds from overhead aircraft and satellite imagery.
"The computing power we have and the ability to bring in information from all these disparate sources, you can really paint a picture for the commander," said Merrill.
The program, which debuted last year, stems from an earlier web-based system, but has added capabilities providing users with close to real-time imagery as well as interactive features that speed up communications between responding agencies.
"You're bringing all sorts of information in and it displays it geospatially," said Merrill. "Any operation that you're doing, you can see right now in either real-time or near real-time what's going on."
That gives Guard members the ability to respond faster in emergency situations, said Merrill. The program allows commanders to assess rapidly changing conditions, such as road closures in a large-scale flooding incident.
"[Those] who are responding, they'll know which routes are still open and which ones to avoid," Merrill said, adding that most people are saved within the first 72 hours after an emergency or catastrophic event occurs.
"The faster that we can get in there to get to people who are caught in voids or who are definitely in distress — the elderly or those who are isolated — the more people who can be saved," he said.
The DAART can be accessed not only by the Guard, but also by state and local authorities and other responding agencies.
"It really highlights the Guard's ability to harness technology at the most local level," said Merrill. "It puts the Guard member at street level, if need be, along with the sheriff's deputy or the local police [officers] and they're all looking at the same thing."
Those capabilities also spotlight the Guard's community and local tie.
"That's really powerful," said Merrill. "That's where the Guard comes from."
The program has already been used in a variety of missions, said Merrill, including the presidential inauguration in January and during last year's wildfire response operations in California. During the wildfire response, it was instrumental in helping rescuers find a lost hiker.
"It was the first time it had been used to find a missing person," said Merrill. "It helped rule out areas where she may have been. When they figured out where she was, they used the program to help vector in the search team and she was saved."
While the DAART provides an expansive capability, Merrill said he and his team are working on fine tuning it and expanding its capabilities.
"The next step is to improve what we already have," said Merrill. "We're taking requirements from the field and prioritizing them, looking at budgetary constraints and how to help them with missions. We have some longer range things we've been working on for a while that will help streamline the process."
Those improvements, said Merrill, will increase capability while balancing fiscal requirements.
"This will save money," he said. "It will save time and it will save lives."