Earlier this month, the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) published its first State of GEOINT Report, which provided insights into key trends that will shape the GEOINT community in the near future.

USGIF developed the report by tapping into members of academia, U.S. government, as well as large and small businesses on what’s “hot,” “not,” and “on the horizon.”

Here are key highlights from the report:

What's Hot: 

• Open Source Data: The world’s real-time information flow has eclipsed everyone’s imagination, and we must seek knowledge from any source to drive actionable decision-making.

• Big Data:  With the amount of geospatial data producers reaching peak levels, now is the time for the terrestrial geospatial community to leverage these sources into a continuously maintained database.

What's Not Hot: 

• Stovepipes: Twenty-first century global threats, workforce demographics, and technology advancements are pushing the Intelligence Community (IC) away from stovepipes.

What's On The Horizon: 

• The Clouds and Crowds: The need to solve global issues will give rise to the “crowds,” which will be supported by advanced cloud computing systems.

• The Visualization Imperative: The rise of advanced visualization will help the IC to enhance decision-making efforts.

• Human Centric Data Immersion: The broadening of geo-location services will create a human-centric approach to GEOINT.

• Data Privacy and Security:  Issues associated with data privacy and security will merit increasing attention.

• Federal GEOINT at a Crossroads: Geospatial capabilities have become ubiquitous.  As such, it’s time for the federal domain to aggressively embrace these shifts to meet national goals.

To read the full report from USGIF, click here.