An hour with U.S. Geographer Lee Schwartz

when you think of geography you probably think of memorizing place names and lines on a map but in fact they feel their geography is far more complicated than most of us realize today and kbr presents the official geographer of the united states police force who knew we even had an assistant editor for the united states i'm kay mcentire and today we'll find out why us geographer be schwartz spoke at the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas on march first two thousand eleven where he was interviewed by institute director bill lacy at a few one disclaimer right upfront whatley says tonight will be his opinions and his opinions on the do not represent the policy the slave fort lee toss they got hooked on geography and the better education about your personal background well i think the earliest example don't argues would probably when i plan a trip out west with my father on a living room floor where we were trying to figure out what national parks

to go to and we had alice does in maps and and the good fortune of having a month of their family and then in a first turn the field and then when i went to college actually was interested in in people more than one and physical geography and i i got excited by a course in coal to anthropology or be an anthropologist for my university and have an anthropology major are coming under the the influence of law professor who was second study many of the same things about people and places as john major was one of these accidental works where i had to choose a major after fifty two years in college and that's our became a jar of major ice or it seems as if it had had up straight track to get to where i am now major jarvis an undergraduate at the

vast majority of the way he's a huge rv of torture we work for the auto jobs for i like to say that i had are all plotted out from that time it was oh my lou flowed my father looking at maps but more than anything to the fact that our graduation college in the mid seventies and there was a recession and looked a lot better going to grad school and then waiting tables to get what is what is your role what does the geography united states in his office well as it's evolved over the years and you expected to twelve years with that with a changing world map and change innovation concussions officially by law the only real responsibility of the jar of her is today issued guidance on on international boundaries and how they are betrayed on or us government maps and that's that's the limit of my authority which actually can be kind of fun because i've found that if you were sitting on a table without with a bunch of two and three star generals

who are trying to change their maps to show things that might be more advantageous for them in theater and i get the i get the last word that i say no sir home this without have to go in is that shulman that are doing that now my father doesn't go beyond the wait for trade we do share the four names committee of the board of geographic names which has the same oversight over over names of teachers and that there's more complicated more problematic than you and you imagine just consider the difference between calling the persian gulf the persian gulf or the arabian gulf for instance and there are literally hundreds of teachers which are a problematic between various different countries but my when dior has evolved over the years is that you've also primarily about making operation where we reject redrawing the boundaries after the two world wars with states about is

changing so frequently in the colonization to actually moving into maritime boundaries where the longer season and how our fisheries in an economic way to meet in the oceans were determined two more have an office that does analysis in the office actually sits in the intelligence research group of border state has for the past thirty five years and as a state on his newfound focusing more almost exclusively on regions and countries and started to work more on what we call font to issues of the issues that cross boundaries anecdote neatly fit into any one region one country those issues came under the authority of your future arthur and global issues under the vote in terms of the political oversight we have those issues so a lot of the issue that we call smart power soft power issues as a secretary's they prefer significantly

such as refugees human rights early warning international organizations there's violence that were developed about the climate change worse security those global issues analytically come within my office psaropoulos is divided about fifty fifty in terms of half the officers technical work on mapping an image now says about half the office does traditional objective analysis in order to inform our policy makers and your career path take you to the office of the dr brennan exactly how the new book the geographer of the united states well mike let's talk about teaching and i was teaching down an unwashed in dc my first job out of college years i had you know my phd at eye toward the school of international service at american university which didn't have hr department and we start having monthly meetings among local charter that were teaching at various different universities in dc

and the courage our krypton george temple who was also a us soviet specialist and my background was in the former soviet union sort of all our people are trained in the cold war hero on those issues and after about three four years working in washington getting getting course involve the work was being done at the office of a chartered jet in front of some colleagues there an opening came up at the state department for someone who understood the non russian years the former soviet union that had been an area that i specialize in the jabaliya however was not in the office and jogger was in the office of regional now sister works on russia and four mystery in i was the prison that they wanted to hire for that job but i insisted that affecting the state department i would go nowhere else on the new junk city made that job actually sit in the office and jumper you sing on the breakup of the former soviet arm i also dabbled in eastern europe and soon after german state department the war broke

