India's Indigenously Developed GIS doing wonders in Elections Monitoring & Disaster Management!

[Chanakya's_Chant]

How India used GIS in elections monitoring, disaster recovery
Maintaining quick response times is a major challenge, says National Remote Sensing Centre.

India's national geographic information system (GIS) was used to monitor the 2014 general elections and gauge damage caused by natural disasters. The National Remote Sensing Centre told FutureGov how its GIS tool, Bhuvan, was used and how it has quickly responded to users.

Bhuvan was used to monitor inputs and to measure impacts of disasters for reconstruction after the recent Jammu and Kashmir floods and Andhra Pradesh cyclone this year, Vinod Bothale from the National Remote Sensing Centre said.

It was also used in the 2014 general elections to support the “planning and monitoring of polling in [the state of] Andhra Pradesh” by crowdsourcing data using mobile devices, said Bothale.

In addition, the Andhra Pradesh State Housing Corporation has used Bhuvan to geo-tag houses it constructed. 200,000 locations have been uploaded from the field, by trained state government officials using a smartphone app.

Though it has been around since 2009, Bhuvan was first used to provide online disaster support services in 2013 when it was deployed in the Uttarakhand flood disaster. The Indian Government used Bhuvan’s crowdsourcing app to map the damage with more than 19,000 points of information from the field.

Subsequently, all major natural disasters have been monitored through Bhuvan, including forest fires and cyclones.

He says that the major challenge to design and develop Bhuvan was the requirement to build it in a “very short time of within one year”. In its first year, the portal was launched with India’s satellite data with 5.8 metres spatial resolution, and has since then been continuously updated with data from other sources.

“Quick response to the requirements of the user has always been a major challenge.” Bothale says. This has been overcome using a distributed computing architecture, with four additional servers in different regions in the country.

Today, Bhuvan sees more than 20,000 unique visitors every month and has seen about 260,000 application downloads to date.


By Charlene Chin - Charlene is a journalist based in the Singapore office, where she specialises in Geographic Information Systems, cyber security and the Internet of Things. She has a degree in Economics and Finance from the University of London.

Source:- India’s GIS tool used in elections monitoring, disaster recovery | 2014-11-30 | FutureGov

 

[Echo_419]

How India used GIS in elections monitoring, disaster recovery
Maintaining quick response times is a major challenge, says National Remote Sensing Centre.

India's national geographic information system (GIS) was used to monitor the 2014 general elections and gauge damage caused by natural disasters. The National Remote Sensing Centre told FutureGov how its GIS tool, Bhuvan, was used and how it has quickly responded to users.

Bhuvan was used to monitor inputs and to measure impacts of disasters for reconstruction after the recent Jammu and Kashmir floods and Andhra Pradesh cyclone this year, Vinod Bothale from the National Remote Sensing Centre said.

It was also used in the 2014 general elections to support the “planning and monitoring of polling in [the state of] Andhra Pradesh” by crowdsourcing data using mobile devices, said Bothale.

In addition, the Andhra Pradesh State Housing Corporation has used Bhuvan to geo-tag houses it constructed. 200,000 locations have been uploaded from the field, by trained state government officials using a smartphone app.

Though it has been around since 2009, Bhuvan was first used to provide online disaster support services in 2013 when it was deployed in the Uttarakhand flood disaster. The Indian Government used Bhuvan’s crowdsourcing app to map the damage with more than 19,000 points of information from the field.

Subsequently, all major natural disasters have been monitored through Bhuvan, including forest fires and cyclones.

He says that the major challenge to design and develop Bhuvan was the requirement to build it in a “very short time of within one year”. In its first year, the portal was launched with India’s satellite data with 5.8 metres spatial resolution, and has since then been continuously updated with data from other sources.

“Quick response to the requirements of the user has always been a major challenge.” Bothale says. This has been overcome using a distributed computing architecture, with four additional servers in different regions in the country.

Today, Bhuvan sees more than 20,000 unique visitors every month and has seen about 260,000 application downloads to date.


By Charlene Chin - Charlene is a journalist based in the Singapore office, where she specialises in Geographic Information Systems, cyber security and the Internet of Things. She has a degree in Economics and Finance from the University of London.

Source:- India’s GIS tool used in elections monitoring, disaster recovery | 2014-11-30 | FutureGov

Resolution should be further improved

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Resolution should be further improved

The current resolution both in 2D & 3D is sufficiently enough. It will be further be improved with the launch of RESOURCESAT-3, CARTOSAT-3 and OCEANSAT-3 - the next generation of Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites in the coming years.

