Corporate Profile
A legacy of innovation and industry leadership
At Image Matters we are pushing the frontiers of intelligent systems and advanced geospatial solutions. People with exceptional values are our greatest assets. We are fascinated and driven by a strong, clear vision of how to improve lives through advanced digital technologies. Image Matters prides itself on delivering the highest quality products and services available. We focus on excellence and continuous improvement. We are zealous about delivering consistent, high quality, competitively-priced products and services. We walk in the shoes of our clients and partners. We are committed to customer satisfaction. Image Matters is a privately held Limited Liability Corporation with its headquarters located in Ashburn, Virginia, and its Midwest operations office located in Bloomington, Indiana.
Founded by successful entrepreneurs
Image Matters’ was founded in 2001 by partners Harry Niedzwiadek (CEO), Janine Hussey (COO), and John Davidson (CDO). Kurt Buehler, the co-founder of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), became a partner and President in 2004. Partner Randy Gladish joined the company in 2010 to spearhead product development. Chris Haakon (former CEO of Autometric) and Larry Shand (co-founder of RadiantBlue Technologies) also joined as partners and Board members in 2010.
A proving-ground for budding entrepreneurs
As a firm that specializes in advanced technology, Image Matters has always drawn brilliant young entrepreneurs out of the college ranks who have their sights set on making a difference in the world. This has been very rewarding for us and for them. Image Matters has proven to be a great incubator for entrepreneurs. We call it “Image Matters Boot Camp”. Several such Image Matters veterans have gone on to play leading roles at firms like Reddit (co-founder), Apple (Siri development lead), Al Jazeera (director), and fast-rising IOT leader ElasticM2M (co-founder).
Our extensive innovation pedigree of advancing the state of the art in geospatial, Semantic-AI, data fusion, analytics, enterprise modernization, and cloud solutions
2000-2006
Lead architects and engineers of Open Geospatial Consortium’s (OGC) highly successful Interoperability Program (still in use today).
2000
Lead architects of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) “Big Idea Project”; NGA’s first service-oriented architecture.
2000
Co-author of OGC’s Geography Markup Language (GML) foundational geospatial data exchange standard.
2001-2002
First geospatial-semantic-mobile services platform; use of formal framework and ontology. Developed under Phase I/II SBIR for US Army.
2003
Co-authors and lead architects of the first Federal Geospatial Enterprise Architecture (GEA), at Department of Homeland Security.
2003
Developed NGA’s Geospatial Ontology Roadmap, which produced a geospatial ontology framework and roadmap that NGA used to develop their Geospatial Ontology development strategy.
2004
Started Geospatial-Semantics Working Group at OGC.
2004–2006
Executed NGA’s Problem Responsive Discovery and Retrieval Project, which pioneered integrated geospatial-semantics fusion. The project’s main goal was to develop geospatial-semantic technology to enable intelligence analysts to retrieve the right data depending on their context, problem definition, and current task.
2004
Lead architects of first Geospatial Interoperability Framework for FEMA MapMOD Program.
2004–2011
Architects/developers of userSmarts® open-source SaaS/PaaS.
2004–2006
Founding contributors / lead architects for OGC’s Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) specs and testbeds.
2005–2006
Co-authors of geospatial profile of Federal Enterprise Architecture, version 1.0.
2005–2007
Image Matters’ Automated Information Triage for Deep Geospatial-Intelligence Analysis (Information Triage) Project wins $1M NGA Innovation Award… as the most viable solution for Gen. Clapper’s “4V Challenge”; Development of pioneering “context-sensitive” techniques and algorithms for performing automated information triage for deep analysis, as well as ground-breaking research in knowledge-assisted structured analysis, and multi-modal analytics and reasoning.
2006–2008
Completed US Air Force’s Semantic Interoperability Roadmap and Contextual Semantic Interoperability Projects, which pioneered an integrated hybrid processing semantic-spatial-temporal fusion and reasoning solution for USAF Air Operations Centers
2006
Lead architect and author of geospatial profile of National Information Exchange Model (NIEM).
2006-present
Lead model experts for DoD’s Spatial Data Standard for Facilities, Infrastructure and Environment (SDSFIE).
2006–2012
First major geospatial analysis platform deployed in AWS Cloud, SLAMM-View. Sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Environmental Protection Agency.
2007–2008
Lead architects for OGC’s multi-sensor interoperability demonstration during “Empire Challenge 2008.”
2008–2010
Lead architects and developers of GeoEye’s first SaaS/PaaS Cloud platform (EyeQ) for commercial imagery dissemination and on-demand services.
2008–2012
DARPA Phase I & II SBIR Awards for “Semantic-based Exploitation of Social Networks”, including: development of SocialML (the first comprehensive ontology for all social media and activities; Pioneering techniques using open standards (OWL, RDF, SKOS, SPARQL) to facilitate integration and interoperability across heterogeneous, disparate data systems; Development of SmartLens® analytical services engine for performing knowledge-assisted filtering, fusion, analytics and reasoning.
