Introduction
Since the beginning of human civilisation, mankind, has lived in a competitive relationship with nature. While man’s interdependence on environment is greater than that of any other organisms, his relentless pursuit of progress, comfort and security has resulted in constantly increasing emphasis on proper decision-making and the need for more and more information. From the earliest time, each age has overtaken mankind more rapidly than the one before. The Stone Age lasted for millions of years when Man had very rudimentary forms of information at hand and was in a process of evolving a “knowledge base”; the metal age that followed only lasted for about 5000 years when Man had lots of information at hand and had also developed concepts for storing it with scripts and symbols, in texts and records, to drawing pictures and shapes. The industrial revolution, which occurred in the early 18th century, saw information and communication technology develop through capture of texts, photographs and books to a good literature base. This age culminated into the Electric Age, in the early 20th century, when man invented newer modes of gathering and generating information and recording it on magnetic and tape media and also when photography as an information recording medium developed further. It was in the early parts of the 20th century that radio emerged as a medium of communication and information transmission. Later, in the 1940s, televisions and transmission of pictures changed the scope of communication and entertainment. With the emergence of the Satellites, communication and information gathering took giant leap forward and enabled the reach of information to remote corners. The Electronic Age, which has seen the emergence of newer electronics technology, has lasted a scant 25 years but has been the harbinger for the more recent Information Age, brought about by the preponderance of computer technology, communication technology, database technology etc, over the past 10 years. However, now we see the emergence of a new trend-the convergence of communications technology, database, Information highway and multimedia, which are powerful and pervasive technologies of our times, into the Maga-media age.

Sustainable development – the needs
Man’s dependence on environment is reflected in the pursuit of progress, comforts and security which causes mores stress on the environment. As a result, the life-sustaining mechanisms are stretched to limits and this poses a challenge to the society as a whole. The rapid increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, large-scale deforestation and its impact on boidiversity, land degradation and pollution have become local as well as global concerns. Locally, the impact is felt in the changes in climate, agricultural productivity and loss of biodiversity, social patterns and culture etc. These problems are compounded in the developing countries – mainly because of the rapidly growing population and serious shortage of resources.

The fundamental aspect of sustainable development lies in the paradigm of scientific innovation and economic determinism within the physical limits imposed by ecological systems on economic activity. At the root of this concept is the fact that the environment does pose a limit for development and economic activity and a balance must be struck between environmental constraints and developmental activity. The economics of development must expand within ecosystems, which have limited regenerative capacities. The need is for a full integration of environmental and developmental issues for decision-making on economic, social, and fiscal, exploitation and regeneration of natural resources and other policies.

The science of sustainable development requires strategies based on an accurate assessment of the Earth’s carrying capacity, as outlined in Agenda 21. In practical terms, the carrying Capacity (CC) of a region determines the increasing competition among the populace for resources present in the region. Ecosystem carrying capacity provides the physical limits to economic development and may be defined as the maximum rate of resources consumption and waste discharge that can be sustained indefinitely in a defined planning region without progressively impairing bio-productivity and Eco-integrity. This concept involves an integration of social expectations and ecological capabilities and minimising the differentials between resource demand/requirement and supply/availability.

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.

Indian RS Programme
Recognizing the importance of remote sensing satellite-based systems for the management of the natural resources, the Indian Remote Sensing Programme has been the mainstay for the establishment of the NNRMS – which has the participation of various Central and State agencies/departments. Towards the NNRMS, a series of satellites including IRS-1A launched in 1988, IRS-1B launched in 1991, IRS-P2 in October 1994, URS-1C in December 1995, IRS-P3 in March, 1996 and IRS-1D in August, 1997 have been providing remote sensing data services on a continuous basis to the users.

The Department of Space (DOS), along with user departments/agencies has taken up national- level remote sensing applications projects in different resource management areas and the technology has matured to cover diverse resource themes/areas such as forestry, wasteland mapping, agricultural crop acreage and yield estimation, drought monitoring and assessment, flood monitoring and damage assessment, landuse/land cover mapping, wasteland mapping, water resources management, ground water targeting and environmental impact assessment etc . Some of the notable applications are:

• Ground water targeting, wherein remote sensing data has been used to map the hydrogeomorphology for the whole country on a district-wise basis at 1:250,000 and now on 1:50,000 scales.
• Forest mapping, where the extent and density of forests have been mapped for the whole country. This is being done in a routine manner every 2 years.
• Flood affected area mapping, where the flood affected areas are being mapped on a near-real time basis for the Gangetic and Brahmaputra basins.
• Crop acreage and Production estimation for a variety of crops-wheat, paddy, groundnut, sorghum and cotton is estimated using digital IRS data and digital image analysis methods. This is being done for a large part of the cropped area of the country.
• Coastal environment mapping for the entire coastline of the country where wetland, coastal landforms, coastal processes, shorelines, mangroves, etc. are mapped using IRS data.
• Urban growth trends for Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi – NCR, Bangalore etc, are also being studied using IRS data.
• Environmental impact of mining; watershed characterization for soil conservation; mineral targeting; landuse mapping etc. are some of the other significant applications of IRS data.
• Waste land Mapping and Development, where information on wastelands are mapped and developmental plans for reclamation are defined.

