Government Computer News
Border Patrol integrates GIS into its electronic barricade
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Image: Rick Steele
ISIS eventually will integrate geospatial data with information from other intelligence databases to help patrol officers secure the borders, the Border Patrol’s Michael Gambale says.
The patrol already uses several commercial GIS applications. But now the Border Patrol, an agency of the Homeland Security Department’s Customs and Border Protection division, within the Border and Transportation Security directorate, seeks to weave its GIS and other perimeter systems into a seamless electronic web.
The patrol is upgrading its existing electronic systems at the border via an emerging project known as the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System, sometimes referred to as the America’s Shield Initiative.
“ASI will have a major geospatial component,” said ISIS program manager Michael J. Gambale, an assistant chief in the Border Patrol. “We’re working with the CIO’s shop on geospatial technology.”
All of the patrol’s 20 sectors around the country now are involved in collecting geospatial information or have varying degrees of GIS capability, Gambale said. The agency uses applications such as ArcView from ESRI of Redlands, Calif., and MapInfo Professional from MapInfo Corp. of Troy, N.Y.
ISIS eventually will integrate the geospatial information with information from other intelligence databases to help patrol officers secure the borders, Gambale said.
The technology upgrades will be welcome, said Rich Pierce, a senior agent in the Tampa, Fla., Border Patrol station and executive vice president of the National Border Patrol Council. The council, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Government Employees, represents about 10,000 nonsupervisory Border Patrol agents.
“When I go to work, I am running a 450-MHz PC,” Pierce said. “It doesn’t want to run the programs we use to process aliens and run report checks. Many of the sensors along the border are Vietnam War-era stuff that has needed to be changed out for a long time.”
Pierce said patrol agents have been complaining about the lack of equipment. “If they tell us they are going to upgrade the computers and sensors, that is what we need,” he said. “A lot of the sensors are set off by animals and trains. You get a lot of false positives.”
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