Intelligence

Mapping Colombia

The Defense Intelligence Agency asked the Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office to assess the feasibility of creating a property database for Colombia, ostensibly to help in anti-terrorism and drug interdiction efforts. A report by FMSO’s Geoffrey Demarest recently posted (pdf) says that data covering some 30 percent of Colombian property is commercially available and the rest could be obtained or created within 2-4 years. “The author recommends that a coalition of benefited agencies (perhaps to include DoD, DoJ, DoS, NIMA and USAID) sponsor a Colombia GIS database project featuring real property ownership data as outlined in this report.” FMSO reports aren’t posted with much frequency, but they do cover topics of interest to the intelligence community and the military.