India Elevates GIS for Urban Planning
community, earth observation, spatial data, system of systems July 13th, 2009Dr. K. Kasturirangan received the Making a Difference Award at this year’s ESRI/UC, after recently being elevated to the position of director of the Planning Commission for the government of India. Kasturirangan previously served as a member of Parliament in the country’s Senate, and ran the Indian National Remote Sensing Agency.
Dr. Kasturirangan spoke at yesterday’s Senior Executive Seminar about the application of geospatial technologies for sustainable development. In that talk he outlined the many ways that the country has applied remote sensing and geospatial technology to improve the quality of life in his country, including public health, agriculture, groundwater monitoring, disaster management and climate change.
In his new position on the Planning Commission, Dr. Kasturirangan holds the purse strings to achieve his vision of a National Urban Information System. The effort to develop geospatial systems for all large cities within India began this year in 130 cities. The ultimate vision is for the creation of a GIS system in 5,000 cities throughout the country. It’s an impressive goal, and an unprecedented coordinated commitment that will make India a leading force in the geospatial community for some time to come.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 am
Lets check the reality of GIS Implementation in Urban India
Most of the cities under the JNNURM has not gone ahead with the GIS project. The projects are delayed due to slow implementation of NUIS projects wherein the excessive control of government agencies have restricted the participation of the private players. Second, no consultation workshops are carried out specific to the cities and SRS was conducted was not conducted in these cities. Enblock allocation of resources from the central government would not result in appreciable implementation of the GIS systems in the cities. Else they would be limited to ‘pilots’ in some metros. The participation and information sharing with the citizens have yet to start in these cities. Except Surat and Bangalore few cities are prepared to facilitates the citizens with the GIS technology outputs. Till this happens we may not see an effective systems..