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| Volume 5, Number 1 | ISG Newsletter | March, 1999 |
This issue is primarily devoted to the ISG Workshop on 'Recent Advances in Geomatics' organised at the Space Applications Centre on January 8, 1999. It was preceded by a 2-day Training Course on 'Basics of GIS'. This was a major event as it also coincided with the Annual General Body Meeting of the Society. The Society has now a 200–plus life-membership and we hope the membership would grow fairly fast. A chapter of the Society has been established at Bhopal and many more would hopefully come up.
The proceedings of the Workshop, which had a very enthusiastic participation of industry, academicians, researchers and end-users, brought out very well the recent advances made in the discipline of Geomatics in the country. Presentations were of very high calibre and gave expositions of the state of the art in Geomatics. An effort has been made to give fairly detailed highlights of these talks by eminent practitioners of Geomatics so that the readers can get the flavour.
Another heartening development is the election of an end-user of Geomatics (Shri R. Ramabadran) as the new President of the Society. His stewardship of the Society during the next three years is bound to generate enthusiasm amongst the users apart from encouraging technologists, researchers and vendors.
The Editorial Board offers its heartiest felicitations to the outgoing President of the Society - Dr. George Joseph - on being conferred the Padma Bhushan Award by the Government of India. He received the Award on March 23, 1999 from the President of India.
The euphoria created by the interim report submitted in June 1998 by the National Task Force on Information Technology seems to be dying out. The major expectation of the Geomatics community and others about the openness regarding topographic maps and digital map data has not been met. Rather, as reported in GIS@development (November-December 1998 issue), the office memorandum issued by the Ministry of Defence on July 13, 1998 goes in just the opposite direction and makes a depressive reading for the votaries of `transparency'. It rules out digitisation of maps by agencies other than the nine designated departments of the government. The promised repeal of the archaic Official Secrets Act by the Vajpayee government has also not made much headway. On the one hand, the Department of Space, Government of India, has plans to provide 1-m spatial resolution imagery during the next couple of years, and on the other hand we see restrictions being put on digitisation of even 1:50,000 scale topographic maps of unrestricted areas. One wonders whether the Indian bureaucracy would ever loosen their grip on information, as most of them probably believe in the dictum ‘Information is power’.
Baldev Sahai
Recent Advances in Geomatics
ISG Workshop on "Recent Advances in Geomatics"
Report on Inaugural Session
Welcome: Shri A.K.S. Gopalan, Director, SAC & Vice-President, ISG
Shri Gopalan (i) briefly introduced the contents covered in the 2-day tutorial on Basics of GIS; (ii) listed the broad spectrum of technologies covered by Geomatics; (iii) informed the IMSD project where Water & Land Resources Development is currently being carried out using GIS; and (iv) emphasised how the recent improvements in Geomatics are making it possible for ready-to-use applications to be developed addressing both Government and private users.
He concluded by welcoming all those present on the occasion.
Presidential Address: Dr George Joseph, President, ISG & Distinguished Professor, ISRO
Click to read the Address
Inaugural Address: Shri R. Ramabadran, Principal Secretary, Gujarat Govt. & Vice-President, ISG
Shri Ramabadran opened his address with the remark that he is going to put forth the point of view of users amidst an audience consisting primarily of technologists. He briefed the initiative taken by Gujarat Government in opening the RESECO centre with personnel deputed from ISRO, which is responsible for introducing GIS to the State Government, and the current projects being undertaken by that centre in rural development, forestry, and agriculture; and recently in the departments of higher education and revenue (cadastral mapping). He then highlighted the different peculiarities which apply to cadastral mapping, viz. (i) Existing records drawn to scale and some not to scale; (ii) accuracy differences resulting in mismatch of survey numbers and village coverage; (iii) changes happening in built-up area over time; and (iv) some of the above problems, although known to exist for long not being resolved still. These peculiar problems make it a challenge to the management to integrate all such data in a GIS.
He also emphasised that creating a GIS for the first time is one thing and what we do further with it on a sustained basis is another. He was happy to state that some of the models that have been developed so far, have been used to forecast successfully. He cautioned at the same time, the success of existing or proposed models in generating meaningful end-user products, will only fetch long-term support for GIS projects from the different user departments.
He suggested that GIS solutions should address managerial aspects as well.
Vote of Thanks: Shri Arup Dasgupta, Secretary, ISG and Dy. Director, SAC
Before Shri Dasgupta proposed a vote of thanks, a message from Shri N. Sheshagiri, Director General, National Informatics Centre and Special Secretary, Planning Commission, was read out. The message highlighted the developments that are occurring in computers and tele-communications; specifically, hardware, software, Internet, Information Super-highway, and Knowledge-based Systems. It also highlighted the NICnet configuration as it exists now with about 700 mini earth stations linking the length and breadth of the country, using Ku band communication. The National Task Force on IT, future network-centric distributed GIS, which link the different resource organizations were also highlighted.
Shri Dasgupta specifically thanked Shri Ramabadran, the chief guest, Dr. George Joseph, President, ISG, Shri A.K.S. Gopalan, Director, SAC, participants from industries, viz., Dr. Munshi from Rolta, Shri P. Jyothimani from Tata Infotech, Shri Darshan Singh from PAM Consultants; Shri R. Ramachandran from ADRIN, Shri K.R. Sridhara Murthy, Sci. Secy, ISRO who were to deliver talks and participate in the panel discussion. He also thanked his colleagues Shri R.K. Goel and I.C. Matieda from SAC for being the Course Director for the Tutorial and Organising Secretary for the Workshop, respectively; and especially those who have come from out-stations to participate in the Workshop.
