Mapping Agency Wants to ID Locations by Sound
Through the newly unveiled Soundscapes Competition, the agency will distribute up to eight awards, including a $27,000 top prize, for innovative, novel means to identify, analyze and model “sound and acoustic scene indicators” used to decipher the origination of recordings in one of eight cities.
“This is the first time NGA has sponsored a competition exploring the potential for using non-speech sound data to narrow in on the place where video or audio recordings were made,” the agency’s Research Image and Video Pod Lead Michelle Brennan told Nextgov over email Thursday.
She explained that NGA analysts obtain a great deal of expertise in leveraging data to geolocate activities, patterns, behaviors and features that are critically important to global intelligence and national security. “Over time, NGA has received more requests to geolocate the source of audio and video recordings, yet fewer of the recordings include any clear visual geographic features,” she noted, adding that to confront the problem, the agency’s research hones in “on other, non-visual information contained in the media,” such as background sounds that could support geo-inferencing. Scientists within the organization recently conducted what Brennan called “an exhaustive literature study” to spot new assets that can help link non-speech sound to geolocating capabilities.
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