With the help of the Planning Commission and active participation of user departments, 174 districts in the country have been taken up under the Integrated Mission on Sustainable Development (IMSD) programme for preparing locale-specific land and water resources action plans towards achieving sustainable development. Actual implementation of these strategies is being carried out in some selected watersheds of the country to demonstrate the capability of the technique for sustainable development planning. The IMSD approach involves integration of thematic information on various natural resources – land use/cover, types of wastelands, forest cover/types, surface water resources, dr4ainage pattern, potential ground water zones, geomorphology (landforms), geology (rock types, structural details, mineral occurrence, soil types, etc . derived from satellite data and integrating them with other ancillary information, meteorological and socio-economic data in a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment to arrive at locale-specific prescriptions for development.

Towards NSII – A network of GIS based Information Systems
In Indian, a major effort is on-going towards establishing a National (Natural) Resources Information Systems (NRIS) – a three-tiered hierarchy of GIS databases pertaining to districts on 1:50000 scale; states on 1:250000 scale and the nation on 1:1000000 scale. The NRIS is networked across the levels so that aggregated information can be available at high levels. The NRIS has a standard GIS design and contains 21 layers of primary spatial data sets and 8 types of non-spatial attributes. The NRIS has application shells that allow information modeling and access for decision-making on land management, water management, facilities siting, services centre location etc.

The establishment of a three-tiered Natural Resources Information System (NRIS) is one of the major and essential steps towards the achievement of the National Natural Management System (NNRMS) and also to meet the spatial information system requirements of IMSD and other developmental activities in the country. NRIS mainly caters to three levels of decision-making –national levels - for policies and strategic decision-making; state/region – for planning and tactical decisions and local-level-for implementation and actual development. The NRIS is a distributed database system catering to the needs of decision-m makers. The objectives of the NRIUS Programme are:

• To systemise, design and establish sectoral and hierarchical information systems for the totality of natural resources management in the country.
• To design information transfer mechanisms for a systematic networking of the sectoral and hierarchical information system.
• To develop appropriate technology and establish an infrastructure base for hardware, software and trained manpower for the operational usage of NRIS.
• Evolve an organisation structure for the management and upkeep of the NRIS nodes in an operational scenario.

The NRIS would be a set of natural resources databases organised in two hierarchies, as follows:

• Centre-State-District, catering to resources and sectors requiring integrated resources management or for preparing plans according to administrative units – district plans, state plans, Central plan etc.
• Centre-Region-Project, catering to sectoral resource management needs. For example, Water Resources, Forestry etc where the natural resource boundaries (forest unit, watershed etc) is the unit

The NRIS Nodes need to interlinked/networked so as to cater to free flow of information to the next higher level in the hierarchy. This Networking would be both horizontally – intra–node and vertically – inter-node. Contents of a NSII The contents of a NSII could include, amongst other datasets:

• Natural resources data in terms of land use, cropping area, water bodies and drainage, soils, terrain characteristics, mineral resources.
• Meterological data comprising of rainfall and climatic variations.
• 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.

Development and availability of Expert Systems encompassing navigation databases, water management databases, traffic management databases etc will emerge as a major area.

Spatial information Infrastructure – The Need
Information infrastructure has become an essential element of the development of any country. In the global sense, the concept of a Global Information Infrastructure (GII) is being talked of based upon the vision of open connectivity and information access. The thrust of the GII is an open access, universal service, flexible regulatory environment, competition and private investment. The fundamental principle underlining a National Information Infrastructure (NII), is the “Right to know” and “Right to information” tenet. Right to information of public domain data, consumer data, citizens rights, universal access, financial data, etc., drives the need for developing a NII. A National Information Infrastructure (NII), in India, is not something new, something separate from an across- the-board integration of the entire nation and the world.

The core of a NSII consists of Geographical Information System (GIS) based databases – containing both spatial and non-spatial data, linked together through keys and indexes.

Establishment of National Spatial Information Infrastructure (NSII) is a prime activity in many countries, as part of a NII. The core of a NSII consists of Geographical Information System (GIS) based database – containing both spatial and non-spatial data, linked together through keys and indexes. A hierarchy of such GIS databases forms the core of a NSII with networking – both across hierarchy and within a level in the hierarchy.