ISG Workshop on "Recent Advances in Geomatics"
Report on Technical Session
1. Introduction: Shri K.R. Sridhara Murthy, Scientific Secretary, ISRO, Chairperson
2. Geomatics Prospects – An Overview: Shri A.K.S. Gopalan, Director, SAC & Vice-President, ISG
3. Advances in Technology and Systems – Dr M.K. Munshi, Vice-President, M/S Rolta India Ltd.
4. Advances in Mapping and Photogrammetry – Shri R. Ramachandran, Scientist, ADRIN
5. Value Added Services in Geomatics – Industry View Shri Darshan Singh, PAN India Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
6. National (Natural) Resources Information System Shri K.R. Sridhara Murthy, Scientific Secretary, ISRO
1. Introduction: Shri K.R. Sridhara Murthy, Scientific Secretary, ISRO, Chairperson
Shri Murthy, who chaired the morning session of the technical presentations, in his opening remarks said that the workshop was a unique forum, where representatives from R&D organizations, industry and user community, could take stock of the developments in the field of Geomatics, in terms of new tools, technologies and application activities and exchange notes with one another. He remarked that with a vibrant space programme, Geomatics applications are bound to increase rapidly.
2. Geomatics Prospects – An Overview: Shri A.K.S. Gopalan, Director, SAC & Vice-President, ISG
Shri Gopalan defined Geomatics as the technologies dealing with all aspects of geo-referenced data, covering data acquisition, data assimilation, information generation/ decision support, and information dissemination and proceeded to identify the target user groups of Geomatics and their requirements, and reviewed how well the current state of the art satisfies these requirements. He then presented a very broad spectrum of Geomatics applications including the challenges involved.
The application areas covered include the following:
He concluded by presenting a technology overview of Geomatics, covering data acquisition systems, data assimilation, data management, GIS interoperability and standardisation, and data dissemination/ communications.
3. Advances in Technology and Systems Dr M.K. Munshi, Vice-President, M/S Rolta India Ltd.
Dr. Munshi presented mainly the Mapping and GIS activities of M/S Rolta India. He covered, among others, the following areas: (i) Field data collection; (ii) Digital Photogrammetry; (iii) GIS; (iv) Internet Map Publishing; (v) Automated Mapping /Facilities Management and (vi) Cartographic Visualisation. He also covered a specific application on public safety and timely dispatch of emergency vehicles to the public in need.
He informed that with the new reflector-less laser technology field-data-collection for performing surveys has now become essentially a one-man operation, with high flexibility, with just a point-and-shoot operation, with or without simultaneous GPS data collection. He informed of an application in forestry, where GPS might lose control due to the foliage, where this method of data collection could support the estimation of timber.
He presented another novel system, working on magnetism and dual-frequency, which could be employed for performing surveys of buried pipelines including sewage lines, cables and other utility networks.
He informed that the latest GG (GPS+GLONASS) receiver technology employs both the 24-satellite GPS satellites as well as the 20-satellite less-popular Russian GLONASS satellites for the same purpose, viz. precise identification of position and time anywhere on the globe. The greater number of satellites provides greater availability of satellites over any place at any given time. The precise knowledge of the difference in reference systems employed by both satellite systems, both in terms of datum and time, improved accuracy is realised on the fly by an integrated analysis of data received from satellites of both systems.
Field computing facility has now advanced to a level, that ruggedised field computers are now available, which pack the power of Intel Pentium processors and the whole range of application software. One can now easily take the whole GIS project on the notebook computer for the fieldwork and correct errors online.
Advances in Softcopy or Digital Photogrammetric WorkStations now enable both image processing and photogrammetric functions to be carried out on the same system. Automated space triangulation and DTM generation for satellite stereo images, including IRS-1C/1D PAN are now available as part of these systems. One could directly read the satellite data into the system and generate orthophotos, which could then be analysed to update/add existing/ new map features.
There is an increasing shift towards Wintel platforms in preference to UNIX workstations. Wintel-based Digital Photogrammetric work-station configurations, complete with dual Pentium Xeon processors, 512 KB cache, 28" high-resolution stereo-ready monitor with Crystal Eyes 3D-goggles, Scanners and other standard input-output devices with the required software are now available for the users.
Dr. Munshi then went on to speak on the expected growth of commercial high-resolution earth observation satellites in the 1999-2000 time frame. He stressed that aggressive marketing by these commercial operators will compete with Indian space programme. He emphasised the need to develop vendors, software developers and value-added resellers for this purpose. He also informed the changes happening in the corporate industry, especially the joint venture by Intergraph and Carl Zeiss.
According to Dr. Munshi, for every 10 doers, who are involved in generating standard data products in the field of GIS community, there are 100 users, who do the value-addition, customisation and reselling and 1000 viewers, who are the end-users employing these information products in their specific application areas. Also, till now the GIS products were addressing the needs of the doer-category and only recently products addressing the needs of other two categories have appeared in the market. One could now publish a map on the Internet for the viewers to access, using the world-wide-web. Seamless integration with other office-automation tools for word-processing, spread-sheet and graphic utilities can easily be carried out. There is an increasing support for non-proprietary formats, mainly due to the OGIS initiative and market pressures.
AM/FM solutions built on GIS provide What-if analyses addressing specific application areas, which include telephone, electricity, gas, and water distribution. They are ideal for managing these utilities, especially in maintaining and planning expansions. They come in very handy to tackle emergency situations. He also briefly indicated civil engineering applications using GIS, such as development projects for transport network, earth works, water supply and sewage. He hinted at the possibility of simultaneously using CAD systems in addition to GIS.
He highlighted the following thrust areas for now and the next few years: (i) Cartographic database generation; (ii) Election charts and displays using GIS; (iii) Publishing intelligent maps on the WWW; (iv) Queries made to a standard GIS; (v) 3D Visualizations to simulate walk/ fly through's over terrain; and (vi) GIS for public safety. He went on to elaborate the last point, wherein communication and GPS-based vehicle tracking, and automatic identification of emergency call source locations are employed to alert the nearby police/ ambulance van to immediately rush to the service spot. He concluded by telling that advanced and easy-to-use devices are now available for the field work; and open systems with non-proprietary formats are now available addressing the needs of users and viewers; and that merging of different technologies and user needs summarise the current state of advances in Geomatics related technologies and systems.
View Dr. Munshi's presentation.
4. Advances in Mapping and Photogrammetry Shri R. Ramachandran, Scientist, ADRIN
The presentation mainly concentrated on (i) Digital Photogrammetric Systems & DEM related issues, (ii) Elements of ‘Rapid Mapping’, and (iii) ‘Middle Level’ Image Processing functions.
