Home > Geospatial Application Papers > Utility > Transport

Power | Telecom | Transport | Others




Building a transport GIS in Manipur


Towns and Villages  
The 1991 Census of India publishes eight volumes - one for each District (Imphal East & West are combined in a single volume). There are 2262 places - towns or villages. Each place has been allocated an Unique Identifier - PlaceID eg BSP.1V.12 where BSP is the standard district abbreviation in this case Bishnupur, 1 is the number allocated to the development block in the Bishnupur Volume, 'V' indicates the place has been designated a village ('T' indicates a Town) and 12 is the serial number allocated to the village in the appropriate census volume. The location of the villages was determined from the 1:50,000 toposheets, PWD District Maps and the maps in the Census Documents. The locations were digitised using the heads-up method with the 1:50,000 toposheets displayed on the screen.
Initially only a small number of the items of information contained in the census document was keyed into the computer. Now practically all the information has been keyed :- Amenities
  • Education
  • Medical
  • Drinking Water (Potable)
  • Post & Telegraph
  • Communications (Bus Stop)
  • Approach to Village (type of road construction)
  • Nearest Town & distance by road to nearest town
  • Power Supply
    Demographic
  • Number of Residential Houses
  • Number of Households
  • Total Population (Male & Female)
  • Population in 0-6 year age group (Male & Female)
  • Scheduled Castes (Male & Female)
  • Scheduled Tribes (Male & Female)
  • Literates (Male & Female)
  • Total Main Workers (Male & Female)
  • Cultivators (Male & Female)
  • Agricultural Labourers (Male & Female)
  • Livestock, Forestry etc workers (Male & Female)
  • Mining & Quarrying workers (Male & Female)
  • Manufacturing, Processing and Repairs in Households (Male & Female)
  • Manufacturing, Processing and Repairs not in Households (Male & Female)
  • Construction (Male & Female)
  • Trade & Commerce Workers (Male & Female)
  • Transport Storage & Communications (Male & Female)
  • Other Services (Male & Female)
  • Marginal workers (Male & Female)
  • Non-workers (Male & Female)
Using the "Info" tool the census data for a specific town or village can be displayed on the screen simply by 'clicking on' the village.

In addition the amenity and/ or the demographic information relating to people living within say 3 km of a selected road section(s) can be readily summarised and/ or accumulated.

The villages contained in the census sometimes comprise two or more small settlements. To assist social, environment and other surveys the location of settlements within two kilometres (crow-line distance) of the centre-line of road sections being evaluated in the Feasibility Study have been digitised from the 1:50,000 toposheets.

Earth Sciences
This major component owes much to Dr Arun Kumar and his GIS team in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Manipur(MU). The co-operation between us started early in our work. We had digitised the road network from a 1:250,000 map base and MU provided us with the following vector tables (layers) :-
  • Geological formation
  • Soils
  • Main Rivers
  • Waterbodies
  • Epicentres
  • Faultlines
  • Relief (250m increments)
which they had digitised from a 1:250,000 map base. Figure 5 shows the Epicentres and Faultlines overlaid by the main roads in the District of Tamenglong.

More recently we have 're-digitised' the rivers using the 1:50,000 toposheets as a base.

In the Imphal Valley and the surrounding foothills we have together digitised the contours (100 m).

The locations of and information about recent landslides were obtained from PWD and supplemented by searches through past copies of the local newspapers.

- Dr Arun Kumar and his team are currently processing satellite images acquired by PCCS from IRS to prepare land-use/ land cover maps.

Raster Images
Raster images have two main roles in the GIS. The first is to provide the base mapping on the screen for heads-up digitising and the second is to present information that is not, or not yet, available in vector form. (Photographs fall into the second category)

There are five folders of raster images in the GIS.
    - Map250000 - 1:250,000 scale maps
  • Survey of India 1:250,000 scale maps of areas adjacent to Manipur available as grey scale as well as colour
  • Original Blueprint with roads drawn on provided by PWD - Road Tracings - these were prepared by tracing the roads and rivers on the 1:50,000 toposheets. Additional village names from the District Maps were added.
    - Satellite Photographs - obtained from IRS.
    - Toposheets - 1:50,000 Topographic Map Sheets
    - Various - The Development Constraint Maps (19 in all) from the "Zoning Atlas for Siting of Industries" prepared by the Central Pollution Control Board. Photographs, mostly of the roads, taken on the road observation tours. Pages from Manuals etc for use in training/ presentation.
Other 

Road Accidents

Information on all road accidents in the five years 1994-1998 was prepared by the Police or the Director of Transport. Only personal injury accidents were recorded. The location of the accidents are written descriptions. From these we were able to identify on which road link in the Road Network the accident occurred in three out of four cases. For economic assessments and to guide road safety campaigns additional data on injuries received in road accidents were obtained from the Hospital.

Historic Sites
The location of important historic sites were obtained from local literature.

Hospitals and Major Health Centres 
Information on health facilities were obtained from the Dept of Health and the 1991 Census.

Acknowledgements
Without the encouragement and support of E. BinoyKumar Singh (ex-Chief Engineer, PWD), A. Nilamani (Project Director,PWD), R Riding(Team Leader) and the co-operation of Dr Arun Kumar the GIS would not be so comprehensive. Further without my Manipuri GIS Team - Tarun, Subho, Jeetu, Oken, Biswajit and Tampha little of the above would have been possible.

Page 3 of 3
| Previous |