Building a Maritime Picture in the Era of Big Data: The Development of the Geospatial Communication Interface+

The compilation of information in support of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) remains an ongoing challenge for defence and security partners. Compounding the historic difficulties of large-scale picture compilation in support of MDA, there is now the challenge of ingesting large volumes of data into systems that were never designed to consume such volumes. The Geospatial Communications Interface Plus (GCI+) represents a redesign of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) information architecture to support MDA. Using predominately open source technologies, GCI+ has been shown to maintain pace with the velocity and volume of maritime data. Delivery of the data in a single aggregated stream also enhances monitoring and analysis capabilities of the information system.