He emphasised that the trend in mapping and photogrammetry over the years, has been a move from symbolism to realism, facilitated through:
According to him, applications are not still imaginative enough in utilizing the combined power enabled by these advances.
Digital mapping concepts are based on mathematical formulation of photogrammetry and concepts of computer vision. He classified the processes and tasks involved in digital mapping into four categories:
While the state-of-the-art developments are very much advanced in the first two categories, current research emphasis has been more on the middle level and initial on the high level.
He then went on to analyze the DEM and contours generation methodologies using conventional analytical plotters or Digital Photogrammetric Workstations, respectively. While the former resulted in (i) optimal data collection based on manual methods, (ii) additional identification of break-lines, ridges, spot heights, and (iii) significant stress on interpolation; the latter results in (i) large amount of automatic data collection, (ii) skeletal interactive break-line, break-point identification, and (iii) practically nil or meager amount of interpolation. He also brought out the inherent differences in the evaluation methods for the DEMs generated using both approaches; i.e., DEMs derived from contours in the former approach and contours derived from DEM in the latter.
He also touched upon the DEM noise that are present, especially in those derived from images over urban areas, where building features have to be either interactively delineated or superimposed using existing ‘city models’.
He then described the features of a modular and object-oriented digital photogrammetric and mapping software for aerial images, ADAMS, developed at ADRIN. He also briefed about the SAR processing for speckle reduction using the method of simulated annealing.
He then went on to describe a scheme for map updating cum field verification, wherein a digital map is carried to the streets in a moving vehicle on a notebook PC based GIS, and specific features updated with a mouse-click with precise coordinates read-in through a GPS receiver. The scheme provides a higher throughput with less manpower than previously known methods.
Results of automatic feature extraction methods are generally noisy. These are to be followed-up with edge focussing and edge following operations for feature recognition and understanding. Noise is the result of illumination effects (shadow edges), texture effects (texture edges) and the choice of thresholds used in detecting edges. Edge following takes into account the presence of spurious edges and disconnected edges. Edge following is carried out by performing image search in different scales. Edge following is also performed using a method known as Active Contour Models or ‘snakes’ based on an energy minimization principle. Current research initiatives are onto employing Gestalt’s psychology of human vision (1920) in the recognition of features based on proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, simplicity, foreground/ background effects, etc.
5. Value Added Services in Geomatics – Industry View Shri Darshan Singh, PAN India Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
With increasing geophysical activity throughout the globe, the growth rate of RS and GIS services is bound to increase. People have wider choice in terms of RS data availability and are no longer ready to accept outdated technology. Selling value-added customised data in comparison to raw data provides higher returns. Considering the increasing demand, increasing competition and increasing returns, it is necessary for the Indian Government (DOS) to promote participation of Indian Industry in providing such value-added services in the field of Geomatics.
He suggested that DOS and ISG should seek appointments with politicians and decision-makers for the promotion of RS and GIS services in India. He went on to list the various areas where such value-added services could be offered by the Industry, with/ without any help from DOS.
He informed that there is a sizeable increase in the government allocation of funds for building highways and cadastral maps.
He also stressed the need to have highly skilled manpower in making such value-added products and services, and the cost involved. He emphasised the scope for generating village-level GIS in India.
He pointed out in conclusion an impediment in the development of Indian industry for providing value added Geomatics services, namely the restriction policy being adopted by the Government of India in obtaining digital topographic maps or digitizing existing paper maps published by SOI.
View Mr Darshan Singh's presentation.
6. National (Natural) Resources Information System Shri K.R. Sridhara Murthy, Scientific Secretary, ISRO
With India’s population crossing 950 million over a land area covering 2% of world’s geographic area, with 1% (65 million ha) of world’s forest cover and 0.5% of pasture lands; developments getting concentrated around the four megacities, and solid waste disposal touching 0.45 million tonnes per day; use of a space-based national (natural) resources information system, that provides synoptic and repetitive RS images in different scales and spectral bands, is essential.
The NRIS system aims at developing an infrastructure for decision support for the management of natural resources. Decisions used to be and are being taken at various levels for strategic, tactical or technical reasons. The resources available and the local needs of a region are considered for analyzing the various development alternatives, by assessing the impact of each alternative in advance; and generating action plans to be carried out at local level. Information gathering and maintenance are to be carried out at various scales, say 1: 1 million at centre level, 1:50,000 for different administrative hierarchies and still larger scales for actual implementation. The databases to be maintained at the sectoral systems and regional nodes are to be linked to the centre through a network similar to the WWW.
As part of NRIS, standard GIS formats and software are to be used with common application specific software modules, data base schema and update provisions with dedicated communication links built over terrestrial and satellite-based networks using standard protocols. Standard query shells for decision support and analysis and planning modules on Unix workstations at each leaf node are being developed as part of a pilot project linking 30 districts covering 17 states and 4 state nodes.
The sources of data are the RS images and the thematic maps generated from them. Twenty primary spatial layers and eight primary non-spatial layers are generated and maintained apart from several derived layers under each category. He concluded by informing the responsibilities of ISRO/DOS and the various state nodes and the PC-NNRMS hierarchy under which this project is getting executed. He suggested that the NRIS-data standards, that is getting developed, be communicated to all members of ISG and feedback obtained.
ISG Workshop on "Recent Advances in Geomatics"
Panel Discussion on "Geomatics in the next millenium – Is India Ready?"
1. Opening Questions for the Panel:
Shri Ravi Gupta,
CSDMS, Editor, GIS@development
India has a technologically advanced space programme and an old survey organization.
The physical infrastructure currently available for developing geomatics professionals are RRSSC’s, DOS/DST infrastructure, Universities/ IITs and private initiatives. Are they adequate to meet the demands of this developing field? At the best, trained manpower generated till date, by all these institutions, may be about a little over 2000. Is this enough?
The information policy should allow and promote a spatial information dissemination infrastructure, as opposed to the restriction policies currently being adopted. People have already started demanding information, especially that information, which has been generated using public tax money, as a basic right. However, intellectual property rights of original information sources and subsequent value additions should be protected. Access to geographic information held by government departments, should be enabled. One example to note is the CD-ROM products on China’s national data sets. A collaborative effort needs to be pursued to develop and operationalise such a spatial information dissemination infrastructure in our country.
