Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence, Michael, and Dorian. BAE Systems’ Geospatial eXploitation Products™ (GXP®) technology has met them all. For the past two years, the company’s unique partnership with Team Rubicon – a veteran based non-profit organization that mobilizes veterans and provides the opportunity for them to continue their service through disaster relief – has helped keep responders, volunteers, and residents safer and more agile in the face of natural disasters and humanitarian crises.
The GXP team – part of BAE Systems’ C4ISR Systems business area – creates industry-leading geospatial intelligence applications that leverage satellite and aerial imagery, along with additional layers of data, to allow for informed, timely decision making. Originally developed for military and security applications, the technology is a natural fit for disaster response.
“Partnering with Team Rubicon has given us a meaningful chance to pivot and further evolve our GXP technology,” said Damon Brady, senior director of product development at BAE Systems. “Response coordination in these situations is complex and continuously evolving. Responders operate in hard-to-reach areas while actively managing resource shortages. They don’t always have the luxury of access to reliable communications and current information, so they have to be willing to adapt. Our technology can help them do that.”
William Porter, senior manager of operations support at Team Rubicon, agrees. He says that BAE Systems’ transparency, domain expertise, and willingness to hone the GXP technology to meet his team’s needs has been critical to its success. Porter adds that the most significant benefit has been the ability to capture real-time inputs from people on the ground via the mobile application,
GXP OnScene.
Following Hurricane Michael in October 2018, Team Rubicon volunteers uploaded more than 400 ground photos and videos to the app. These live inputs, coupled with existing data sets, helped identify optimal relief distribution points, impassible roads, flooded areas, and more.
“The data we receive helps us target our teams, so we can get them to locations where they will make the biggest impact as quickly as possible,” said Porter. “BAE Systems’ technology allows us to retrieve this data faster than other non-governmental organizations and first responders, so we can rapidly respond and deploy.”
Team Rubicon is beginning to leverage BAE Systems’ GXP technology to expand its reach and explore mitigation efforts for ongoing relief application beyond just hurricanes. From diverting traffic on the flooded streets of New Orleans, to taking measurements to help repair damaged roofs on homes in Puerto Rico – the riders on the storm are making a difference where it counts.