The US Army's Commercial Civil Affairs System

U.S. Army Civil Affairs (CA) forces are one of the primary resources a commander has to understand the complex and ever-changing civil components of the operational environment (OE). CA forces are trained, organized and equipped to plan, execute and assess the Joint Force Commander’s concept of civil-military operations. CA forces are essential elements in support of the Commander by virtue of their area and linguistic orientation, cultural awareness, training in military-to-host nation advisory activities and civilian professional skills that parallel common government functions. Data collected by CA, referred to as civil information, is relevant data relating to the areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people and events of the civil component of the OE. Civil information is used to provide a situational awareness for the supported commander. CA forces conduct civil reconnaissance to obtain civil information and require the ability to geo-reference their data. The Commercial Civil Affairs System-Army (CCAS-A) is an Esri ArcGIS Online (AGOL) solution tailored to the meet the unclassified civil reconnaissance requirements of the CA branch. The CCAS-A consists of 1) a field data collection application for non-personally identifiable information, 2) an online geospatial information system (GIS) hosted in Amazon Web Services, 3) an Esri developed “Open Data Harvester”, 4) an auto-generated gap analysis tool to assist with developing the Civil Information Collection Plan, 5) an auto-generated Area Study tool, 6) an automatic data feed to UNOCHA’s Humanitarian Data eXchange (HDX) and 7) an export routine which allows for the CCAS-A civil surveys to be shared across any analytical or visualization tool currently being used by units throughout the CA branch. It is a web accessible, app-enabled website that enables CA civil survey collection via personal electronic devices and laptops via the commercial internet. The intent of CCAS-A is to provide a repository for CA data and to share that unclassified data with Mission Partners. The CCAS-A uses civil surveys for data collection based on MILSTD-2525D taxonomy with entities primarily focused in the Infrastructure and Installation sectors. The system is fully customizable down to the tactical level, and will display civil surveys and other CA data across all Geographic Combatant Commands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow us on Social Media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/Esri Facebook: https://facebook.com/EsriGIS LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/esri Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/esrigram The Science of Where: http://www.esri.com