An issue in pricing such information is that they be either on the basis of recovery of cost spent in generating such information, or otherwise.
A managerial survey on user needs, implications to society, etc. is to be taken up before establishing such an infrastructure.
With such an infrastructure in place, Governments can be made more accountable. Public can exercise their rights in a more informed way. Changes in target populations of various development activities could be monitored. If any malpractice is happening the same can be easily detected. Public participation in government decision making will be possible. However, there is a possibility that such information infrastructure could also be misused by other interests and used for surveillance.
He concluded by recalling a few questions recently raised by Mr. Jack Dangermond, CEO, ESRI Inc. (Arc/Info and other related GIS software products). 1. How critical is GIS in keeping India competitive in a global economy? 2. Is GIS available to the most important users of Information? 3. What is the involvement of Industry and NGOs?
View Mr. Ravi Gupta's presentation.
2. Shri R. Ramabadran, Chair-person
Shri Ramabadran initiated the panel discussion with the following remarks: Some managerial questions have been raised. On the part of Government, some natural inhibitions are bound to be there in suddenly opening up all the information, which they have been holding for their exclusive use. The question of reliability of the information thus offered, and the legal implications that any anomalies in such information might cause. At the national level, SOI could take the initiative.
The constraints of those state departments, who have not used GIS so far, want demonstration of suitability of introducing GIS in their areas of activities. It is not a question of deciding on the basis of only the marketing information of GIS products; but real solutions that could be demonstrated are needed.
He then narrated how a "school map" prepared in the Education department was very useful.
3. Dr. M.K. Munshi
Dr. Munshi raised the question of supply and demand. Demand is large, and there is practically no supply. Even when suply is available in some cases, the question of time involved in getting the spatial information with required resolution and quality has to be considered. He informed that the typical time involved in getting usable data generated from an aerial survey campaign could be anywhere between 6 months to 1 year.
Other than SOI, Geological Survey of India and the All India Soil Survey organizations also hold spatial information, which could be made more accessible.
He quoted the examples of demand for data by the Bahai/ lotus temple projects in Calcutta/ Delhi. There are funding agencies that are ready to spend 1000’s of crores of rupees on infrastructure projects in the country. Should each one of them have their own survey teams for acquiring the much-needed spatial information?
Cadastral survey is state subject and not the central government’s responsibility. It does not make sense that still the state governments are not going in for the new GIS technology. One thing to be noted is that RS is not going to give all the input data that is necessary for such surveys. We should be aware of these limitations. For instance, field boundaries within farms or orchards are necessary for cadastral surveys but can't be identified from RS images. Hence dependence on ground/aerial surveys will still be there.
For urban areas, GIS could be used to delineate encroached areas. There are useful applications in navigation as well. For instance in Huntsville in US, GIS-GPS combination is operationally used to track, monitor and despatch emergency vehicles to needed locations immediately on call.
Finally he suggested that NRIS project should consider switching over to Wintel platforms as against the UNIX workstations, currently contemplated.
4. Shri A.K.S. Gopalan
Shri Gopalan said the question of demonstrating usefulness does not arise and the process of implementing solutions in different areas is already on. In fact India is foremost in RS applications. RS feeds into geomatics. Within next 5 to 6 years, with private parties and industry participation and technology expansion, marketing is going to be through Internet covering a global clientele. Value additions and total solutions are going to be the rule rather than exception. One problem might be the poor R&D focus in industries, and concentrated only in the Government sector. However, collaborative efforts could be undertaken by industry to compete in the global market.
In development projects Government could provide data and funds and NGO with local knowledge could be used in implementation in reaching more people.
He concluded by quoting the developments taking place in the NRIS project and similar efforts in Malaysia.
5. Shri K.R. Sridhara Murthy
Shri Murthy said that having seen the spectrum of recent advances in geomatics, we should prepare for the future. Development of GIS applications for down-to-earth problems should be taken up. Spatial information should influence the decision making. He wondered, why users are not coming forth and demanding more applications, is it that they are not serious enough or is it understandability of information provided or is it that necessary training is lacking or is it that the collectors are transferred every 3 years and hence GIS usage is not picking up in state governments and local administration or, is it the question of standardisation in software, database, network or hardware employed and the rapid changes which are occurring in these fronts. He emphasised that at the delivery end it should be simple enough for the end user to interpret, and AI and Expert System solutions should merge with GIS to provide dynamic aspects of the application. Decision making should become more rational. Perspective and behavioural models should be introduced in GIS. He said GIS could find large market in the areas of consumer behaviour analysis and in travel and tourism. He observed that object oriented geomatics is developing, which will make it easier to convey the semantics of the objects to the end user. At research level, necessary techniques and tools should be developed addressing this need.
6. Shri R. Ramachandran
Shri Ramachandran opined that at any time a new technology is introduced there would be an initial lead-time for people to accept the same and become more fluent in making use of it; and, quoted the example of computerised reservation of railway tickets in India. He also said that geomatics being a multi-disciplinary subject, some efforts towards standardisation of terminologies used are called for. According to him another area where further work is needed is that of knowledge engineering.
7. Shri Darshan Singh
Shri Singh agreed with Dr. Munshi's remark that Wintel platforms are going to proliferate and Shri Gopalan's remark that private R&D is practically nil. He suggested that ISG should form small committees of 3-4 persons to push things in promoting GIS usage in the country, for example, by sending this team to Lal Bahadur Shastry Academy at Mussourie, where IAS officers get their initial training. He said he could offer his mite with his involvement in CII in organising state-wise meetings.
8. Discussions and Contribution from Audience
Dr. Munshi said that once the applications are made user friendly, there is no need for elaborate training. Wintel platforms which are Internet ready are going to be available everywhere. He reacted to Shri Gopalan's comment on R&D being concentrated in government sector by remarking that though it is so, not much of the research work carried out is made public, and quoted the examples of SOI, Naval Hydrology and NHO.
