Testbed-11 NIEM-IC Feature Processing API using OGC Web Services
2016
The goal of the Geo4NIEM thread in Testbed 11 was to gain Intelligence Community (IC) concurrence of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Version 3.0 architecture through the development, implementations, test, and robust demonstration making use of IC specifications, Geography Markup Language (GML), and NIEM in a simulated "real-world" scenario.The demonstration scenario begins with NIEMconformant Information Exchange Packages (IEPs) containing operational data and IC security tags from the Information Security Marking (ISM) and Need-To-Know (NTK) access control metadata, and the Trusted Data Format (TDF) for binding assertion metadata with data resource(s).Those instance documents are deployed on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services to be used by client applications.Access control is based on attributes of the end-user and the instance data.The assessment included reviewing example IEPDs and performing test and demonstrations using OGC web services, such as Transactional Web Feature Services (WFS-T), Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs) and OGC Attribute Stores to process geographic feature with NIEM components and security tags.The Test and Demonstration included, but was not limited to feature retrieval and transactions.Recommendations to update these information exchanges were provided to reflect NIEM 3.0 architecture and security tags in a 'NIEM/IC Feature Processing API'.Results from this task helped provide a preliminary architecture for Geo4NIEM in Testbed 11, summarized in other OGC Testbed 11 Engineering Reports.This task also identified potential change requests to OGC WFS or other OGC Services for handling security information in a federated role-based access control environment.These changes may help the NIEM/IC transform into more agile and customer-centric frameworks driven by collaborative partnerships.This transformation is vital to confronting the security challenges of the future. Business ValueGeospatial information technologies are increasingly a foundation for supporting homeland security, law enforcement, emergency management, and public safety missions in the U.S.While these technologies rely upon much of the same data, they are typically developed in silos within a specific mission area.As a result, data duplication and data exchange delays occur.In addition, many Information Sharing Environment (ISE), Homeland Security (HLS) and Law Enforcement (LE) mission partners have developed stand-alone geospatial information systems (GIS) or Common Operating Picture (COP)/Situational Awareness (SA) applications to support their stakeholder communities during incidents and for daily operational support.While different missions, these GIS or COP/SA capabilities rely upon much of the same data or generate specific data during an event.The data are often OGC 15-047r3 vi