Spatial Information Technologies in Critical Infrastructure Protection

Summary
This document prepared by the National Consortia for Remote Sensing in Transportation(NCRST), addresses the necessity of remote sensing technologies in protecting critical transportation infrastructure. The document discuss the varying concepts on defining critical infrastructure, threats to the infrastructure, protection of infrastructure and disaster management needs. The document then discusses the critical role of remote sensing technologies. While they have become a vital tool in critical infrastructure protection, the systems are limited by the users and their status.

Strengths
Remote sensing provides low cost, multi-purpose, wide area “at-a-distance” data. That can assist in modeling, identification of critical infrastructure. It can also provide powerful visualization to assist when shaping policy.

limitations
While remote sensing data is useful, it may be unusable due to timeliness and expertise required to convert data. Some sensing may also be limited by its sensitive nature, limiting its use. Additional concerns stem from the interoperability of data sets and systems.

Source:http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/ncrst/research/cip/CIPAgenda.pdf