Zooming in Closer

Does the district have the infrastructure to support all its villages, to

sustain a hydro power plant, to run the local gum and resin factories, and even

support mobile circles? Up further, at the state level, how many mandis are

there in a state, and how can they be connected to the other markets in

neighboring states?

The answer lies in planning, analyzing and making decisions based on

geographical information systems (GIS), which act as a reliable data gallery. At

the micro level, GIS applications act as an aid to native decision-making. At

the macro level, it can also be used effectively by national bodies.

National Informatics Center's GIS National Mapping is the Indian answer to

international GIS projects. "All administrative borders of the country,

coastal boundaries, soil types, ground water, forest covers, health

infrastructure, information of the 6 lakh Indian villages, national and state

highways, in 72 layers are all available on the Indian Map on a scale of

250,000:1 to 25,000:1, moving from the national level to the district

level," says Vishnu Chandra, technical director of the Remote Sensing and

GIS division at NIC. "All 72 layers are depicted in point (village, mandi),

line (river, road, railway line) and polygon (ice beds, district)

features."

Obviously, huge efforts have been made on capturing this data, which

according to H Madhava Reddy, senior technical director at NIC "accounted

for an 80% of the total investment." The main sources of information that

has been, collated over three to four years, are the Survey of India, the

ministries, census and land surveys.

Interestingly, the various ministries and departments are also the consumers

of the data. In fact, the Planning Commission has been the foremost agency using

these spatial databases, facilitating planning at the macro and the micro level.

"We are encouraging the use of a common base map by different government

agencies-in good times and in crisis," adds Chandra of NIC.

What's more, various successful applications have emanated from the base

map database, including Agmarknet, coastal zone management, IFFCO information

server, total sanitation campaign all of which have been developed for different

user groups.

For example, Agma-rknet, an application for the Directorate of Marketing of

Ministry of Agriculture maps 1,500 of the 7,000 mandis: their locations, market

arrivals, daily average prices, storage facilities, grading of crops and quality

checks of the various agricultural commodities. The information of the mandis

that are not mapped is stored in a sequential database.

Utility Mapping



It depicts an area's natural and human-made resources, including soil

types, population densities, land uses, transportation corridors, waterways,

street patterns, mass-transit patterns, sewer lines, water sources, and utility

lines. This helps in ensuring better management of the utilities in the urban

areas, which make up a major portion of the municipal budget. The utility

mapping of Delhi is now ready.

Dr N Vijayaditya, director general of NIC, who is spearheading NIC's

initiatives on this front said, "The Delhi utility map covers 900 points

earmarked by the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), with aerial surveys and

then verified by a physical ground reality check." The points include Delhi

Vidyut Board power lines, Delhi Jal Board, sewage, landmarks etc.

This project is based on the latest technology such as global positioning

system (GPS), photogrammetry, and GIS-being implemented in India for the first

time. Using photogrammetric technique, aerial photographs in pairs (consecutive)

were used to form a 3D model. The whole area of Delhi (1,485 sq km) was covered

on the scale of 1000:1. The competence of NIC here can be established by the

fact that NIC also provides consultancy support to big companies for setting up

their own CAD centers. It also helps them in the area of analysis and design.

Taking forward



According to Dr Vijayaditya, "The time taken for the projects

implementation on our end depends heavily on the cooperation extended by all

agencies in sharing information. While Delhi's utility map took three years,

the other major cities of Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and

Ahmedabad should all be ready in the next 18 months-ultimately, helping to

solve last mile connectivity issues, electricity and power commissioning."

To increase the expanse of mobile connectivity in the country, MTNL and BSNL

have been using NIC's GIS capabilities to determine the locations for future

mobile towers. It being a G2G facility, private parties interested in sourcing

similar information have to wait for some more time.

The National Spatial Database is under continuous evaluation and upgradation

as data comes in from various sources time and again. Ministerial and

departmental co-operation is the only way by which the ambitious GIS project can

gather further speed.

Jasmine Kaur

NIC's Spatial Data Content

GIS: A Closer Look



Geographic Information Systems are special-purpose digital databases where a

common spatial coordinate system is the primary means of reference, displaying

all forms of geographically referenced information. A GIS contains subsystems

for 1) data input; 2) data storage, retrieval, and representation; 3) data

management, transformation, and analysis; and 4) data reporting and product

generation.

It is useful to view it a process rather than a thing, supporting data

collection, analysis, and decision-making. It's far more than a software or

hardware product. Special-purpose GIS includes land-base information system,

land record system, web-based coastal database, emergency planning and response

systems.

Geographic information such as roads, streams, habitat types, sensitive

areas, soil types, or any other features are the different layers that can be

mapped on the ground. GIS are especially useful in management planning and

land-use decisions on a landscape scale.