NRSA has been a pioneer in operational remote sensing activities for India. How would you describe the agency's growth and evolution over the years, especially in the present competing times of widespread recognition of the science?
Since its inception in 1975, NRSA has gradually evolved itself as a leading force in the field of operational remote sensing. Till 1980, during the formative phase, the concentration was towards building up of infrastructure, wherein, the major milestone was establishment of the Earth Station at Shadnagar in 1979. The period 1980-86 can be described as experimental phase, wherein, national level utilization programmes were given the impetus. Rechristening of IPI at Dehradun as Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) can be termed as another milestone.

During its operational phase, say between 1986-93, NRSA geared itself for handling many projects at national level covering fields like land use/land cover, wasteland inventory, hydrogeomorphology, fishery, drought, floods etc. Besides , it also opened its international marketing vista for data products dissemination, which incidentally has crossed the 10,000 mark during the time. The major landmark for this period is undoubtedly the launch of IRS-1A (1988) / 1B (1991) operational remote sensing satellites and their data reception.

In the expansive phase from 1993 to till date, NRSA has matured into a fully operational remote sensing services provider. It helped the establishment of 13 International Ground Stations (IGS) all over the world, besides, 3 mobile stations. It also has undertaken new national projects like IMSD, Wastelands, RGNDWM, Disasters, LHZ, etc. during this period. Setting up of the Centre for Space Sciences Technology and Education for Asia-Pacific (CSSTE-AP) at IIRS campus in 1995 has been a landmark. This centre trains personnel in different fields of space sciences and applications from the Asia-Pacific region.

How much of OGC standards have actually been implemented for use by different software or service vendors today?
To the best of our knowledge, there are hundreds of implementations of OpenGIS Specifications. If one goes to the website - http://www.opengis.org/resources/?page=products, there is a detailed list of implementations that have been registered. However, this is by no means a complete list. There are many more implementations, especially in Europe and Australia. The Web Map Service (WMS) Interface Specification is the most widely implemented OpenGIS Specification. Other key OpenGIS specifications, especially in terms of portal implementations, are the Web Feature Service (WFS) Interface specification, the Geography Markup Language (GML), and the Catalog Interface Specification.

Is the OGC about compatible file formats or common identification parameters for features? Or both?
This is a real misconception regarding the work of the OGC. We do not work on content standards, file formats, or defining common identifiers for features. Instead, the OGC membership works collaboratively to define, test, document and approve specifications for common software interfaces and encodings that enable the industry to maximize the value of past and future investments in geoprocessing systems and data. Put another way, the use of OpenGIS specifications, such as WMS, allows applications to access and share spatial data stored in multiple, distributed spatial data repositories that are network accessible. These repositories may be stored in in any number of formats.

The OGC uses global consensus process that results in approved interface and encoding specifications that enable interoperability among and between diverse geospatial data stores, services, and applications. In the OGC, geospatial technology users work with technology providers.

Our membership is international and includes universities, national government agencies, local government agencies, earth imaging vendors, content providers, database software vendors, integrators, computing platform vendors and other technology providers to reach agreement on OpenGIS Specifications for interfaces, schemas and architectures. OGC standards provide essential infrastructure for application such as a National Spatial Data Infrastructure, a network of geospatial resources that is integrated into Web.

NRSA being focussed on operational aspects, where do you see the future of geospatial operations market in India?
Ideologically, the future of the geospatial operations market is expected around fully networked and freely integrating spatial information flows in a borderless environment. For this to fully evolve, it requires developments on many a front including remote sensing including image processing, GIS, GPS, Web technologies. Besides, it requires a quantum jump in the understanding and appreciation of the user community needs towards systematizing their information needs. But all this is happening, across the globe and in India too, albeit with different speeds. Indian market cannot be studied in isolation, as it is not oblivious to the changing order world over.

What major initiatives have been taken by NRSA?
In one of the major initiatives, Department of Space (DOS) has initiated Disaster Management Support Programme (DMSP), wherein a Decision Support Centre (DSC) would be set up at NRSA. It is expected to be a single-window space-based information provider for supporting operational disaster management activities. Since 2000, NRSA has also opened up its aerial survey facility for users outside India on a commercial basis. It is also equipping with an Airborne Laser Terrain Mapping instrument (ALTM). Initiation of Natural Resources Census (NR-Census) and Large Scale Mapping (LSM) are two new programmes, among a host of other application areas. Availability of data from IRS-P6 with enhanced capability should open a vista of new applications.

How easy or difficult is to acquire a high-resolution imagery for a private sector applicant? What is the NRSA policy in this regard?
NRSA has been identified as the nodal agency for dissemination of high spatial resolution data. A high powered committee comprising of representatives from Department of Space, Cabinet Secretariat, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of External Affairs, Survey of India has been constituted to screen the requests and facilitate dissemination to all, including private users. Till now, the requirement of more than a hundred users have been met.

What do you think is NRSA's role in education/training of the Indian geomatics community at large? Is there a dedicated mandate to transfer expertise and knowledge to the Indian industries?
NRSA through IIRS is contributing in a big way towards human resources development cause of Indian geomatics community.It is conducting both Masters and PG Diploma programmes for this audience.