Data management for military data

You can work with National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) data formats in ArcGIS, including:

ArcGIS capabilities that simplify your work with these data formats include the following:

Descriptions of NGA data formats

Common military data formats include RPF, DTED, and NITF. More recently, NGA developed the HRE data format. RPF data can be categorized into two further types: CADRG/ECRG and CIB rasters. CADRG/ECRG rasters are georeferenced scanned images of NGA hardcopy products and are used as basemaps for other GIS layers. CIB rasters are panchromatic (black and white) imagery in either 1-, 5-, or 10-meter resolution and are also used as basemaps.

DTED rasters are elevation rasters of three resolution levels: Level 0 at 30 arc-seconds (approximately 1,000 meters), Level 1 at 3 arc-seconds (approximately 100 meters), and Level 2 at 1 arc-second (approximately 30 meters). Each DTED dataset covers an area of 1 degree of longitude by 1 degree of latitude.

NITF imagery is used for intelligence analysis. The NITF standard allows for storage of multiple images within a single NITF file. NITF files can also include other types of information, such as graphics and text.

HRE data replaces the current non-standard High Resolution Terrain Elevation/Information (HRTE/HRTI) products and also replaces the non-standard DTED level 3 thru 6 products.

RPF (CADRG/ECRG and CIB), DTED, and NITF have published specifications that define the format and structure of the data. The following table lists the format and related specification documents:

Related Topics

8/7/2012