SAN ANTONIO — (BUSINESS WIRE) — November 2, 2009 — The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation today announced the winners of its 2009 USGIF Awards Program. This year’s recipients are Mr. Andrew Schaeffer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Imagery Exploitation Course Team, the Integrated Collection Management Program Team, the Eagle Express Production Team and the geospatial engineers on Google Federal team.

“On behalf of USGIF, our Membership and Board of Directors, I congratulate the 2009 Award Program winners,” said USGIF President Keith Masback. “Each year the Awards Program becomes more and more competitive and 2009 was no different. All applicants were truly deserving of these awards. We feel a sense of pride in being able to recognize those continuing a pattern of excellence within our community.”

Academic Achievement Award – Mr. Andrew Schaeffer was a model student during his attendance of the Basic Analytical Training (BAT) and the Geospatial-Intelligence Training Program (GITP). Mr. Schaeffer is a dedicated professional who strove for perfection in all aspects of the course by demonstrating sound judgment and flexibility not normally noted in someone so junior to the agency and intelligence community. Mr. Schaeffer completed the grueling five month long GITP as the honor graduate, a testament to his desire to excel at his new profession, completing the course with an astounding 98 percent, a task only few have ever achieved. During the last five days of the course Mr. Schaeffer was chosen as a team leader for an exercise that encapsulated all aspects of the previous five months of training. During his role as team lead, he used exceptional people skills and tact to guide, direct and mentor his team to success.

Academic Research Award – The Imagery Exploitation Course Team demonstrated the highest levels of professional excellence in producing a first-ever world-class curriculum for motion imagery exploitation training. Their commitment to excellence and ability to leverage community involvement resulted in a highly collaborative effort lauded by the motion imagery community. The Motion Imagery Exploitation Course is an 80-hour, hands-on course that introduces students to the exploitation of Large Volume Streaming Data (LVSD) and Full Motion Video (FMV) and is the only definitive advanced level training available in the community. The Motion Imagery Exploitation Course Team is a group of Intelligence Community professionals with diverse analytical backgrounds. Together they have been at the developmental forefront of the motion imagery tradecraft, and pioneers of education and training in this rapidly evolving arena.

Intelligence Achievement Award (Government Division) – The broad-based government and industry team responsible for executing the Integrated Collection Management (ICM) Program has achieved unprecedented integration and collaboration successes in support of congressional and executive mandates for intelligence reform in the areas of mission management, collection and production operations. The ICM team developed a scalable, adaptable multi-INT operations capability that is increasingly enabling NSA, NGA, DIA, NRO and mission partners to improve their capacity, versatility and agility in collection and production as a dynamically integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance force. This matrixed team of individuals from diverse areas of the community united in 2007 for a common purpose of achieving post-9/11 intelligence reform objectives at further integrating Intelligence Community and Department of Defense operations. Referred to by senior leaders across the community as the “coalition of the willing,” the ICM team successfully developed and continues instantiating new work roles, mission processes and technologies that are transforming the traditionally stovepiped collection domains through an unprecedented level of integration.

Intelligence Achievement Award (Military Division) – The Eagle Express Production Team delivery organized and led by U.S. Air Force A2U and the NATO C3 Agency Geo Team met critical needs of the ISAF CJ2 Geo Community at the Headquarters and Regional Command levels in a remarkably short period – unprecedented from the NATO perspective. The Eagle Express Production is based on NATO-standard GIS solutions augmented by state-of-the-art components delivering a mission critical capability to insure geospatial information superiority to the coalition warfighters in Afghanistan. After identification of capability gaps, the team, made up of U.S. Air Force Col. Vic Kuchar, U.S. Air Force Capt. Steve Wackowski, Mr. John Teufert and Mr. Paul Teague, took immediate and significant mitigating action to get the warfighters the right support when needed, where needed. In less than 12 months, beginning with the capturing of requirements, complete geospatial production hardware/software/data kits, and training were delivered successfully to the HQ ISAF CJ2 Regional Command geo cells at Kabul, Bagram, Kandahar, Heart and Mazar e Sharif. This is the first time in NATO history that all coalition forces are fighting off the same maps.

Intelligence Achievement Award (Industry Division) – The geospatial engineers on the Google Federal team developed a version of the Google Earth Enterprise software which is specifically aimed at delivering mission critical GEOINT to the last tactical mile. Their work has enabled a new product from Google, Google Earth Enterprise Portable, which is now being field tested and used in Afghanistan and other areas of operation. The portable systems are enabling the warfighter and NGO's on humanitarian missions to have high-resolution imagery for the entire country of their interest in the familiar Google Earth application without the need for network connectivity. This has proven critical in the field where bandwidth and connectivity are never a certainty, and is seldom similar to the highly connected world for which Google Earth was designed.