Dr. Ghosh from the audience said the following points in support of why GIS applications have not picked up in India: (i) Lack of political will and bureaucrats not being able to influence the politicians; and (ii) Language, with so many different languages being used in different states of the country, for governance.
Dr. Nandakumar recalled (i) the suggestion of Dr. George Joseph in making GIS applications down-to-earth to influence at a personal level to the citizens, (ii) the observation of Shri Ramachandran that in geomatics there is a paradigm shift happening i.e., a move from erstwhile symbolism to the current realism, and (iii) Shri Ravi Gupta's wish in involving public in the decision making process of the Governments; and suggested that similar to STD telephone booths, Internet access points should proliferate in the country and easily downloadable and easily usable GIS products should be made available to the citizens at the press of a mouse-click.
Shri R.K. Goel stressed that the return on investments should be made explicit while marketing GIS products by the Industry.
Dr. Anjana Vyas agreed to the point made by Shri Goel and criticised that users should look at the sustainability and long-term maintenance of the system in view, considering the initial cost and time involved in setting up the GIS database, in the absence of a suitable information dissemination infrastructure in the country. If this lack of information infrastructure is continued for a longer time, she feared and pessimistically told that whether it is right to train more students while there would be no takers for the fresh talent within our country.
Dr. Jothimani informed that Tata Infotech, the group he belongs to, has already a geo-information product in the market in the form of a Information Kiosk, which is net enabled and juke-box type, which has an ATM-like touch-screen user interface.
9. Concluding Remarks by Chair-person
Shri Ramabadran recalled the life of the scientist Benjamin Franklin, who did not get support for a long time for his innovative finding. He said that having a powerful technology is one thing and having ready-to-use technological system solutions is yet another. We should and need to make progress towards realising the latter, to make GIS applications more popular. He recalled the Malaysian initiative referred by Shri Gopalan and said that we should excite the users by providing more total solutions. He also recalled the question raised by Shri Sridhara Murthy as to why users are not coming back and demanding more applications, he said the bottlenecks are mainly the accessibility, reliability and lack of standards (especially the hardware) that apply to the current GIS solutions being offered to the decision making users.
He strongly opined that the efforts taken up at the different departments should be integrated and coordinated and no duplication of efforts should take place by every one spending time and money to generate the baseline database.
He also felt that we need to develop useful application-oriented GIS models in making these applications more popular. He remarked that how numbers (statistics) could be twisted to reflect one's point and gave an example. Of the total water available on earth, the oceans cover 97%; out of the remaining 3%, 2.2% is accounted by the polar caps. Out of the remaining 0.8%, 0.02% is covered by lakes and rivers and only 0.78% is available as ground water. He said while satisfactory mathematical model to monitor ground water is available, models to solve other user problems are lacking.
He concluded by saying that we should not stop with just talking but should take steps towards implementing the suggestions made in this forum and make a thrust towards making GIS usage as a mass movement.
ISG Workshop on "Recent Advances in Geomatics"
Pre-workshop Two-day Training Course on Basics of GIS
Short-term training on basics of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was organized on the eve of ISG Workshop and the Annual General Body Meeting, at Space Applications Centre Ahmedabad during January 6-7, 1999. The training course covered theory lectures spanning 6 hours, hands-on exercises for 7 hours and demonstration of application case-studies. There were 19 participants from various organizations from all over India covering educational institutions, state and central government agencies and private sector. Faculty was primarily drawn from Space Applications Centre (for theory lectures and applications case-study demonstrations) and private sector (for hands-on exercises).
Theory lectures covered the following topics:
Hands-on exercises were conducted by the representative from M/S Tata Infotech using MapInfo Professional GIS package. Ten Pentium systems were available for these exercises.
Case studies were demonstrated live using the Arc/Info packages on SGI workstation platform covering various applications taken from NRIS project. These included:
Apart from these, a special demonstration was arranged on generation of DEM from satellite stereo pairs.
Feedback received from the participants was overwhelmingly encouraging. Almost all the participants indicated their satisfaction with the quality of theory lectures, hands-on exercises and case-study demonstrations. However, they expressed the need for more time and elaboration on theory and practical in the future training courses.
Design a Logo for the Society and Win a Reward!
Members are invited to design and submit a Logo for the Society. If selected, they will be rewarded with book(s) on a Geomatics related topic worth Rs. 500/-.
The Executive Council of the Society, on January 7, 1999, formally granted recognition to the ISG Bhopal Chapter, with headquarters in the premises of the Remote Sensing Applications Centre, MP Council of Science and Technology, Bhopal, with the following office-bearers:
Post Name
Chairman Dr. S. Khan, Incharge, RSAC, MPCST
Secretary Shri N.V. Deshpande, RSAC, MPCST
Treasurer Dr. J.P. Shukla, RSAC, MPCST
Members Prof. R.N. Saxena, Barkatullah Univ.
Shri V. Chitale, NIC
Smt Aruna Saxena, MACT
Shri N.K. Choubey, RSAC, MPCST
Please Note!
To open a local chapter at your city, the minimum requirement is to have at least 15 life members in the city and a permanent address for the office.
ISPRS 2000: Geoinformation for All
July 16-23, 2000, Amsterdam
Refer ISG Newsletter, Volume 4 Number 3&4, December, 1998 for details.
Upto date information is available on the website http://www.itc.nl/~isprs
Industry News:
Dr. George Joseph receives Padma Bhushan
Dr. George Joseph,
President, Indian Society of Geomatics and
Distinguished Professor, ISRO
was conferred Padma Bhushan
by the President of India on March 23, 1999
for his outstanding contribution to the Indian Space Programme.
The Editorial Board offers its heartiest felicitations to him.
ISG WORLD WIDE WEB HOMEPAGE ADJUDGED AS BEST
http://members.rediff.com/isg/
Rediff Personal Homepage (http://members.rediff.com/isg/) was selected as the best homepage for the month of December 1998. The concept, the implementation simplicity, along with the utility offered to the surfer are the factors that made it a winner. Some encouragement to perform even better!
that GIS World has changed its name to GeoWorld beginning from the issue dated Nov., 1998?
