Civil applications committee

The interagency Civil Applications Committee (CAC) facilitates the appropriate civil uses of overhead remote sensing technologies and data collected by military and intelligence capabilities, including from commercial sources. The CAC is operated and staffed by the U.S. Geological Survey on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior and its interagency partners. The director of the U.S. Geological Survey is the chair of the committee, and the vice-chair is a non-Department of the Interior senior official. The CAC ensures certain Federal civil agencies have access to these remotely sensed assets to meet their statutory missions in ways that do not threaten the civil rights, civil liberties, and personal privacy of U.S. citizens. To meet its mandate, the CAC hosts various working groups and communities of interest including those focused on thermal issues (wildland fires and volcanoes), environmental security, and historical satellite imagery.