out the balkans and by virtue of having vacation on the mission coast number of times i was against it or criteria balkans expert and i was drawn into the fray of a humanitarian emergency response and and i gradually changed the focus on the former soviet union a regional focus to working much more on crisis response emergency response humanitarian affairs refugee fairs and that their growth growth industry for the past twenty years that we were ever on my hat howard became a janitor i recommend use this strategy to anybody my predecessor the woody moore my dear friends actually died of brain cancer five years ago and after he was that you know we need to take his place it follows a deputy and out and that's how actually came into the position you know reference assistant a minute or so ago about the balkans talk a little bit about joe rolls various roles raucous has played in a situation of genocide like and r for most of

them well we're an intelligence research bureau and a lot of the work that the people that here you were are tracking bad guys and i knew the military maneuvers and doing da da da analysis of of the way on these are moving in and their orders were intercepted the cheaters different commanders an office you need to find out to finish i think in order to do that because there are people out of those types of expertise and we need to figure out a way to these people were trained warren geographic jewels analysis i think the first real breakthrough in the work we did in the balkans was when mass graves began to be identified from satellite imagery and there were mass grave identified in satellite imagery but the imagery would declassify used in public press briefings for our public diplomacy campaign is and it's very

interesting spill itself and how you know you find these miscreants most people are under the impression from what in some popular television shows that yet satellites above that new pickup decomposing bodies with the ground penetrating keep fixing radar phone from three thousand feet and then that didn't work that way where he used to pick up easy pickup of the signatures of the way things are moving that then leaves the investigator to search for the possibility of a brave sophie see large machinery for instance that it's easy to pick up by imagery and then you start looking for disturbed ground and mass graves we then develop a methodology where we look at the time of the graves with the areas of of military control to try to tie the grave sites into the commanding control of areas in order to i'll try to bring about some eventual accountability for commanders that were in charge of

units and either perpetrated genocide or court the geneva conventions have a genocide laws are written could've stopped the genocide from occurring and soon thereafter that secretary of state after the dayton peace agreement they may be they they created the international criminal tribunal for former yugoslavia and rwanda and my office became the executive agent for intelligence sharing with the tribunal's on all issues related to genocide him for rwanda and that's why we started a very comprehensive systematic evaluation of the type of evidence we might find in united states circles it was a unique relationship at the time which is gold will seventy agreement where we actually worked with the investigators for the tribunal's who asked us if we had information on a certain psi certain area and we will provide that information at the secret level to clear investigators working at our

embassy in the hague for the purposes only because then they would have to go out and get their own evidence of this information could be used in court now because it was classified because you'll be tainted because of being provided by the us got a relationship work very well we came to actual court cases however we found that napping the changing sides of these mass graves over time actually held up much more strongly in court proceedings then just the satellite images of these mass graves that probably most of you familiar with its very visceral win the seat register good likelihood of all of the hundreds of bodies being thrown into ditches and then covered up but as evidence reportedly through initially would surely that grouse a circus show who did it doesn't necessarily sure precisely what we've done or more compelling for court cases this with lawyers told us was only icy map he's raised over over time and space for a pattern our militaries were moving in certain places

they're only going towards one ethnic group and they were boarding other villages and the mass graves could soon be associated with movies and military groups and yet his show and i snap into a court proceeding and i was compelling and so that's our first involvement with a lot more in kosovo because we have a lot of experience in because we have the luxury of knowing that the nato airstrikes are going to allow us the time to work for information together that's where we start applying that technology have thought of destroyed and damaged villages where we literally had every house marked as destroyed damaged and what the ethnic composition those villages were we even tied into refugee resettlement process is where we were taught at target refugees to move back to villages that were least less damage because we have no access to their advantage well will we boldly and forcefully the refugees didn't listen to or planned when the border opening they came in and impeded that's their constituents what is what