GEOTECH -Your ‘Partners in Progress’
Geotech is one of the first offshore companies in GIS launched way back in 1988 in USA and emerged as a GIS-AM/FM-CAD company during post-economic liberalisation in 1992 in India, offering operational services mainly for custom data conversion. Such services are provided since then for numerous Government/Non-Government Organisations in and around the country and abroad, mainly dominated by USA. To its credit, Geotech has digitally converted more than half a million ‘Parcels’ (in India these are known as Survey nos.) for several US counties using "Orthophoto Maps" and established database with multiple attributes like Parcel Code, Ownership, Dimensions, Acreage etc.
Also, Geotech has generated huge databases from Cadestre surveyed land records of US counties, locally called as ‘Tippan’ in Gujarat. Additionally, this data capture indicates RoWs (Right of Ways) with their names and dimensions, and major Facility/Service centre locations, among other attributes. Besides such a high precision data conversion, Geotech offered its services for International Airports and City Guide Map services for several cities of USA. Also served for several City Service Departments (locally referred to as Municipality), such as Drainage and Sewer Systems, Water Supply, Electrical Services (Street Light System), Health, etc.
With this kind of very rich and unique quality expertise on ‘Data Conversion & Spatial Database Organization’, Geotech has already entered into domestic markets in India. The area of expertise include Municipal/Urban Planning, Natural Resource Management & Surface Topography, Utility/Services Sector such as Electrical, Drainage, Water Supply, Storm Drainage, Real Estates, Oil/Gas Pipe Lines and Telephone sector.
In order to meet such multi-disciplinary forum of clients, Geotech is equipped with well-trained, technical personnel with latest computer hardware & software facility labs. These include the highly credible ‘AM/FM-CAD associated systems and more than 15-Workstations Arc/Info licenses’ working under one roof. Operationally, perhaps it is the only such large unit in the country, besides ISRO. In addition to a huge number of PC Pentiums & high-end Workstations, additional GIS peripherals including Scanners and Digitizers (A0/A00 size), Inkjet Plotters and Pen Plotters, Laser Printers and Data Transfer media, Internet & Video Conferencing facilities.
ISRO is the pioneer for this kind of high-tech spatial technology in the country. ‘KUDOS’ to ‘ISRO’ for providing very high-resolution (< 6 m) state of the art spatial pictures of the world on a continuous basis. Geotech is the ‘ISRO approved’ technical service provider in the field of ‘GIS, Digitization and Cartography’, which is an art & science of map making through Remote Sensing or through other collateral sources of data. Accordingly, it has offered similar services under various national projects like RSAM, IMSD and NRIS to various ISRO Centres and State Remote Sensing Centres in the country.
Geotech received national award for its ‘Best Infrastructure Set up and Highest Exports’ among all Software Technology Park units in the country, during 1996-97 & currently ranked among top 5 units of STPs in India by Department of Electronics, Government of India, New Delhi.
Looking into the future demands of ‘Remote Sensing Data, Data Conversion & Application Development’ needs in the country, Geotech has already started its expansion to cope up with such ‘Application Customisation (AC), Value Addition Services (VAS) and supply Custom Map Data Products (CMDP)’, The need of the hour is to provide such ‘off the shelf high-tech services’ to the user community which can be best offered using RS, GIS & Software Development Techniques. Many more applications are yet to be explored. Let us rededicate ourselves in the interest of Nation. Be the ‘Partners in Progress’ with Geotech for all your future ‘Hi-tech service demands and customized needs’.
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Dr. S.V.C. Shastry, Geotech Digital Bharat Pvt. Ltd., C/903, Indraprastha Complex, Ahmedabad - 380 054.
CompuSense Automation: an Autodesk ATC
Autodesk Inc., the fifth largest PC software company in the world, has approved CompuSense Automation, Ahmedabad as an Authorized Training Centre. Autodesk Authorized Training Center (ATC) is a world-wide channel of Autodesk Inc. for delivering authorised instructor-led training, for meeting needs of design professionals for discipline-specific training.
The important aspects of ATC for training are:
CompuSense Automation is Ahmedabad-based company providing complete CAD and GIS solutions in terms of hardware, software, consultancy, data preparation, customisation and training in GIS software. CompuSense Automation are also dealers for Autodesk products and provide other GIS services like digitization, customization and database linking etc.
The Ahmedabad Centre is an Advanced ATC, which implies that it offers courses in specialized subjects like GIS. The training is imparted with practical aspects like use of digitizers, scanners and plotters so as to be useful in an actual professional job.
For more information contact:
CompuSense Automation
S-1/A, Gold Coin Complex,
Jodhpur Char Rasta,
Satellite Road,
Ahmedabad 380 015
Telefax: 079-6740577
Email: compsens@ad1.vsnl.net.in
Satellite Data Products from NDC
The National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) of the Department of Space, Government of India, is the focal point for distribution of remote sensing data products for users in India and its neighbouring countries.
NRSA has an earth station at Shadnagar, about 50 km from Hyderabad, to receive data from almost all contemporary remote sensing satellites such as IRS-1D, IRS-1C, IRS-P3, IRS-1B, Landsat, ERS-1, ERS-2 and NOAA series.
The data is archived on High Density Digital Tapes (HDDT) at Shadnagar and is utilized for providing data products to users as and when orders are received.
Data products can be supplied in a wide variety of media and formats such as:
NRSA Data Centre (NDC) assists in selecting the appropriate data based on the applications and availability of cloud free data.
Users are invited to contact the NDC for their data product requirements at the following address:
NRSA Data Centre
National Remote Sensing Agency
Department of Space, Governement of India
Balanagar, Hyderabad 500 037
Phone: 040-3078560; 040-3079572 Ext 2327
Fax : 040-3078664; 040-3078158
Email: sales@nrsa.gov.in
Events
Report on INCA XVIII International Congress, December 15-17, 1998, Calcutta
The Congress on the theme Cartography in Action was organised by the Indian National Cartographic Association and NATMO. The Congress was sponsored mainly by M/S Bentley with DST, DOS, GSI, NHO, ASI (Anthropological Survey of India), NABARD, DST, & NES (WB), M/S Darjeeling Planters Association, M/S Duncan Industries Ltd. and M/S Morani Tea Estate being the other co-sponsors. The annual general body meeting of INCA was also held on December 17, 1998 after the valedictory session of the Congress.
