Overview#
A joint-force headquarters is coordinating a multi-national field exercise across three countries. Dozens of mobile teams are submitting structured field reports through MAGE, the open-source Mobile Awareness GEOINT Environment maintained by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Each report carries a GPS coordinate, a completed observation form, and a device identifier. The challenge is consolidating all of that into a single, access-controlled operational picture that each participating nation can query without seeing data belonging to the others. The MAGE Geo module solves this by acting as a bridge between one or more MAGE server instances and the Argus platform, pulling events and observations on demand and persisting them with full multi-tenant isolation and classification-level enforcement.
Once synced, observations are immediately available through the platform's GraphQL interface, scoped strictly to the requesting organisation. Each observation retains its original GeoJSON geometry, form properties, originating device, and operator identity. Classification level is carried through from ingestion to query, so operators only retrieve records within their authorised clearance. Every sync and access event is written to the immutable audit trail, satisfying EDF and PESCO compliance requirements for multi-national data sharing.
Key Features#
- Event and Observation Sync: Pulls complete event rosters and all associated field observations from a connected MAGE server on demand, with upsert semantics to avoid duplicates on repeated syncs.
- GeoJSON Geometry Preservation: Each observation's geographic coordinates and geometry type are retained verbatim, enabling downstream spatial queries, map rendering, and proximity analysis without any coordinate conversion.
- Multi-Tenant Isolation: Every observation is stored and queried with strict organisation scoping, ensuring that no field report from one participating organisation is visible to another, regardless of whether they share the same MAGE server.
- Classification-Level Filtering: Observations carry a classification level assigned at ingestion. Queries transparently filter results to records at or below the requesting operator's clearance, enforcing information-handling rules at the data layer rather than in application code.
- GraphQL Query Interface: Observations and aggregate statistics are exposed through the platform's standard GraphQL API, letting dashboards, investigation workspaces, and external consumers request exactly the fields they need with a single typed query.
- Comprehensive Audit Logging: Every sync operation and every observation access is recorded to the immutable audit trail with operator identity, organisation, timestamp, and classification level, meeting EDF multi-national operational trust requirements.
- Aggregate Statistics: Per-organisation counts of total observations and distinct events give operations staff an immediate health-check view of how much MAGE data has been ingested and how many active events are tracked.
Use Cases#
- Joint Field Exercise Coordination: Multi-national exercises with separate MAGE deployments per nation can feed all field reports into a shared Argus workspace, with each nation's data remaining sovereign and visible only to its own operators.
- Persistent Surveillance Operations: Intelligence teams running long-running MAGE events sync observations into Argus periodically so that analysts can correlate field reports against other platform data sources such as OSINT, graph link analysis, and alert feeds.
- Tactical Situational Awareness: Command staff query synced MAGE observations through the operational map view to maintain a real-time common operating picture without requiring direct access to the underlying MAGE server.
- Evidence Collection and Chain of Custody: Field teams using MAGE for evidence-gathering benefit from automatic audit records that document who accessed which observation, when, and at what classification level, supporting post-incident review and legal proceedings.
- Cross-Domain Data Correlation: Synced observations, with their GeoJSON geometry and structured form properties, can be joined spatially with other platform datasets to identify patterns, proximity relationships, and entity connections that would not be visible within MAGE alone.
Integration#
The MAGE Geo module connects to any accessible MAGE server using the server's standard REST API and bearer-token authentication. Synced observations are stored in the platform's PostgreSQL database and immediately available through the shared GraphQL layer, meaning they appear in the same operational dashboards, map views, investigation cases, and alert pipelines as data from all other platform sources. No additional middleware or custom connector is required; operators trigger a sync by providing the server address, event identifier, and optional access token through the GraphQL mutation interface.
Open Standards#
- GeoJSON (RFC 7946): All observation geometries are stored and returned as GeoJSON, the IETF standard for encoding geographic data structures; coordinate precision and coordinate reference system conventions follow the RFC 7946 specification.
- OGC Simple Features (ISO 19125): The platform's spatial query layer, built on PostGIS, conforms to the OGC Simple Features for SQL standard, enabling standard spatial predicates such as containment, intersection, and distance on synced MAGE geometries.
- STANAG 4676: Synced field observations can be associated with STANAG 4676 track and event records, allowing MAGE-sourced positional data to participate in NATO-format track correlation workflows.
- GraphQL (June 2018 specification, The GraphQL Foundation): Observations, statistics, and sync operations are exposed as typed GraphQL queries and mutations, giving consumers a self-describing, version-safe interface.
- OAuth 2.0 / JWT (RFC 6749 / RFC 7519): All API access is authenticated with short-lived JWT bearer tokens carrying organisation-scoped claims, with token issuance governed by the platform's OAuth 2.0 authorisation server.
- ISO 8601: All observation timestamps and audit record timestamps are stored and returned as ISO 8601 UTC strings, ensuring unambiguous chronological ordering across multi-nation deployments spanning multiple time zones.
- EPSG:4326 / WGS 84: Coordinates ingested from MAGE are retained in the WGS 84 geographic coordinate reference system, the default for GeoJSON and the coordinate datum used by NATO tactical systems.
Availability#
- Enterprise Plan: Included
- Professional Plan: Available; number of concurrent MAGE server connections and observation retention period may be subject to plan limits.
Last Reviewed: 2026-05-26