Darryl Murdock, PhD.

Bio: Following graduation from West Point, Dr. Murdock started his career as a U.S. Army Aviation Officer. He co-founded Highland Geographic, a GIS and remote sensing applications development company. Dr. Murdock went on to operate as Project Manager and Scientist at Eastman Kodak. He also worked as an Account Manager at Esri managing imagery-related geospatial software programs, business development, and client management within the Intelligence Community. Before joining USGIF, he was Senior Director of Business Development & Research at TransVoyant.

Dr. Murdock, for the past several years, served as a member of the USGIF Academic Advisory Board as well as a co-chair of USGIF’s Tradecraft and Professional Development Committee. He is a member of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and he possesses an active FAA commercial pilot license. Murdock has written numerous publications on commercial airborne and satellite-based active imaging, passive sensors and sound mapping science concepts, including “Airborne DIAL (Differential Absorption LiDAR) for broad area hazardous liquid leak detection.” Murdock earned his B.S. in Human Factors from the United States Military Academy and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Resources Engineering from SUNY ESF.

A Different Way of Thinking About Geospatial Certifications

Geospatial Intelligence, or GEOINT, has been typically narrowly associated with secret government-sponsored exploitation of geographic information for national security or at the advancement and/or protection of national interests. Today,nothing could be further from reality - GEOINT is a ubiquitous concept in use by businesses and governments around the world. There is a broader definition that resides at the core of GEOINT, which is emerging as a powerful and widely accepted idea; that spatial-temporal information plays an important role in guiding virtually all organizational strategies and tactics. Such overt recognition is taking place globally in industry and academia and is increasingly becoming simply an integral part of “business intelligence”.

The overwhelming majority of existing certifications and credentials seek to primarily identify skills-related competencies within narrow domains. The nature of geospatial intelligence, given a guiding definition that is accepted globally, instead requires the identification of fundamental knowledge, skills, and abilities across a much broader context of geospatially-related activities; geovisualization, data management, remote sensing, geospatial positioning, analytic techniques, imagery analysis, critical thinking and problem solving are but a few examples of GEOINT competencies explicitly outlined in the published EBK (http://usgif.org/education/geoint_EBK).

The U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) is working to facilitate exposure of the GEOINT Essential Body of Knowledge (EBK), identify and discuss current activities associated with geospatial intelligence while promoting a broader, standardized, transportable, and transparent system of credentialing, including a globally recognized and 3rd party accredited Universal GEOINT Professional Certification Program. Related accomplishments and activities will be presented followed by an open discussion.

Essential Body of Knowledge, GEOINT, USGIF