2010
Led development of interoperability profiles for NOAA’s groundbreaking Integrated Ocean Observing System (unifying NOAA’s global constellation of disparate oceanic and atmospheric observation systems).
2011–2012
Lead architects of a new highly-scalable cloud platform for a leading commercial provider of web-based vehicle tracking and alerting services.
2011–2015
Lead architects of U.S. Army’s Geospatial Enterprise Architecture.
2011–present
Architects/developers of unique FactWeave® structured analysis platform for object-based intelligence.
2012–2013
DARPA XDATA – Effort to enhance large Linked-Data processing utilizing high-performance GPU graph processing.
2012–2013
DoD OSD Rapid Innovation Fund Award for Knowledge-Assisted Structured Analysis Tools; Pioneering Ontology-based approaches for Object-Based Production and Structured Analytics Platform.
2013–2014
Supported National Geographic in building its first worldwide streaming content services for the Cloud.
2013–2014
AFRL SBIR – Context-Sensitive Real-Time Mobile Alerts and Warnings, including development of ontological models for alerts and context, and “SmartLenses®” to exploit these models.
2013–2014
Under OGC Testbed 11, was the lead author for new OGC ontologies for Geospatial-Temporal, GeoSocial, Alerts, and Emergency and Disaster Management, and services, including Semantic Gazetteer and semantic mediation for disparate geospatial resources.
2013–present
Lead author of OGC’s GeoPackage Encoding Standard, for mobile application support; implementing this standard in Army applications. Leads the GeoPackage Standard Working Group for OGC.
2014–present
Selected by Department of Interior for the lead technical role in developing the next generation National Geospatial Platform (http://www.geoplatform.gov/), the single most important geospatial “big-data” initiative in the U.S. civilian government today. A modern SaaS-PaaS solution for geospatial resources on demand. Significant advancements in workflow automation. Pioneered use of ontologies for knowledge-based search, discovery, navigation, and recommendation services for cross-agency asset management, sharing, and collaboration.
2014–2015
Selected by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to tackle the #1 Challenge Area under the new Accelerating Map of the World (AMoW) initiative: developing and implementing a new Linked-Data platform to address the integration of object-based intelligence with foundation geospatial intelligence for Map-of-the-World. Addressed the integration of semantically-enabled object-based and activity-based intelligence with foundation geospatial intelligence; Achieved many innovations to assist analysts with “intelligent” recommendation services and semantically-enabled filtering, fusion and analytic-reasoning services, and to rapidly access and transform structured data and knowledge into suitable human-centered views; Innovations in shared awareness and collaboration.
2016–2017
Under OGC’s Testbed 12 and 13, led the design and development efforts to enhance and test GeoPackage for DOD and IC sponsors. Image Matters was the only provider of semantic-enabled gazetteer, registry, portrayal, and mediation services for the OGC community. Image Matters was the lead author for new ontologies and services for Semantic Registry, Semantic Mediation, and Semantic Portrayal.
2016–2017
Image Matters awarded a sole-source contract to provide advanced semantic web services to support the Multi-INT Knowledge Graph Pilot (MKG Pilot). This pioneering pilot is prototyped the use of Knowledge Graphs with Structured Observation Management (SOM) to support Object-Based Intelligence knowledge curation and analysis through the Cloud.
2017–2019
Pioneering use of knowledge-based techniques to streamline and automate Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (PED) operations. Completed Phase I /II SBIR for automating PED operations for 2D/3D/4D geospatial data. Features use of Ontology and semantic search, discovery and recommendation services. Also features Augmented Reality on mobile devices. Project results seeded Image Matters’ Cloud-based eXperience Reality® product line for mobile users.
2018–2019
Under OGC Testbed 14, Image Matters was the lead author for new ontologies for Aeronautical Info (FAA), and new application profiles for NGA’s NSG Enterprise Ontology (NEO). Also demonstrated advanced implementations of GeoPackage specification for enhanced situation awareness, featuring new draft portrayal standards.
2018–2020
Awarded DoD OSD Rapid Innovation Fund Project for Knowledge-Based Structures Fusion-Analytics and Object-Based Production. Features state-of-the-art use of semantics, semantic services, and ML-based Natural Language Processing. Proved viability of FactWeave data fusion and structured analytic approaches.
2019–2020
Built Department of Interior’s showcase Smart Bison prototype, which featured state-of-the-art Semantic-AI techniques for users to interrogate Department of Interior databases through digital assistants.
2019-present
Awarded Phase I /II SBIR for Next Generation Graph.
2020
Selected as Top 10 Geospatial Intelligence Solution Provider for 2020. Featured as Cover Article.
2020-present
Rapid modernization of US Corps of Engineers enterprise with state-of-the-art linked data and Cloud technology.
2021
Selected as Top e-Governance Solution Provider by govCIO Outlook