National security could be enhanced with a system that quickly sorts and evaluates spatial and geographic information captured in enormous volumes of images. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory-developed system combines the lab's expertise in a number of areas and addresses the problem of having too much information for trained personnel to analyze. Consequently, much of the staggering collection of data is not effectively utilized, said ORNL's Budhu Bhaduri, co-principal investigator for the project. With the ORNL system, security experts would have access to a dynamic data archive plus methods to quickly analyze the information using a variety of tools, including intelligent software agents, geospatial modeling, feature extraction and image and pattern recognition. This combined with ORNL's unparalleled LandScan population database provide national security personnel with a powerful system to safeguard the nation. Funding for this work is provided by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.
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