A Geospatial Decision Support System Toolkit

We propose to build and commercialize a working prototype Geospatial Decision Support Toolkit (GeoKit). GeoKit will enable scientists, agencies, and stakeholders to create and deploy their own web based applications containing maps, forms, algorithms, and a rich set of functionality related to visualization, analysis, reporting, querying, and publication of geospatial data and information. GeoKit is intended for customers who are experts in a particular area or problem; have in mind a set of users who will use their site to address a specific problem; have in mind a particular workflow that they want the users to perform and datasets they want to utilize; do not necessarily know or want to know about geospatial data types, formats, operations, and structure; and do not necessarily know or want to know how to construct a web-based application. The mission of GeoKit is to reduce and eventually remove technical barriers that limit direct stakeholder control over the creation and management of geospatially enabled web applications. AGS has worked on numerous geospatial web based applications and services, and continues to have active projects in this area. Our Phase II GeoKit proposal is to create the technological foundation for the distributed "open source DST development framework" that NASA envisions as described in the 2015 Subtopic S5.02 SBIR solicitation.

The proposed innovation (GeoKit) will be especially applicable in service of NASA needs and objectives. First, NASA scientists involved in building decision support tools on top of data dissemination activities would be primary potential customers. Second, future proposal applicants working in areas of research, or applications development could be encouraged to make their data and applications available using NASA's GeoKit application. Applied Geosolutions could partner with or be contracted to develop enhancements or interfaces to new data types, if needed.

Non-NASA applications for GeoKit will reach broadly into a number of different stakeholder communities. In the area of environmental resource management, tools could be constructed that make the job of monitoring the state of the agro-ecosystems, forests, or aquatic habitats streamlined and tailored to the needs of the specific agency or regional office. Researchers in academia and in commercial R&D could have a greater access to NASA data combined with data from other sources, with custom rule-based algorithms and visualization tools.

This is a mature technology (TRL 8) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.