Geo-Pioneers Down Under
Eagle Technology Automates Maps for NZ Military
By NICK LEE-FRAMPTON
Published: 19 January 2009
WELLINGTON - "A military user wants one big button that just solves a problem, as a tool - a tool to help you make better, smarter decisions when you are cold, hungry and haven't slept for 72 hours."
David Swann was talking about geographic information systems (GIS) for military purposes, one of his responsibilities as a business development director for Eagle Technology Group.
Geographic information systems integrate computer hardware, special software and data to capture, manage, analyze and display geographically referenced information. A GIS can overlay and combine different kinds of information into a single map that summarizes the geographic, cultural and scientific attributes of a particular region.
Traditional GIS maps show streets, phone and electrical lines and sewers. Applications include charting fast routes for police and emergency vehicles or plotting the course of an oil spill.
Swann joined Eagle Technology last year after serving as director of international defense business development for ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute), Redlands, Calif.
"I went to ESRI because they are the leading GIS company in the world," said Swann, a United Kingdom native. "But ultimately, there were two things that brought me to New Zealand: the lifestyle and the great professional opportunity of heading up Eagle's GIS business unit. [Plus] Eagle is an ESRI distributor, so I am still part of the ESRI family."
Almost 40 years ago, Trevor and Corallie Eagle started a data processing organization based in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. Some 20 years ago, the company established national leadership in GIS when it became only the fifth ESRI distributor worldwide.
Today, Eagle Technology is New Zealand's largest privately held information technology firm and employs more than 120, including 63 in Auckland and 48 in Wellington. Trevor Eagle died in 2000; his wife Corallie serves as chairman of the company's board.
Besides the GIS unit, Eagle Technology has two enterprise solution units and a business applications unit.
"GIS has a great habit of surviving economic downturns because it is all about bringing economic sustainability to organizations," Swann said.
"One of the things I have introduced into Eagle is a return on investment methodology," he said. "The message is, if you are not obtaining a return on your investment in GIS, we shouldn't be selling it to you and you shouldn't be buying it. As you go into an economic downturn, that message becomes all the more compelling, because people are desperate to make efficiencies."
The commercial-off-the-shelf GIS technology offered by Eagle is more cost-effective than systems tailored for defense customers, because the customer does not need to pay for a large team of support technicians devoted only to defense, Swann said. The New Zealand Defence Force "gets to leverage off the fact that GIS is used so widely in New Zealand."
Swann said he used to visit New Zealand every year as part of his globe-hopping sales trips for ESRI. "I certainly wasn't chasing enormous revenues ... but what I was looking at was a defense force that is small but perfectly formed, and able to be much more agile in the uptake of new technology, specifically GIS."
Gerard Lelieveld, a defense consultant with Eagle Technologies, said GIS is especially valuable for defense users. "Ninety percent of decision-making is based around location," he said. "Data fusion is location, and GIS does that superbly."
Lelieveld has worked with the New Zealand Army's Battle Labs at Linton. The Army can respond quickly, he said, but so, too, can Eagle Technology. "The [Army] can rapidly develop solutions faster than bigger nations, [and because] we are locally based ... we can support it."
GIS in the Field
At a military technology exercise last June, Evan Wright, a warrant officer with the Royal New Zealand Air Force, showed off GIS software supplied and supported by Eagle Technology.
He showed samples of maps used by New Zealand's Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan's Bamyan province. The country's military has more than 130 personnel deployed in Afghanistan, most of them with the PRT.
When called up on a computer screen, the maps displayed infrastructure information on utilities, such as water wells and settlements. Clicking an icon on a map yielded GIS reference data, such as the local population. In the event of a disaster in the mapped region, authorities could use the GIS maps to pinpoint which utilities were damaged and how many people were affected.
Army Capt. Rowland Harrison said the Army's geospatial unit uses the Eagle Technology-supplied ArcGIS system for terrain analysis when planning flights for the Kahu, a new hand-launched reconnaissance UAV.
The Army's Unmanned Aerial Systems Battle Lab is working with Eagle Technology to support UAV ground control stations, mission planning, navigation data management and post-mission processing of UAV imagery into the Army's intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance systems, Harrison said.
Lt. Mike Emery, commander of the geospatial unit, said its relationship with Eagle Technology is extremely good. "I say that on the basis of the support they have provided us - they have had guys with us full-time on exercises - and with product development."
The Army set up the GIS unit a decade ago, but only in the last 18 months has the relationship with Eagle Technology grown to "a much higher level," Emery said. "That has been prompted by GIS public relations work on our part - to get the whole of Army on board with the whole environment of GIS, to understand it is the foundation of a lot of the other capabilities that we are trying to build," including UAVs. ■
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