1.3. OBJECTIVE - RISK ASSESSMENTS USING GIS TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATING NATIONAL SECURITY SYSTEMS DATA The spatial data needed for risk assessment lend themselves naturally to the data management system called GIS (Geographic Information System). In this system the spatial data and their attributes coexist in a database that allows spatial analysis and display of “what if” scenarios, to be effectively and quickly performed. GIS is a promising technology that has had success in engineering, disaster planning, city management, and other disciplines. More accurate and higher fidelity spatial data, such as that provided by national security imaging systems, reduces some of the uncertainty in the risk assessment. The national security systems of Russia and the United States have been used for more than three decades to monitor and assess each other’s militaries, economies, and infrastructures. In particular, the high-spatial-resolution imaging systems can add unique data for assessing a wide range of environmental issues. For this reason, in 1995 the United States declassified and made available to the public more than 800,000 images acquired by its intelligence imaging satellites between 1960 and 1972. This imagery is a permanent record of environmental conditions in large parts of the world and predates Landsat, the first civilian satellite imaging system, by 12 years. Under the auspices of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, special agreements have been reached by the United States and Russia to derive unclassified environmental information products from currently classified NSS imagery and to share these data with the EWG subgroups. In the specific case of the Oil and Gas Subgroup, the unclassified derived products of oil development activities are incorporated into a GIS to form the database from which risk assessments can be produced.