The technical programme of the Congress was organised as follows: Inaugural session, Thodarmal memorial lecture by Shri Y.S. Rajan on Vision for the Emerging Knowledge Based India, Prof. S.P. Chatterjee memorial lecture by Prof. S.P. Dasgupta, past INCA President and past Director, NATMO on The Traditional Science of Education in India, a special industry key note lecture on Enterprise-wide Engineering Modelling by Shri Yoav Etiel, Senior Vice-President of M/S Bentley Systems, a panel discussion on Cartosat and Unrestrained Cartography. 17 technical sessions in three parallel sessions, on the following topics were held, and finally the valedictory session.
(1) Cartography and Education
(2) Digital Cartography I-II
(3) History of Cartography
(4) New Sensors and their impact on Mapping
(5) Cartography for Urban Planning
(6) GIS, LIS and Geomatics I-III
(7) Cartography for Socio Economic Planning I-III
(8) Cartography for Watershed & Coastal Management
(9) Mapping of Resources I-II and
(10) Mapping of Environment I-II.
In total there were 225 papers listed in the 17 technical sessions.
There was also a poster session having four papers. Further there was an exhibition of hardware/ software/ consulting/ marketing/ service/ publication organizations, closer to the Congress venue. One technical session for presentations exclusively by the exhibitors was held.
There were about 550 registered participants during the Congress including a few from abroad. A souvenir and a volume of abstracts were given to all registered participants.
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Rapporteur: Dr. R. Nandakumar, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad - 380 053.
Report on ISRS Symposium - 1998/99
January 19-21, 1999, Bangalore
The national symposium on the theme "Remote Sensing Applications for Natural Resources: Retrospective and Perspective" cum annual convention of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing (ISRS) was organised at Hotel Atria, Bangalore. The event was sponsored by DOS, different departments of central government and Karnataka state government, State RS Application Centres of AP, UP, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana and the following: (a) Speck Systems Ltd., (b) IN-RIMT, (c) RSI, (d) National Capital Region Planning Board, (e) Dept. of Science, Technology and Environment, Goa, (f) IRS, Anna University, (g) KEONICS, Bangalore, (h) FSI, Dehradun, (i) NIO, Goa, (j) CMC, New Delhi, (k) Tangerine Geoscience, Bangalore and (l) WII, Dehradun.
Apart from the inaugural and plenary sessions the following technical sessions were held:
Each technical session started with a few invited presentations from eminent speakers, followed by other oral presentations. Parallelly poster presentations were also organised under each session.
During the inaugural session the first Bhaskara award was given to Dr. George Joseph, President, ISG and Indian National RS Award to Dr. D.S. Mitra, ONGC, Dehradun and Dr. Y.V.B. Sarma, NIO, Goa. The lead lecture was delivered by Professor U.R. Rao on the symposium theme and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai Memorial Lecture was delivered by Dr. Abraham E. Muthunayagam, Secretary, Dept. of Ocean Development on "Potential and Uses of Ocean" during the inaugural session.
An exhibition of products and services offered by Industries and Entrepreneurs was organised in parallel to the technical sessions.
The ISRS annual convention was held on Jan. 19, 1830-2030 h at a nearby venue. An abstracts volume cum souvenir, and a T-shirt with ISRS emblem as a surprise gift were given away to all registered participants.
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Rapporteur: Shri B. Gopalakrishna, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad-380 053.
Report on Regional Workshop on Commercial Applications of Remote Sensing & GIS, February 16-19, 1999, Ahmedabad
A one-day regional workshop on commercial applications of remote sensing and GIS, preceded by a 3-day tutorial on the same topic, was organised jointly by the Value Added Services Cell of RS Applications Area, Space Applications Centre and the Indian Society of Remote Sensing - Ahmedabad Chapter, during February 16-19, 1999 at Space Applications Centre(SAC). The event, first of its kind in western region, marked the launch of value-added services from SAC. A database of 1000 industries and user organisations of relevant sectors was created and used for communicating the announcement and a questionnaire. In addition, the event was advertised in the region through newspapers.
The response was overwhelming as close to hundred participants applied for tutorials as against 20 seats. Forty five participants comprising 28 from industries and remaining from user organisations were selected for training. The tutorials comprising visual analysis, digital image processing and GIS on the respective days were conducted over 10-hour daily schedule. The program comprised of 15 lectures, and six practical and demonstration sessions. The feedback shows that the programme was a success and 90 per cent of the participants rated it as excellent to very good.
The workshop held on February 19, 1999 was addresssed by Shri Y S Rajan, Senior Technology Advisor, CII, Shri N Sampath, Executive Director, Antrix Corporation and Shri Vishnu Varshney, President, Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd., Ahmedabad. In all there were 180 participants to the workshop, which included 60 from industries and users, 45 from tutorials programme and 75 from SAC. There was lively participation and subjects like technology sharing, training, business options and collaboration were deliberated. The major points emerging from regional industries are sharing of applications technology, support to new RS/GIS ventures, training options including industry organised training, development of user-specified applications and empanelment of new industries. SAC has promised help in the form of training, long- term collaboration, help in developing applications and limited access to facilities for new enterprises. One of the biggest achievements of the event was that a large number of industries were sensitized in a single exposure and many of these will hopefully develop into full-fledged service providers in the field of RS/GIS applications.
A tutorial volume of lectures and exercises and a souvenir featuring abstracts and topical articles were brought out on the occasion. For the first time a brochure showcasing the applications technologies available for value added services from SAC was also released.
The tutorial volume is available from Secretary, ISRS-Ahmedabad Chapter at a price of Rs 250/-.
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Rapporteur: R P Dubey, Organising Secretary, CARG-99 & Manager, Value Added Services Cell (RESA), Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad-380 053.