The NSII will be an all encompassing infrastructure consisting of the following:-

• Databases, which could be mainly GIS based natural resources, economic and development oriented information system – all integrated and linked to basic spatial units.
• Network. The basic issue in the operation of the NSII is the backbone on which information travels from one point to another. Today, India has a good telecommunication network and a space based satellite communication network in the country. The backbone carrier will have to be a high-speed carrier capable of providing bandwidth on demand to intermediate levels of the network and to users of the network.
  With rapid advances in technology, network configurations are transgressing to provide high band-width connectivity using fibre optics, fast Ethernet, Fast Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), etc with capacities of upto 100 Mbps datarate, communication networking of upto 2 Mbps datarate with VSATs and high-speed satellite broadcast/delivery. Therefore, the network backbone will have to be a mix of satellite and terrestrial communications. The advantage of satellite communications is its regional reach and also its ability to serve miniature hubless VSATs and Direct-To-Home delivery of information services. Thus, and radio, multi-media broadcast etc, all in one single “mother of networks”.
• Standards are an important element of the NSII and would be of relevance to database standardisation – formats, exchange and inter-operability; Network – gateways and protocols; communication equipment, software; etc. Standards enable applications and technology to work together. Tools, applications and data affect each other, and processes for developing standards must consider these interactions. Data and related activities can be considered at the conceptual, logical, and physical levels, and standards may be needed at each level. Different skills are needed to develop standards for each level, and people should work at the level at which they are the most knowledgeable. Although users must be involved closely when standards are developed, they should be protected from the many details that must be addressed.
• User Interface. With regard to design of the NSII, much depends upon the level of penetration and the upper-end level of applications or services available on it. For a completely ubiquitous NSII, the penetration will have to reach the household level and the capabilities will include online access of video application such as video-on-demand.
• Query Shells – which will be decision support tools as a front-end to the GIS databases and designed to cater to the questions of various needs of decisions making.
• Metadata. The concept of Metadata is familiar to most people who deal with spatial information. Meta means change and Metadata, or “data about data”, describe the origins of the track the changes to spatial data. Metadata helps in the use of spatial data to find the data user’s need and determine how best to use it. Metadata will also benefit the data-producing organisation as well. As part of a national Spatial Information Infrastructure (NSII), one of the critical steps could be the development of a Metadata standard and development Metadata files.

RS and GIS for Sustainable Development – Indian Example
The management of India’s varied natural resources calls for a delicate balance between competing demands and protection of the fragile environment. In the present day context, this entails the maiximum utilization of existing natural resources to reduce regional imbalances, promote sustainable development and at the same time ensure the protection of the environment. This is the goal of the National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) for which the Department of Space is the nodal agency. There are three major elements to the NNRMS and explained as follows:

• Natural Resources Information System (NRIS) where there are two sub-elements – the Information Generation System (IGS) which would generate resource information and the Spatial Information System (SIS) which would spatially model the resource information to suggest spatial scenarios.
• Management Information System (MIS), which would model management alternatives using the spatial scenarios and the socio-economic data.
• Decision-making and Implementation System (DIS) – mainly for the formulation of policies, planning and implementation of the decision/plans/policies.

In order to achieve an environmentally benign development and utilization of natural resources it is necessary that the NNRMS be supported by a comprehensive information system for decision makers. The information system should provide periodic and systematic information on natural resources related to land, water, formats, minerals, soils, oceans, etc. Equally important is the need to combine this set of information with socio-economic information such as demographic data, financial allocations, development targets, etc. Such an integration of information would aid the decision-making process for systematic planning of resources utilisation. From the viewpoint of technology, Remote Sensing techniques would provide reliable and repeated information on the natural resources and thus will be a major data source for the NNRMS. This will have to be integrated with the conventional data source to get a comprehensive and detailed data on natural resources. In this manner, the NRIS envisages to provide the information system support to NNRMS.

NRIS-The Status
The NRIS Interim Plan spatial databases are being set up in four States and 30 Districts. The States are Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Gujarat. The districts are seven from these states and another 13 from the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Karnataka. The State databases contain information on natural resources at a scale of 1:250,000 while the District databases have information at the detail of 1:50,000. The districts have been selected based on data availability. All these districts have been covered under the Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development, IMSD. Each database has up to 18 map layers and 20 socio-economic tables. As stated earlier, the databases are operated through application shells that have been designed to provide a simple front end to the database. In addition, based on discussions with the state and district administrators, customised decision support shells are being provided for specific planning scenarios like soil conservation, water harvesting, watershed management, etc.

