Exelis brings fun, games, and veterans assistance to Esri® this year!

We’re bringing something new to this years’ Esri® International User Conference. In an effort to educate more GIS users about the value of the information contained in geospatial imagery we have designed some interactive, touch-screen games. These games are designed for everyone and anyone who is interested in learning more about the types of information that is contained in imagery. They are designed for someone who knows that there’s some usefulness to be gleaned from imagery, but is unsure what that is or how to go about retrieving it. The games challenge players to visually extract information from imagery within a certain amount of time. Naturally, visual exploitation takes a long time and can be very resource intensive, so it is often difficult to solve the problem.

In the game shown below, you are an intel officer running change detection over the nuclear site located in Natanz, Iran (data courtesy of DigitalGlobe™ Inc.). You can see the before and after pictures, and the player is invited to manually identify areas of change between the two images.

The player is then provided with information about ENVI change detection, and the ENVI analysis result is overlaid on the ‘after’ image. The two images demonstrate the accuracy of the image analysis workflow and the value of the software without confusing the player with over-complicated demos and analysis.

There will be three different scenarios to play at this year’s UC, if you want to learn what the other two scenarios are, you’ll just have to stop by the booth and play! As an added bonus, for every person that plays one (or all) of the games, we’ll be donating $5 to a local veterans organization via our non-profit volunteer organization, Exelis Action Corps. At this year’s User Conference, we’ve partnered with a local California organization called Team Rubicon which unites the skills of military veterans with first responders to assist in disaster situations. Team Rubicon will receive each $5 donation made as a result of playing the games.

So if you’re in San Diego this year, be sure to stop by our booth, play some games, and give some assistance to those who have served our country. Who knew helping people could be so much fun!