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Spatial Information Systems for Sustainable Development
Towards Sustainable development
Within the
framework of sustainable development, planning needs also to oriented towards
addressing both short-term implications and needs to address:
- Natural resources optimisation in developmental projects so as to minimise
the impact on environmental degradation form the inputs of natural resources.
- Integrated rather than sectoral developmental approach. Planning based on
the sectoral approach, with separate financial allocation made for different
sectors of economy, like agriculture, forestry, etc. fails to recognise the
multi-dimensional interlinkages between various natural resources and
environment and hence produce results/plans which would be not sustainable.
- Adopting natural boundaries defined by river basins/sub-basins as a planning
unit rather than an administrative unit which does not take into consideration
the boundaries of resource transgression.
- Stress needs to be on determining different alternatives and selection of
the most sustainable solution for development.
- People’s participation for a proper definition of the developmental
needs/requirements.
The fundamental principle underlining a National
Information Infrastructure (NIL), is the “Right to know” and “Right to
information” tenet. Right to information to public domain data, consumer data,
citizens rights, universal access, financial data, etc., drives the need for
developing a NIL.
For effective planning and development, a variety of
data on physical and natural resources, human resources, social practices and
economic aspects etc. are required. Keeping in view the scope and content of
plan and from overall development needs of a region, information needs for the
planning could be broadly grouped into following data sets.
- Natural resources data in terms of land use, cropping area, water bodies and
drainage, soils, terrain characteristics, mineral resources.
- Demographic data – relating to population, sex ratio, age structure, urban
and rural population, scheduled caste and scheduled tribe population,
occupational structure migration etc.
- Agro-economic data-comprising information about cropped and irrigated area,
agricultural production, land holdings, live stock population etc.
- Socio-economic activities relating to industrial, fishing activities,
tourism development as well as beneficiary of various schemes and programmes of
development.
- Infrastructure data relating to availability and level of various facilities
– utilities and services such as education, health, power, transport network,
water supply, drainage etc.
Role of Remote Sensing and
GIS
Viewing the Earth from Space emphasises the global nature of our
planet and inter-relations among the various natural and man-made phenomena and
earth’s resources. These observations have also brought to mankind’s awareness
the fragile nature of the environment and its vulnerability to change from both
natural resources exploitation and human activities. The human-race faces the
conflicting challenge of an increasing population and limited natural resources.
On the other hand, it is imperative to maintain the environment for the future
generations. This necessitates the development of natural resources to meet the
immediate needs of the present population and the requirements of the future
generations without in any way endangering the ecology and environment – thus
recognising the fact that economic growth and environmental protection are
inextricably linked.
Earth Observation (EO) satellites provide the
vantage point and coverage necessary to study our planet as an integrated,
interactive physical and biological system. The key areas where EO data are of
use is Global environment change monitoring, management of renewable and
non-renewable resources, resources mapping, geo-positioning applications and
also for strategic application of national security.
GIS relates to the
technology dealing with the character and structure of spatial and non-spatial
information, its methods of acquisition, analog and digital capture,
organisation, classification and qualification, analysis, management, display
and dissemination, as well as the infrastructure necessary for the optimal use
of the information. GIS is a synergism of various disciplines-Geographical
information System (GIS), computerised databases and applications, computer
science, graphical processing, cartography, photogrammetry, statistics, remote
sensing etc. The applications of GIS to real-world problems of management of
natural and man-made environment and of the objects related to it. This would
encompass the fields of natural resources management, resources planning and
decision-making etc. GIS has to be at the core of sustainable development
efforts with specific utilities for:
- Organising integrated spatial and non-spatial database using the GIS tools
in a systematic manner. The spatial data - consisting of maps from Remotely
Sensed (RS) data and also conventional sources would have to be input and
organised on a standard cartographic reference. The non-spatial data –
consisting of numeric attributes in respect of socio-economic characteristics
from census and other sources – most of which would be on the administrative
hierarchy of the region, say village-taluk-district; ward-municipality etc.
- Integration or the synthesis of the spatial and non-spatial information
within the framework of a coherent data model and a linkage between the
different datasets. This involves the bringing together of diverse information
from a variety of sources, requires the effective matching of similar entities
and demands information consistency across the databasets.
- Generation of spatial outputs, supported by tables/charts, to help the
developmental planning and decision-making.
- The Geographical Information System (GIS) package will be the workhorse, as
both spatial and non-spatial databases have to be handled. The GIS package
offers efficient utilities for handling both these datasets and also allows for
the spatial database organisation; non-spatial datasets organisation – mainly as
attributes of the spatial elements; integrated analysis and transformation for
obtaining the required information; obtaining information in specific format
(cartographic quality outputs and reports); organisation of queries etc.
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