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ESSO-INCOIS, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India) - INCOIS, designed and developed indigenously, had worked perfectly in the last seven years, sending out information to authorities in India and 22 other countries in South and South-east Asia and the Middle East about earthquakes being generated in the Indian Ocean region, and whether they were likely to produce tsunamis.

India Upgrades its Tsunami Early Warning System Adding a new GPS Security Layer​

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

IMD launches SMS-based weather alerts

Under this round-the-clock web-based operational system, the IMD will send SMS to individuals who would register themselves at the weather forecaster's official website — IMD - Weather on Web — for this purpose. ​

NEW DELHI: The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) - country's national weather forecaster — on Thursday launched an SMS-based alert system for general public for dissemination of weather and disaster-related (cyclone, floods, heavy rains) information.

Under this round-the-clock web-based operational system, the IMD will send SMS to individuals who would register themselves at the weather forecaster's official website — IMD - Weather on Web — for this purpose.

Besides giving information about natural calamities, the system will also suggest what action needs to be taken, both by the authorities and the people.

Launching the system to mark good governance day, the Union minister of earth sciences Harsh Vardhan said the information on warnings will be disseminated to officials involved in administration, district magistrates besides fishermen, farmers and general public.

"The whole process would take almost a year to get operationalized since we need to collect data and put it together. We would be closely working with the ministry of home affairs and agencies like National Information Centre and NDMA to put all the data together," he said.

Besides giving information about natural calamities, the system will also suggest what action needs to be taken, both by the authorities and the people.​

The SMS-based weather alert system is a component of the 'Digital India Programme'. The Met has leveraged its programme to utilize the 'Mobile Seva' of department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) for SMS based alerts/warnings for a wide range of users, including disaster managers, targeted users and general public.

This is part of multiple initiatives taken by IMD in recent years, for improvement in weather forecasting and warning services based on latest tools and technologies including information and communication technology.

"The improvement in cyclone warning systems has resulted in significant reduction in loss of life and property", said Shailesh Nayak, secretary, ministry of earth sciences.

He cited examples of very severe cyclonic storms, Phailin and Hudhud, which crossed Odisha coast near Gopalpur and Andhra Pradesh coast near Visakhapatnam on October 12, 2013 and 2014 respectively wherein loss of life and resources was minimized with the help of effective and accurate cyclone warning systems.

Source:- IMD launches SMS-based weather alerts - The Times of India

 

[SledgeHammer]

Awesome!!

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

Advanced Version of IGiS Platform Launched

Scanpoint Geomatics Ltd. (SGL)​

Launching the advanced version of IGiS platform developed by Ahmedabad-based Scanpoint Geomatics Ltd. (SGL), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman AS Kiran Kumar called for more indigenously developed operational software in the country.

Highlighting the predicament users face while using imported software, Kumar said that more institutions could work on several areas for developing software within the country to save costs.

"Users have to pay a lot of money for merely maintaining imported software. Lot of such software is imported and exorbitant costs are paid for them. We need more and more institutions to work on host of areas and build an ecosystem of developing capabilities for software that can solve day-to-day problem of the country. IGiS is such an effort to bring in more and more operational software developed indigenously," Kumar said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the launch, Kumar said that GSLV Mark III is being readied on time. "We are now building our cryogenic technology for GSLV Mark 3. We have completed almost four of the trials and firing tests. We are going quite well. We expect the next version of the GSLV Mark 3 to be up by December 2016," Kumar said.

The latest advanced version of IGiS platform includes capabilities like various image processing and GIS tools has been developed and integrated with IGiS.

According to Chirag Soni, chief technology officer of SGL, when ISRO launched RISAT Satellite then new features are available are taking satellite photos during nighttime, during rainy season, During cloudy weather condition, Scanpoint IGiS version 2.0 has capability to process RISAT images and it will be first such Indian company to have this capability.

The major modules are RISAT-1 SAR, Meteorological GIS (Met GIS) and Resourcesat-2 AWiFs Atmospheric Correction. A module for the support of DGN file is also provided with this version. RISAT-1 SAR module is capable in ingestion and processing of all modes of RISAT-1 data. The MetGIS module supports meteorological satellites data like Kalpana-1, INSAT-3A, INSAT-3D and Proba-V.

"This is a significant enhancement product release that will support digitising crop map and asses the crop damage," said Rajendra Chaudhari, CEO, Scanpoint.

Meanwhile, Ramesh Sojitra, managing director of SGL said that with IGiS Platform version 2.0 launch Scanpoint is going to compete with World Class GIS companies.

Need more indigenously developed operational software: ISRO chief | Business Standard News