roles the euro has played in terms of supporting negotiations on climate change well that's an interesting one because even though director of national intelligence has deemed that climate change is an intelligence community issue and again my office is in this point intelligence community the most the work we do compare to the other offices in my bureau is our classified it this is work that really needs to be done mostly by climate skeptics and and and we recognize that and the work that we primarily due to my office is we support the negotiators were negotiating with various different governments to try to figure out what the positions of the government would be going into negotiations another thing we're working on a theater at sea level is to

try to come up with some ideas for a baseline of measuring half greenhouse gas emissions for inequality or comes into play because there's a lot of science that's applied to different analysis of greenhouse gas emissions be it changes in and biomass or coombe analysis of atmosphere and to get countries to agree on a baseline it really doesn't matter where change detection techniques you come up that you apply so our challenge really has been working with with other other governments to support a war argument of other governments to try to get some based on agreements in place so that science and universal size can then be applied to a baseline so that whatever's agreed upon to be monitored consistently with one technique over the world and alongside mindset about more of an environmental issue talk a little bit about how you've been involved in global

partnership for sustainable development specifically in the summer of two thousand and eight i lead at nine country fifteen person to to a mission in africa as part of the size of our new secretary of state program called global bugs are emerging science and technology these dogs we're supposed to identify the state of various different sizes in any given country or region identify young scientists to work with an inch wide our leverage be the academic professional private relationships or built up by these thoughts into supporting that the continuation of science into partnerships to us and whatever country we're revisiting arm the previous programs that took place on the science

advisor cover things such as nanotechnology biofuels a metal engineering and one we had a gap in the size of our geographic at the state department they asked me if i would if i were to fill the gap with the global dialogue promoted sides technology and do something and john they also want to do something in africa because at work in africa and so i'd read two of the program a recall geo spatial sciences for sustainable development africa we visited a number of countries in the effort was to identify potential partnerships so that this new bible over which include academics and yellows professional musician us organizations and the light could then once this three week mission public office and did go back and universities go back to their primaries issues and the activities and floors well if i must say you know modestly that in my opponent was so

so effective that'll through african easterly for into the guest as if it was some sort of odd and institutional program that had a budget and our staff and read that a fire opportunities for working working closely together so much so that i couldn't kill it and instead i've been fostering it for the past few years we're now really does have a life that we have all read set up through the state department and the association american john rivers too an angelic in africa making use of free imagery provided by the national do special intelligence agency has a hook to get your scientists working on sustainable development nations with the idea being that you as a government canola is a lonely position potentially place like africa of trying to go out and ingest or the information that is out there that will only be successful if we develop partnerships will be successful if we foster the networks are already in place with some continuity as opposed to a lot of the programs in the past

which have been one off the programs that quick it can lead to the proven technology or or pay lip service to to provide for assistance and so the idea was that for a really build sustainability into a lot of these projects we need to find the eu the islands of continuity which tend to big universities support them with wings when universities no states bring in professional activities we're not a cost associated with this at harvard were reportedly private organizations and some of the foundations like google earth and rockefeller microsoft i think a real potential to see succeed some of the touches that are working in but to be a new prototype for the type of partnerships that the us government is trying to try to foster where we let the people matt themselves if you well as opposed to try to map most will give them the tools and technologies to do that but our roles as your office played

in assisting after various natural disasters well our our bread and butter has always been what we call complex emergencies which usually involve military involvement un peacekeeping troops refugees we do a lot of work to play with united nations with ngos in terms of trying to figure out the logistics in the strategic options for a complex emergency which involved not only bringing in and food shelter are getting belligerent to sit at the table and negotiate on terms of cease fires are trying to figure out where siege populations are how to get food jobs to them and and there are though those are all whole panoply of issues that they're keep as busy that natural disasters are a little bit trickier because it hard to plan for the artist therefore it we seem to come a weekend or a holiday

ended and it involves surgeon with lots of different government agencies and where my office as a typical the low hanging fruit in terms of the role that we have is we have been sharing commercial satellite imagery with the united nations and foreign governments with and you know those that are deployed out to the fields so that they will have the ability to do analysis of there is a natural disasters that we cannot see from where i'll still be tricky because a lot of times you have to be careful you know wheezing effort to double or triple purchasing imagery or by sometimes within the analysis herself and us government like after the tsunami here where we can record time in forty eight hours produced a beautiful imagery based map of both the entire coast obama actually that showed that or seventy two bridges well and we pass it out in the field and their response was golf course or bridges are out where you think happens in the tsunami

