NEWS

India plans to prepare digital maps of all its 6,00,000 villages and pan-India 3D maps will be prepared for 100 cities, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology said at an event to mark a year of the updated geospatial policy guidelines. It will help SVAMITVA scheme

DETAILS

WHAT IS GEO-SPATIAL DATA

• Also known as “spatial data”
• Represents the data-linked to features or objects on the Earth’s surface
• Referenced to locations on the earth (some portion of data is spatial)
• Can be
  • Static, like the location of a road, an earthquake event, malnutrition among children, etc.
  • Dynamic like a moving vehicle or pedestrian, the spread of an infectious disease.
• Examples in daily lives – food delivery apps like Swiggy or Zomato, e-commerce app like Amazon, Weather apps, etc

WHAT INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE

• Location information
• Attribute information (the characteristics of the object, event, or phenomena concerned): For example, in addition to the spatial information of building it also provides other information like the number of stories in the building, number of owners, etc.
• Temporal information or the time at which the location and attributes exist

IN INDIA

• Till recently, the government had a near-monopoly regarding the collection, storage, use, sale, dissemination of geo-spatial data and mapping. This was because of concerns over internal as well as external security threats.
• For example, Only government-run agencies such as the Survey of India, Defence and Home Ministries were allowed to use geospatial data.
• The private companies require approval from different departments as well as the Defence and Home Ministries. Then only, they were able to collect, create or disseminate geospatial data.
• So there is a lack of private participation in Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping in India.
• India built its own navigation system known as Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) or NavIC
• Building geospatial portals like Bhuvan portal, Meteorological and Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Centre (MOSDAC) of ISRO.

NEW GUIDELINES

• Geospatial data will be freely available in India, specifically for Indian companies.
• The companies can self-attest to government guidelines and start using geospatial data.
• Restrictions under the present policy:
  • Only Indian entities can use terrestrial mapping and surveys.
  • The data generated also needs to be owned and stored in India.
  • High-resolution data—finer than 1 m horizontally and 3 m vertically—will still remain restricted.
  • Except for sensitive defence or security-related data, all other data can be accessed by Indian companies.
• With this policy, Indian companies will be able to set up location services like Google Map in India.

NOTE :

SVAMITVA SCHEME