1. Executive Summary
This paper explains about the experiences of developing GIS for a typical urban environment in the case of Bangalore City. The various aspects covered in this paper are the evolution of the GIS model, the various agencies involved, the projects, the methodology, the GISnet, GIS steering committee, Spatial Planning/Data center, the implementation and the benefits. The core issue in this paper is how the Bangalore GIS model evolved over the period.
2. Background
Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF): Objectives
In Nov 1999, the State Government of Karnataka constituted the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) with several eminent professionals. The Objectives of the Task Force are:
- Make Bangalore the best city in India by 2004
- Upgrade and enhance the managerial and administrative capabilities of various civic and administrative stakeholders
- Enable provision of citizen oriented , high quality public services that will improve the physical quality of life for individuals and communities
- Augment financial resources and revenues of stakeholders to enable them to perform at world class levels
Digital Urban Management Programme
The digital Urban Management Programme is set of information tools with number of applications designed to manage urban areas efficiently; this is based on the Geographic Information System.
Long term goals of the DIMAP are towards the development of a comprehensive urban information system to address the issues of:
- City planning and development
- Transportation system and traffic management
- Planning and development of civic amenities-Schools, Hospitals, Shopping centres etc
- Property tax collection and urban development fund generation
- Planning, development and managing the utilities-water supply, sewerage system, telephone system and power.
The goal of the project is to simplify the acquisition and sharing of geographical data. The objective is to:
- Establish modern GIS facility (Hardware, software and Human resources) capable of supporting the urban development
- Identify other GIS application domains within the city council and other authorities dealing with urban development (water and electricity services, health and community services, civil engineering etc)
- Instigate the establishment of links in the form of data exchange agreements between relevant urban development authorities
- Produce a high quality, digital and parcel maps for the entire city
- Improve the quality of the results of the city's assessment process
- Facilitate effective collaboration between local and federal government agencies as well as private enterprises and other end users
- Share data with other GIS users
3. GIS Action Plan
Immediate tasks:
- Needs assessment- Projects related to GIS/GPS (BATF with stakeholders)
- Formation of GIS steering committee (BATF)
- Periodic review of status of GIS projects or mapping activity(BATF)
- Formulation of policy, city level GIS regarding the use of map and other data, software/hardware etc
- Action plans for executing the projects-(BATF with the stakeholder)
Need for GIS Steering committee
GIS projects are not same as other projects, in terms of design, cost, and implementation. At present the various stakeholders are dealing with some form of GIS/GPS projects or mapping activity. But there is no coordination or inclination towards sharing of data or cost. Inordinate delays in executing projects, the approach or attitude towards the project are not satisfactory.
The formation of steering committee, coordinated by BATF, will bring all the stakeholders under one umbrella. The various issues can be resolved and increases the chances of coordination between agencies with the initiative of BATF. The coordination lead to solve the overlap of issues like sharing of cost or data in the city level GIS projects, that most of the stakeholders already involved or to be involved in the future.
The other general issues related to the various GIS/GPS projects, there is no standard base map, data, software/hardware used by various agencies. For example BWSSB is using NRSA base map, and the software/hardware used is different from other agencies like BDA and BMTC.
Roles have GIS steering committee
- Standardization and fostering cooperation among stakeholders
- Responsibilities include the development of GIS standards
- Data sharing
- Guidelines for data sharing