From 4,000 Hours to 40 Minutes
How Booz Allen’s Modelpoint platform accelerates threat detection
Unclassified data from satellite images, radar, and radio signals hold immense potential to detect threats on land, at sea, in the air, or up in space—all before a security risk escalates into a full-blown crisis. Yet, much of this valuable information remains untapped by the federal government. The Booz Allen Modelpoint platform is changing that.
Federal agencies face a common problem. They often lack the capacity, infrastructure, or resources to take advantage of all the insights that unclassified commercial and public data offer. Many don’t have the licenses or vendor agreements needed to access the data. Others don’t have the budget to build and maintain the cloud infrastructure for storage and processing or the staff to take on the time-consuming analysis work.
Modelpoint solves these challenges by doing the heavy lifting agencies aren’t budgeted to do themselves. It pulls in unclassified data from numerous sources and translates it into clear, actionable intelligence. The result: Federal agencies get the insights they need faster—without adding staff or building new systems. That speed helps them spot and respond to threats sooner, whether it’s troop movements on the ground or unusual satellite activity in space.
How Modelpoint Works:
Only Pay for Results
In one recent project, the Booz Allen Modelpoint platform processed an entire country’s worth of imagery—more than 230,000 square miles—to detect environmental changes, such as deforestation, over 12 months. A human analyst would have needed to download hundreds of images, examine every inch, annotate changes, and repeat the process each time new imagery arrived. Done manually, that work would take about 4,000 hours. Modelpoint completed it in just 40 minutes, automatically identifying more than 1,000 areas of change. That’s roughly 6,000 times faster than manual analysis—and for less than the annual cost of one full-time analyst.
How the government pays for this capability is part of what makes it so cost effective. Unlike traditional contracts, Modelpoint works on an outcome-based model, meaning agencies pay for results—not the number of hours worked. The approach saves time and money—and helps the government run more efficiently.
Connect All the Dots
When it comes to data, it’s not just about collecting it—it’s about connecting it. By combining information from different sources and analyzing it together, the Modelpoint platform adds context, uncovers patterns, and reveals the bigger picture that no single dataset can show on its own.
For example, take a region on the brink of conflict. Warning signs might include news reports of increased hostility, sudden construction of roads or temporary bridges, a buildup of vehicles or equipment, spikes in radio traffic, communications blackouts, or the activation of battlefield radar systems. Modelpoint can track all these indicators at once, pulling from satellite imagery, radar, radio frequency data, and open sources to give leaders a clear, real-time view of the situation—and the insight to act before events escalate.
One of the Modelpoint platform’s advantages is that it uses a type of machine learning called computer vision to scan large amounts of imagery and spot very small changes, such as identifying specific objects, vehicles, or equipment in a location. But it doesn’t stop there. The system layers multiple analytics together so it can determine why something is there, what it’s doing, and even predict when or where it might appear again.
Predictive Mapping for Economic Security
Modelpoint can also help address one of America’s key energy and economic challenges: locating deposits of critical minerals. These materials—which include cobalt, lithium, nickel, and others—are a linchpin of America’s energy sector and economy. They're found in wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicle batteries, as well as popular consumer products like smartphones and flatscreen TVs. The problem is that our nation’s access to these minerals is threatened by domestic scarcity and a supply chain concentrated largely in China and a small number of other foreign countries. The U.S. must strengthen its ability to rapidly locate supplies of the ores in which the minerals are found.
To this end, efforts are underway to map the locations of untapped mineral deposits within the U.S. and outside of our borders. Such mapping is needed to counter China’s dominance of the supply chain. But it entails the collection and analysis of geospatial data, which is a time-consuming, mostly manual process.
Modelpoint accelerates this work through AI-powered predictive mapping and the use of spectral imagery collected by commercial and government satellites. Spectral images divide light into narrow wavelength bands that go beyond what traditional cameras and the human eye detect. Every material on earth has a unique spectral signature based on how it interacts with light energy. Modelpoint can apply an advanced type of AI-powered data fusion to examine the spectral value of every pixel in these images and find critical minerals as well as other minerals that are often found in close proximity. With this information in hand, federal agencies can better and more rapidly assess the location and relative quality of critical mineral deposits.
Designed for Impact
With the Modelpoint platform, national security and civilian agencies don’t have to build or maintain complex systems, hire more analysts, or juggle multiple vendor contracts—freeing them to act on insights instead of getting mired in technical or administrative work. The platform can process huge amounts of data in minutes, completing work in less than an hour that would take a team of analysts an entire year. That speed means leaders can spot issues and act much sooner, whether it’s responding to a security threat or tracking activity around the globe.
This tech works across every environment where the U.S. has interests to protect. On land, it can track troop movements, spot new construction, or find minerals. At sea, it can monitor ship traffic or flag signs of illegal activity. In space, it can track satellites and detect unusual behavior. Built for defense, security, and civil missions on a global scale, Modelpoint delivers the intelligence leaders need to anticipate threats, respond decisively, and stay ahead—anywhere in the world.