and so you know so it's important also to have the ground truth we don't work well leave where we've fought in getting away from that is as little bit but what we've taken on classified data from unexploded ordnance that slanted light in southern lebanon and we've drawn concentric circles foreign leaders around that ordinance that because within a very rich agricultural area and we get the analysis of that showed that forty percent of that land was taken out of an order to have a huge impact on the agricultural economy of southern lebanon until again doing a little bit of that of checking around and some ground truth ing without that what usually happens numbers like that is take police tape and draw make circles around him and wondered if they pick it up in the pollen off somewhere and if on their land they may lose a landmark hour ago so it was only so much you can do from

from imagery without make sure we said that the ground troops from below to confront one of things it strikes me as were to sit here talking as as i prefer from nicest a huge range of issues that europe offices involved and now is that animal reacted basis to various requests within the state department and the us government already jazz canon normally create a certain number of geographical products that are just kind of like standardized well i'd say both week we try to produce standard products were templates that we can we can develop politically or visual analytics where we can where we can have at a map and a graphic and times here even the chronology and havel hyperlink took to various different sources via the web and and the goal is to be able to manage ten or fifteen emergencies ongoing basis the ones that we can and probably most people who hear that

identifies as most likely to occur or clark american sees potential emergencies which i do a pretty good job of anticipating what the needs of applause so in a sense we we plant i in a sense we reacted because we we there's always the unanticipated events like what's happening in northern africa right now but i think if we're doing our job best it's because we are co located with the state public policymakers are people my office reading the sisters' secretaries for the refugee purely human rights hero the environment bureau every morning we know what their priorities are we know with their schedule of meetings with foreign dignitaries or wino or caucuses are coming up so we should be able to anticipate what the needs are so that when we are tasked with something we haven't percent or so we we we never to be prepared for the unexpected but oh well i think that we usually pre prepare for

a united percent of what's going on with the big question was how large is your staff describe various roles a good question step right now is i think at its highest since world war two is it's got two forty forty five people at any given time interesting enough it's staffed largely without joan rivers i'm trying to change the professional profile the staff and hire more professional jobber first or environmental science scientists were public health specialists and try to move the profile of the office from the traditional for affairs research analyst to one with more technical background and a degree and degrees the office also has a number of cartographers and imagery analysts have their own special training some of them actually do have geography degrees some of them don't some of them actually a graphic arts degree that result in the best photographer had a background as a graphic artist makes sense if

you think about it to me now that so much is genetic information systems in full digital i think his thoughts that some with a fine oh i hadn't really are sensitive to produce the past week also have a number of contractors we hire to leave people who do our own technical work it work somewhere geographic information systems and a day's work and we have a number of officers do now oh i think a preferred location for lots of people come from outside agencies and what have a liaison with the state department we had a senior scientists from the us geological survey we have the senior liaison national geo spatial intelligence at see we've civil affairs and defense department liaison there we have a number of us get the people in the office i think because we offer the opportunity to work across the whole scope of global issues and not be tied to a specific region is very attractive place for people to come from other government agencies to get a sample of

what the state department does are of course the whole range of issues we also make very good use of science carlos was again our i don't pretend to have the scientific expertise resident the office so right now we have to aaa asked fellows my office so city america says hisham advancement of science and one jefferson sign solar dobson was my office that i recorded my science guy a lot of the scientific issues as well and one party officers should mention that deserves i think special note because a bit to be proud of it is is our humanitarian mission and we created here about about ten years ago prior to the call from the nine eleven commission that the intelligence community needs we're more an unclassified there is an breakout stove piped between different agencies and that information was was created and staffed holy by the kelly's from different agencies working largely unclassified environment so that we

