Enhancing safeguards analysts' geospatial usage.

Abstract

This report is the final summation of Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project #151316, -Open Source Information Verification‖ (OSIV) which ran from FY11 through FY12. The aim of OSIV was to research, develop, and evaluate relevant geospatial analysis capabilities that address open-source information needs for international safeguards.OSIV generated a number of technical, programmatic, and cultural advances, detailed in this report. There were new methodological insights and research that resulted in ten publications and presentations; this report concludes with an abstract-annotated listing of all materials. OSIV generated a substantial prototype, GeoSafeguards, that not only achieved its intended goal of testing our hypothesis, but which also served as a vehicle for customer education and program development. OSIV, as intended, has catalyzed future work in this domain; by the end of two years, it has already brought considerable attention to this work both domestically and with our international partners. Finally, the OSIV project knit together previously disparate research staff and user expertise in a fashion that not only addressed our immediate research goals, which has created cross-understanding, in service of Sandia's national security responsibilities in safeguards and nonproliferation.

Data, Detection, and the Redistribution of the Sensible in International Law

“…Advanced satellite imaging technology has been an "area of development" in IAEA safeguards work since the mid-1990s. 161 Since that period, the IAEA has used analysis of satellite imagery to assist in its evaluation of site declarations and reports submitted by state parties, in its detection and assessment of undeclared nuclear facilities, and in preparing for (or sometimes prompting the initiation of) safeguards inspections or related visits. 162 Except to the extent that satellite image data are included in information provided by NPT states parties to the IAEA, the data in question are sourced from commercial satellites.…”