For applications, user friendly shells have been developed which lay users who are not familiar with UNIX, GIS and remote sensing can use. These shells are developed using the macro language of Arc Info and provide a simple point and shoot interface that requires only a basic familiarity with mouse based navigation.

Currently, two types of shells have been provided. The first type is a generalised query shell. This allows the user to interact with the database and build up scenarios using simple queries. The second class of shells is application specific and address land and water management scenarios. In these shells the user can use a predetermined application model, or a modification of the same or a de novo model developed by him. In addition, at a later date more application modules can be added as per the user needs.

In addition, a utility shell has been provided for housekeeping tasks like data validation, image to map registration and image map creation. Image maps provide the user with updated information of spatial features. These maps can be created at scales up to 1:12,500 using high-resolution data from satellites like the IRS 1D. users have indicated that such maps will be needed to precisely locate sites for implementation of development works like check dams, gully plugs and so forth.

Spatial Information – Future
The technology and application of Remote Sensing and spatial information system are based on an integration of different sciences and concepts – mostly related to Computer Science, Databases, Planning and Management, Modeling etc. But the most fundamental aspect of spatial information system that is going to impact out way of life in the future pertains to the following:

• Advances in the RS technology will also impact NRIS as it is the primary source for spatial data. today, India has have IRS-1C/1D which is providing data with about 23 m resolution in multi-spectral; 180 m in wide-field multispectral domain and 5.8 m in panchromatic. While this provides a capability to map thematic natural resources at about 1:12,500 scale, it does pose limitations when assessments are to be made at a detailed level of cadastres or plots. This will be overcome with the next generation remote sensing satellites, IRS-P5 and P6 – which will provide data at 2.5 m panchromatic with fore-aft stereo and 5.8 m multispectral, alongwith 23 m multispectral and 80 wide-field multispectral data. Other commercial EO satellites also plan to provide high-resolution satellite images.
  
  The Indian experience in the operationalisation of the space systems, evolution and management of institutional mechanisms for ingraining the uitulity of space systems in the rural sectors are oriented towards national development and the benefit of the people.
  
  
• Use of high resolution satellite images, alongwith GPS, will enable the generation of detailed cartographic database with digital terrain models leading to engineering solutions to complex problems involved in micro-level development.
  
  
• Satellite images will find direct application and ingest into GIS databases, thereby providing an accurate and latest back-drop of the actual situation on the ground for all management applications.
  
  
• Ability to handle multiple-layers of information in the spatial domain allowing for the integration and modeling of these parameters to arrive at inputs to decision-making. The modeling and integration will allow for visualisation of information in newer perspectives. Information processing and presentation will only be limited by human imagination and visualisation .
  
  
• On the technological side, there is a need to look at automated methods for data capture – both spatial and non-spatial so as to minimise the intensive manual efforts and also ensure a common degree of accuracy and standardisaion.
  
  
• Organisation of web-databases that will provide instant connectivity on Networks and will allow easy manipulation of the map and non-spatial data for remote data processing and decision-making.
  
  
• While a GIS offers tools for data integration, the actual analysis of the integrated data has to be done by an expert using different methods. If the expert’s knowledge could be captured and embedded in the GIS as a separate module, then the same can be available as an Expert shell for analysis of the integrated GIS data. Development and availability of Expert Systems encompassing navigation databases, water management databases, traffic management databases etc will emerge as a major area.

These and other associated technologies of data and image processing data fusion, data warehousing, modelling and integration etc will be the core of databases that will be part of the NII.

Conclusions
The Information age has set in. Old pardigms are giving way to new ones and is earmarking possibly the most significant era to change in human civilisation. It has refined the concept of information and the communication methods and thus applies to everyday aspects of life. As we move towards establishing the NII and the NSII, we find that it will impact the way we do things. This not only applies to trade and commerce activities but also applies to issues of health environment, education, natural resources management, social issues development issues, government decision-making etc. The establishment of the NII is an imperative for the future of the society calling upon us to address associated issues of networks communications, databases, spatial information systems, advanced applications.

The Indian space programme is well-knit and extends into vital sectors of the nation’s economy – communications, education, health natural resources management, TV broadcast, radio networking and disaster management. Innovative extension of space technology towards integrated sustainable development at micro-level and oriented towards benefiting the rural populace has now become a reality. Space technology is now a “part and parcel” of the development process and is an efficient tool for the NII and the NSI which needs to be further embedded in the nation’s fabric and character.

The Indian experience in the operationalisation of the space system evolution and management of institution mechanisms for ingraining the utility of space systems in the rural sectors are oriented towards national development and the benefit of the people. Innovative concepts – specially catering to the requirements of national development should enable the benefits of space technology to reach even the weakest sections of our society enabling the rural population to effectively contribute to the nation-building tasks in the coming years.