foster our contacts with the witty and your worldview and world the academic world and i think that's a mile that's been adopted elsewhere by natalie give reporter the intelligence community but the combatant commands well we realized again getting back to earlier point about leveraging networks that we do much better off if we can figure out how to we're in the open source for classic art world levinson that works that are out there are existing through technology as opposed to when war breaks out remember this particular is an instance which enjoyed and abkhazia getting on a phone and study today try to find the positive specialist that could come into the state party and helped us a lot it's it's it was unique model is being replicated and and that focuses on visual analytics more than the traditional written a memo warning state cable form i know you and a job like that you don't have an average day you can describe that tell us what things

might happen on one of their normal basic deal well it's probably easier to let people work for free but the first thing we tend to the morning we have a number of people come in at at all dark hundred and go through all the intelligence information from the night before and prepare briefing packets for all the senior policymakers in the area that work where theyre their offices at eight o'clock in the morning i'll buy a thirty there will meet with secretary of state senator has built her senior staff she casts out all the assistant secretaries by ten o'clock hour meeting with weis as a secretary and a task is it of come from our seven fourth consecutive that the secretary gets filtered out through our office so in the morning they've ingested a whole lot of that over the night before reaching out to customers and have received that by ten o'clock or more tumors in terms of specific tasks of the most recent work with and we've been

managing his years on libya to try to figure out where united way the state department might be able to actually just came from from higher up but where we get with every we don't have much of a presence and i never have much of a president presidents what ideas would bite we have what strategies we come up with to make inroads into the civil society that was burgeoning and in libya and one idea that offer was to make use of the same type of crisis map or community that existed in haiti that officer very close ties with rick is a community of young self starting mobile phone enabled that work or jill levenson events and and setting than two to two headquarters or elsewhere that can create maps of unfolding events or social networking and texts as well anything you can locate and time and space and that we have the

ability to i think false indigo those same types of communities that are developing in libya and rather than that it happened and just come out tonight the whole series of tweets which are very difficult to move and allies a systematic way it might be a good idea to try to try to manage what we're looking for and design projects that will fill in gaps from from a community that you really have no control over what should be able to figure out a way to ingest the information is coming out there if we understand ahead of time work that's a minute was there anything that your office often in the middle east on the last few months of the vindicated all of the unrest in and all the pro democracy movement that we've seen just in the last month but now now i was originally this is i think i think josh isn't

wealth is just i think you predicted the self immolation in tunisia only a day before happened and i did it i think we were even now to try to figure out the relationship between food prices and instability and even that is a weak male had a huge interest in the media my office just as we and there are people from agriculture and i'm from i'm from the cia you as an idea and people all over the board in terms of what they hear what the most important thing to pay attention to is it the fact that there are high prices for a long period of time and then the system more vulnerable is that this fight is going to create a problem in a particular country whereby not another country is a country that have a burgeoning middle class as opposed to their territorial be more susceptible to food shortages because of because of our relative deprivation it at the end of the day i think we will agree that the real tricky thing to try to figure out is not the relationship between food prices and insecurity but try to figure out

the relationship between gen cody and the trigger event that might use an unpredictable that can't be factored into a former word algorithm but very often by looking at popular press and political rhetoric you can see relationship between the activities are going on the society and the more the work of the food price index is in the purchasing power and forty years ago when he threw out a way to merge those two two worlds i think very many ways geography john rivers are figuring out how to make a link between between structure databases which are due reference database so you to work with things are kidnapped and on structured and structured day whereas it may not be above the mat over place in time but you can make linkages beach in those types of information the types of information you can so know your view is one of things that anybody's ever spent much time in washington understand his

importance of the report in terms of conveying information that your transom very unexciting step in your office to try to do more dramatic and more compelling way talk a little bit about that well i talked to the first point about the academic memo and it's a very difficult call trip to try to change the fact that the rig nemo still rules the i think we have the vendors coming into my office talking different types of software whether it's new mapping software or or or this les software or analytical software and then they'll come in my office and now they'll have the latest and greatest information of course i was working off a database from san diego as opposed to chat where we don't have an idea and and that the display something you know don't take out their their now snow and put something up on the screen and in the sink and all you have to do you click here and then you click beer i say