Report on Ninth NDC User Interaction Workshop, March 15-16, 1999, Hyderabad
There were approximately 300 users registered for the event, representing various application areas. The user organisations represented include State RS Application Centres, University Departments, Regional RS Service Centres and other ISRO/DOS centres. A few participants from neighbouring countries viz., Bangladesh and Nepal also participated. Other than user groups, representatives from Indian and International RS industry viz., Space Imaging, US, Radarsat, Canada, and (a) Speck Systems, (b) Sierra Optima Ltd., (c) Tata Infotech, (d) Tricad Designs and Consultants and (e) IN-RIMT, all from Hyderabad, also participated.
Apart from inaugural and concluding (user feedback cum discussions) sessions, there were the following six technical sessions organised:
There was also an industry exhibition parallelly organised.
During the inaugural session the WWW homepage of NRSA (http://www.nrsa.gov.in) was formally inaugurated. Digital browse facility can now be accessed through this for a limited portion of the recently archived data sets. During the concluding session, users felt that some interaction among user groups could be facilitated through the web page, in future. It was reported that the prices of data products are getting revised upwards beginning from April 1, 1999.
Printed proceedings of the Ninth User Interaction Workshop was circulated to all registered participants.
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Rapporteur: Shri B. Gopalakrishna, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad-380 053
Literature
Contents of GIS@Development, Nov.-Dec. 1998 Issue
(1) Rules on mapping technology in India heading nowhere: It is official now! The government has finally announced that digitisation of SOI topomaps by agencies other than designated nine is not allowed. This order also has clearly brought out the fact that all the illusions created by IT Task Force for liberalisation of mapping country have met the dust. If implemented in letter and spirit, this document can drastically change the fate of GIS in the country.
(2) Mapping the mines: The quest continues: The use of latest mapping technologies like GIS, GPS and Remote Sensing is growing in Indian mines. These technologies have been extensively used in mapping the mining regions for various purposes. It provides the framework to acquire, develop and interpret the coupled spatial and tabular data sets used for mining. (An overview).
(3) Autodesk to set up wholly owned subsidiary in India.
(4) Online Atlas of India: Maps of India having various features like physical, political, population, mineral, railway, air network, etc., is available on www.mapsofindia.com. Several other details about state-boundaries, places, climate, economic indicators, revenues, infrastructure, industrial progress, capital investment and financial concessions etc., are available.
(5) Village maps online: Rural Ministry starts the dream project: The Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment has allocated US$ 800 million (Rs. 3200 crores) for updating cadastral maps at village level. This amount will be given to the states in the 9th plan period. It involves updating and digitisation of around 3 million sheets of maps and mapping of around 168 million households in the country.
(6) High Speed National Data Network: Sankya-Vahini is set to serve as a National Internet Backbone and it will connect users like universitieis, schools, hospitals, business, manufacturing units and financial institutions. The network will provide for their educational training , health care, and other knowledge-oriented multimedia applications for the technological and economic growth of the country.
(7) New Data Archival Policy of NRSA: National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) has revised the Archival Policy in order to keep a better record of the satellite data which is collected from various satellites and is stored in high Density Tapes (HDT). As the maintenance of these tapes is a serious and expensive business, and the demand for old data is less, the policy has been modified accordingly.
(8) Emerging Opportunities of GIS in India: Some of the recent reform measures and infrastructure initiatives from the government may boost the GIS market in a small way.
(9) European GIS Companies choose India to develop databases:
(10) "Low Cost GPS is needed", interview with President and CEO, Leica Geosystems
(11) "India needs to invest in databases", interview with Mr. Jack Dangermond, President ESRI
Contents of GIS@Development, Jan.-Feb. 1999 Issue
(1) Chasing the Mirage: A Planned India, describes various issues involved in the development of urban areas in general and infrastructure in particular. It covers topics like road development, water and sewerage work etc. and suggests probable approaches. The government initiatives have been dealt with. The role of GIS and Remote Sensing has been particularly emphasised. Details of government policies in general and the changes made in the 74th constitutional amendment are particularly highlighted. Some examples are given along with budgetary provisions and future development.
(2) A Facelift to Mumbai: Courtesy GIS: A GIS and Remote Sensing based approach has been used to revise the sanctioned regional plan for Mumbai. A prototype GIS-based monitoring system for Greater Mumbai Development Plan (1981-2001) has been developed by MMRDA.
(3) Getting Smarter with Smarter Maps: A joint venture between CMC and National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organization (NATMO) has undertaken digitisation of smart map of Calcutta.
(4) Right Ideas for Wrong Information: This short article describes the problems associated with non-availability of data required for actual and effective use of GIS technology in the country. The legalities issues and restrictions like the use of 5.8 m data from PAN sensor of IRS-1D satellite and 1:50,000 scale based information for many town in the country.
(5) Key Projects at a glance: A set of reports and articles dealing with the studies which concern with infrastructure development in the country have been listed.
(6) The Garden City Blooms with GIS Projects:
(7) Mirzapur: A GIS that works: This article gives details of the GIS system which is being used now in Mirzapur for various activities like computerization of tax records, property enumeration and mapping, use of GIS to increase revenue, linking urban infrastructure data with maps, water system, solid waste management, drain prioritisation etc.
(8) GPS for Large Scale Surveying: This article describes the GPS technology in details and presents two case studies from Hyderabad for large-scale mapping with GPS technology. These case studies are basically concerned with the competitiveness of GPS over conventional surveying technology.
(9) GIS is sine qua non to development and environment: This covers an interview with Shri Suresh P Prabhu, Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Government of India. In this interview, the Honourable Minister talks at length about the necessity of using GIS and Remote Sensing in the field of Forestry and Environment. He particularly emphasizes the development of Environmental Information Systems (ENVIS) throughout the country for collection, collation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information to all concerned. The talk also covers the utility of Remote Sensing and GIS for preparing bi-annual reports about the status of forests in the country.
Contents of GIS India, October 1998 Issue
Contents of GIS India, January 1999 Issue
Members may come across different sorts of stumbling blocks, while adopting the disparate set of hardware, software, algorithms and data sets available (either already owned or proposed to be acquired), towards configuring operational systems for meeting specific end uses in the broad discipline of Geomatics.
Through this column, they can seek any type of information or solution to any problem that may be faced by them. The Editorial Board would make all efforts to provide the information/ answers/ solutions.
End of ISG Newsletter March 1999.