stop that you've lost my customer would you would with your second cleric so people still in the high seas the highest level decision makers the state department would buy target audience i don't have the time to even or the inclination to get to get on the web to fiddle around with with wit with databases they want a single page and it's usually a single written page tell the picture you to know that i am for victory that that on a map is worth a thousand words and and the way they are the more visually compelling we can make that gap is a challenge that that really stays have to put you're the camp a lot of information a lot of people who are out right a certain level wipers much information about his possible because as rich context you can really understand it well again to lose your audience if you put if you put too much information and that that sort of a lot with what we like to call a brutal alix that's

one side of the picture in terms of production and the other side where we're trying very hard to get our foreign service officers in usa the officers out in the field to change the way they collect the information i think a good example of this is is i feel for years now as well as primarily primarily an analyst i would read cables are coming from various different posts say in africa both by us at by the state department which were praised for the beautiful rich context of their writing and and the varieties long descriptive cables of a visit to the market and the couple about the various to force is in the market and an end in different places that were involved and yet as an alice trying to look for month to month trying to compare what was going on it was apparently comparing apples oranges because was no there was no systematic way of putting this information and any type of structure data they're allowing you know some our

working with with some of the us state department cable messaging innovators tried a gift capacity to to the foreign service officers and feel the borders to have databases that linked with the information that they're collecting be a political information economic information security information that that anytime a bright reverend memo have a database will allow you to map that information and ensure applying for other people in headquarter elsewhere to do to do the analysis and leila fall question tonight for you is that you've got a bunch of geography students in the audience tonight and they're all thinking about i'm going to graduate in one year or two years or three years in go off into the world and trying to find a job what are the job possibilities out there and what advice would you give to them while they're still in school to improve their marketability or to improve the skills that they'll take out the workplace well i think they're

hearing the jobs report that they probably getting divorced and their faculty advisors that i can get them in terms of the skill sets that they need but where i would advise them to do in terms of a half tons of marketing themselves in terms of looking for jobs is is that the humble so dirty with the data first and then i think i've seen a lot of people who come out of college with with a jar of a degree are going to or coming of grudges cooler jug degree and and have high hopes of getting hired into a position where they can use that to be right away and i've invited many these tunes to pick the organization mr work in and pick apart the world i'm a warlock in or something you're passionate about working in an unconvinced that charters because they're the smartest people the world well i thought in your position there and so they'll

get a job as a as a secretary has as somebody writing a press reports that the hall and once you get into an organization and they they find out how many different things you can do what a multifaceted approach is to research analysis you bring because of your training napping skills your understanding of different peoples and cultures i think you will rise in any organization so that's a rather general approached by a lot of companies as eli young jobbers do very well and not because they took the street track into a position that allow them to work as jogger but because they prove their worth as as eight and a well rounded social scientists who could use your tools to apply to virtually any any job of any position ok let's open it up for your questions you're listening to us geography leash words and bill lacy of the dole institute of politics and kansas public radio you did a wonderful job explaining

all these things that really we can't figure out from just looking at the maps in the behind the scenes i really appreciate all that information and that you talk about basic intelligence but then it seems like since you're going up to the retired plumber would you have finished intelligence and then you just preparing it with visual maps and that is what your main task is so my question is how does that differ between you in your counterpart in say britain and israel because i know there's a fundamental difference in the intelligence culture and the way that they do they go well we won't rule very close with our counterparts in britain and it's very different there for office in the cabinet office and he will geographical site they really don't have a counterpart office to the author jon was never very few countries do they tend to have their intelligence analysis order policy

analysis and they have maps and so that was thank you just produced products that get tied onto the mouse i think were rather unique in that we have power that verse an hour alice fordham having clothes and developing product that from the very start tries to integrate visual into the record so on i think we're really unique in the terms of the way we present the way we started the center announced his work and working with these guys we work on israel and particularly out we get a tremendous product without actually just that until the city preparing a laptop for a former secretary of state rice that actually had every the age of the seam zone barrier between was breaking his real eye every every segment ally so that if there was a change in the border war about the calculate the square kilometer difference because of the militias that there were very much about total area that would change

hands but that assumes that what happened there will be arguing over the type of access to value so this was designed so that we actually that could attach a value to wear so that it was rich agricultural land as opposed to desert it would have more value to work into the equation and this was presented for secretary state ah and and special envoy of the time to to bring with them in the negotiations so that they could work with the house it isn't the israelis and the other thing we find very useful about these about these computer generated they're negotiating tools is there is a much greater comfort level between the parties what's on a computer and then it disappears as opposed to when they lay out a piece of paper there's a scene early years that they're afraid to write anything on a piece of paper because becomes part historical record it in the archives of the republican party's top record you know which is to draft ideas whereas when you pull up what appears scream and throw out their images eliminated what the next negotiation the level conflict that

disappears the party's historical record somebody can say i saw that napkin into the ad that's going to record so it's a great tool for eichengreen belligerence together off about the negotiations having having a geographic information system a computer based tools with them fly overs in idaho lot of other things on that and we find that on president of the staples like to fly over technology that that tends to bring to the table as well so i didn't want to answer your question which is not to go at a question on the side i'm aware that many of the international partners are pretty arbitrary and ignore tribal and other traditional lines west of the complications that cause for you well like i said flatly that all that mattered it's not really to address your

question directly because i don't wanna get into the issue of love of the way the borders were drawn in the post colonial recognition of account is it didn't no follow nationalize that's sort of on a long discussion that will have no resolution but oh we have a really really bad at that data and virtually every country in the world is just heart of that and we just got last week from a map of libyan tribes quits deadly bomb the latest and greatest in the detroit and you look at the data it is just it's just nowhere close to replicating that though the volatility irving new movies have taken place over time the changing differential birthrates and this is just the type of an effort we have project that we've been working on for years called populations at risk or tried to use satellite imagery and other tools to better estimate populations at very low

levels of detail and type that into the other content i think that's just the type of information that we're not going to get from some government archive or from some libraries that information needs to be collected at at the field level incurring time self define by the people who are there and i am ende building an effect it may change not just locally but the day we saw that made you question is kidnapping is extremely important it's a huge challenge or the other maps that you ever see are bad and when will it will never get that right if we try to do it on a mapping from afar of course al assad you get a call in the middle of the night and there's this terrible earthquake in haiti and you talk about customers what what is your goal and challenge for the first twenty four hours what do you want to have available for your customers within that time period a great quick question because that's my thinking on that has

evolved over the years also you know i think he has evolved haram and what is no longer what i think is an end because what we're always getting clamoring for those first twenty four hours is image and that's where my office has always been favorably position to have access to commercial imagery satellite imagery they can be declassified and to push it out the communities they're doing first time response and in the years i've been doing this whenever we do after action reports lessons learned of what worked and what didn't work and he's a perfect example where i was their image may be pushed out but it was all there were social networking sites will be set up where bodies were identified in and that text message was sent

to a to a ship in the pacific and then they got that information the coast guard the coast guard nabbed it and then on a digital map that's at the back out of the field and then you know you've got to have a body that was buried underneath the rubble building and then we save lives well it's full apocryphal in fictional lives a siege situation like that by strong backs and big shops and and it would just not fast enough to do you work in east economy and the aftermaths math of emergency to two off to make a big effect and the tools i break what i found in the same after action reports however isn't that same effort is used in the media aftermath but its views already with the knowledge that we need to provide that information to transition into the recovery and reconstruction is that you had a game

so my strategy now is don't pretend we do a lot with imagery to save lives but what happens is these things that had happened and faces and what about the transition from the first response community to the recovery community lose a lot they use a lot of continuity you lose a lot of potential strategic planning and that linkage needs to happen right away so the earlier you can start to get a lawyer now eggs in a basket on the response and recovery phase from day one a much better position to be swiping past now instead of thinking about how i save lives with my tools any other washington my first thought is how we get the best position for what could happen tomorrow when he says ok now are we you know we we we picked up the rubble we save the lives that we learn to leverage resources for reconstruction how we can rebuild schools where the people are to be relocated to the lost their homes how are

we're a drainage going to be built all those things need to be starting much earlier because of the weight month just like that you're your behind or sell directly as to question but i know it's not but was not as what we're where we tried and we've been doing is not the most is one place that there's been some conflict about boundaries is in the arctic for that one time no one care about boundaries or too much because it was all frozen ice melted some is your office involved with that area at all are there any policy issues we need to be aware of is this you were very much involved in it but we are involved in it mostly from the from the mapping of the cost of the continental shelf that's the tricky issue really we're working very closely with our oceans environment bureau aired and know us and the coast guard to to try to figure out where to draw the baseline from not from our continental

shelf and that involved a lot of affinity to actually figure out when a shelf is because are you may know that that according to the law of the sea treaty signatories or the scientific claims of islam oversight of the claims need to be registered with the un i think with another eighteen months or so in terms of what the various claims in the in the arctic regions are the russians know a flag on the seabed floor even the chinese are are getting involved some investigations that they're so our our work mostly as an actor actually can say you about that we produced that that beautiful depiction of all the various different counties in the end zones of conflict and and and and different claims in the arctic but we do not set the policy we will go to add that our policymakers will be having with their foreign counterparts as a resource to be called upon to visit there's no question that this interpretation of

a marriage record too international law if they need a map of guinea a treaty that was signed previously worked out getting registered some live or somewhere so were more dvd research backdrop to the people were actually doing things now let's go over here do you have any our relationship with the national geographic society and they seen as tomorrow is job preparing a special lapse yes we have a very close relation initiative that's it as a matter of fact they cite us on an atlas and their maps because they they were very closely with us to two betray their bodies according to us policy on activities different alice isn't of reports the world sometimes of this and sensitivities over some names and boundaries not better and the us as opposed to a different country art and that we work very closely with a record time of the mapping division there i worked closely with them over the years in their

educational program with a with educate school teachers the summertime and i participated in their in the summer time a kitchen were shops of teaching teachers how to teach john ridley and probably most importantly i'm a judge message our baby without tribeca and so i write it out i don't just talk to some people that my wife never really thought much of my job to have gotten out of that house that it said that you think some pretty cool ads and i just got a lot of the national geographic society last week actually that the secretary's day clinton is actually videotaping a number of the questions that are part of the message it be final this year are in him in a certain category i saw have those questions which are top secret by the way on his babies to take this very seriously i say young women of their white powder poems are sectors they spoke last year during our world were david big ah policy speech are going on or security guards a great great resource to have read washington's a

question if you when you get back your office if you have been informed that you your budget had been expanded to create a new program with in your office sadat and his staff members or that party and how to staff of a kind of expertise which you this is something i never thought of as a senator fictitious it's an area but we're been promoting tirelessly into great frustration over the past couple of years is actually a government wide approach to human jar try to figure out a way to interact on participatory mapping efforts to try to get the type of information to better understand social cultural issues much like the i think fails human terrain system approach from duty was trying to do and they were having a court

where it apologise skalicky with with the military isn't actually armed jerry dobson hear that kansas has one of the things he was worth millions in my office was coming up without with an approach to cover the world with just that type of the approach and if i had out ten percentage in my office i could get a dedicated self to develop a new type of expertise to heart is a methodology and to build partnerships whereas we could surge in any area of the world that need it while the same time manage a worldwide are clan of collecting that type of information that's what i will do i'm just been a co chairman of a newly into rages human geography working group that's developing standards the detective creation were collecting eye human factors social call to information and the trick is how

a lab it's a type of information that you can't collect easily through through the way we've traditionally collect know geophysical information based on information on and wrote in rivers think those standards and then leverage the ability of one of our various different things that india community level to be about to map of the world in terms of its conflicts that time for one last question dr schwartz so i've listened with great interest the night though of the kinds of things you're good office does so through that and i was wondering if you could the speaker if you can how your office has been engaged if it all in finding osama bin ladin we unintelligible

mr brady there was a huge fan listening to delete schwartz is the official geographer of the united states speaking with bill lacy of the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas this event was recorded march first two thousand eleven by lawrence bush we schwartz was introduced at this event by dr gerry dobson professor of geography at the university of kansas who's spent a year working in the us you're the first office as a jefferson's science fellow if you have comments about this or any other kbr present is a kansas public radio's facebook page keep your prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas