| GISdevelopment.net ---> Policy ---> India |
National (Natural) Resources Informaton System (NRIS)
A. R. Dasgupta
Deputy Director, Satellite Communications and II Applications Area
R. K. Goel
Head, Informatics Applications Division
Space Application Centre (ISRO), Ahemdabad
rkgoel@jpdpg.gov.in
A. R. Dasgupta
Deputy Director, Satellite Communications and II Applications Area
R. K. Goel
Head, Informatics Applications Division
Space Application Centre (ISRO), Ahemdabad
rkgoel@jpdpg.gov.in
Introduction
NRIS, the programme launched by the Department of Space (DOS) jointly with the State Remote Sensing Centres, is visualised as a network of GIS based nodes covering resource information in the spatial domain. System encompasses information on natural resources related to land, water, forests, minerals, soils etc. and socio-economic information such as demographic data, amenities, infrastructure etc. The integration of these sets of data would aid the decision making process for systematic resources utilisation and also aid sustainable development goals of the country. During Interim Phase of NRIS, 30 selected Districts from 17 States have been covered at 1:50,000 scale as follows:
- A.P: Anantpur
- Assam: Kamrup
- Bihar : Palamau, Jamui
- Gujarat : Panchmahals, Gandhinagar, Bhavnagar
- Haryana : Bhiwani, Gurgaon
- HP: Chamba
- Karnataka: Bijapur
- Kerala : Palghat, Thrisur
- MP : Datia, Jhabua, Sidhi
- Maharashtra : Ahmednagar, Chandrapur
- Mizoram: Aizwal
- Orissa : Kalahandi
- Punjab: Bhatinda
- Rajasthan : Dausa, Bharatpur, Nagaur
- Tamilnadu : Dharampuri, Nilgiris
- Uttar Pradesh : Lalitpur, Bulandshahar
- West Bengal : Midnapur, Purulia
- The node database contents along with the associated coding schemes, level of details and the update cycles for each of the element at different levels of node hierarchy and ultimately the structure of data base organisation.
- The spatial database design standards including the spatial framework addressing the issues related to the co-ordinate system and the spatial and thematic accuracy levels to be enforced at the time of data input.
- The standards for easily usable Database Query and Decision Support shells for enabling the usage of the NRIS system by the planners and decision-makers themselves directly.
The design concepts and standards formulated as a part of NRIS are now being harmonised with data exchange standards like Survey of India DVD to evolve National Spatial Data Exchange formats which will facilitate for data interoperability across various systems likely to be implemented at different Resource Domain agencies concerned with various National Resources Survey, Inventory and Development. The database design approach followed under NRIS could also be gainfully used for evolving the design of databases at various domain servers envisaged under National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).
NRIS Elements
The Databases
The NRIS node databases consists of integrated spatial/ non-spatial data elements comprising of the map inputs from remote sensing as well as conventional sources and village-wise non-spatial data on socio-economic and infrastructure aspects. The database is designed and organised in a manner such that it minimises the data redundancy and maximises the multiplicity of usage of each data element. A summary list of the data elements is as follows:
- Landuse / cover
- Geomorphology
- Lithology & Geological Structures
- Soils Taxonomic Classification & Profile
- Drainage/ canals
- Elevation Contours/ Spot Heights
- Watersheds
- Taluk/ Block Boundaries
- Village Boundaries/ Settlements
- Forest Management Boundaries
- Well Locations/ Well log data
- Road / Rail Network
- Meteorological Observations
- Demography/Occupation
- Village Amenity availability (Education, Medical, Communication, Power and Others)
- Land Utilisation Statistics
- Slope Classes
- Ground Water Prospects
- Land Resources Development Plan
- Water Resources Development Plan
- Land Capability for Agricultural Use
- Soil/ Land Irrigability
| SN | District Node | State Node | Centre Node | |
| A. | Input Specifications at Analogue stage | |||
| 1 | Scale | 1:50,000 | 1:250,000 | 1:1,000,000 |
| 2 | Thematic Accuracy | |||
| 2.1 | MSU (2mm) | 10000 sq. mtrs | 250000 sq. mtrs | 4000000 sq. mtrs |
| 2.2 | Mapping | 90/90 | 90/90 | 90/90 |
| 3 | Control Accuracy | |||
| 3.1 | Planimetric (RMS) | 50 mtrs | 250 mtrs | 1000 mtrs |
| B. | Digital Database Specifications | |||
| 1 | Spatial Framework | |||
| 1.1 | Registration points | Lat-long intersections/road intersections | ||
| 1.2 | Projection/Co-ordinate system | Polyconic (local to district) | Polyconic (local to State) | Polyconic (local to Centre) |
| 1.3 | Co-ordinate units | Meters | Meters | meters |
| 2 | Accuracy/Error Limits | |||
| 2.1 | Registration (RMS) | 12.5 meters | 62.5 meters | 250 meters |
| 2.2 | Area | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| 2.3 | Weed tolerance | 12.5 meters | 62.5 meters | 250 meters |
| 2.4 | Co-ordinate Movement | 12.5 meters | 62.5 meters | 250 meters |
| 2.5 | Sliver Polygon | 2500 sq. m | 62500 sq. m | 1000000 sq. m |
Query and Decision Support Shells
The ultimate end users of the NRIS system are expected to be the planners and decision makers, experts in their respective areas/ disciplines, who need not be the experts in the technologies like GIS and Remote Sensing. The mechanisms for access of the database elements are therefor made easy and explicit. On the one hand NRIS facilitates standards/ protocols/ procedures for database creation/ organisation, updating and database access using appropriate GIS and other software packages, but also includes customised shells for decision support. These shells focus on providing the user a transparent access to the database and software package environments and address the user specific planning problems. The shells are customised based on the analysis models specified by the users and the customisation tools provided within the GIS and other packages. The Query and Decision Support Shells consists of the generic query components and various problem specific decision support components.
Generic query shell: provides an easy to use, menu based access mechanism in point and shoot mode for making integrated query on all aspects (i.e. natural resources, socio-economic and infrastructure) in a single environment. It offers appropriate menus, graphic screens and icons to a user for specifying query in various modes like what lies here, where lies this, theme surface, criterion surface, reference, spatial window and on-the-fly the generation of user specific index. The shell also presents different user (spatial and functional) views of the database in user terminology, provides an illusion of seamlessness on the horizontal spread of the data base contents and keeps a user free about where and what of the data base elements in the computer storage.
Problem Specific Decision Support ShelI (SDSS): facilitates selection of the best course of action based on pre-declared objectives, decision rules and constraints. It also facilitates modification of the decision rules and navigation of the solution space in an interactive, iterative and integrative environment.
One of the problems addressed at present is the prescription on land development actions based on diagnosis of the land characteristics like slope, soil, current landuse and the ground water prospect. This particular shell works on a default if-then-else logic pre-captured in the system which can be modified by the subject expert end user in an interactive manner. Another problem specific shell facilitates planning the optimum location of water harvesting structures. It is also based on diagnosis of the land characteristics like slope, soil, current landuse hydrogeomorphology and the ground water prospect and provides ample scope for incorporation of subject expert’s knowledge. Yet another shell addresses the problem of estimating surface water run-off modelling and morphometric analysis.
Various other problem specific shells are in the pipeline. These include soil erosion index generation for prioritisation of soil conservation measures etc.
Demonstrated Applications
NRIS is being extensively used for generating the integrated land and water development plans as well as to provide development planning support with specific reference to rural development. Some of the demonstrated case studies in this context include:
- Identification of drinking water sources for flourosis affected villages.
- Demarcation of the regions having high potential for dairy development
- Prioritisation of micro-watersheds for implementing development schemes.
- Identification of villages for placing new schools
- Identification of priority villages to be taken up for development under Ambedkar Yojana
- Identification of check-dam sites for rain-water harvesting
- Identification of areas suitable for aforestation for integrated forest development
- Decision support system for fertiliser management and distribution.
- Plan for reclamation of salt affected lands.
- Priority villages for providing road connectivity.
- Priority villages for locating middle schools and for providing road connectivity.
The major areas of concern addressed while evolving the NRIS Node Design and Standards were:
- Decentralised and distributed strategy for database implementation.
- Complexity and variability of input data formats.
- Nation-wide spread of the spatial framework of databases.
- Minimisation of database redundancy and increasing the data integrity.
- The database quality controls.
- End-user profile calling for independent development of applications facilitating explicit and transparent access to the databases and for planning and decision support.
- The Node Database contents along with the associated coding schemes, level of details and the update cycles for each of the element at different levels of node hierarchy and ultimately the structure of data base organisation.
- The Spatial Database design standards including the spatial framework addressing the issues related to the co-ordinate system and the spatial and thematic accuracy levels to be enforced at the time of data input.
- Database Structure including the naming conventions and the schema for establishing linkages amongst spatial and non-spatial data components.
- The standards for easily usable Database Query and decision support shells for enabling the usage of the NRIS system by the planners and decision-makers themselves directly.
| Code | Description | ||
| Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | |
| 01-00-00-00 | Built-up | ||
| 01-01-00-00 | Towns/cities (Urban) | ||
| 01-01-01-00 | Residential | ||
| 01-01-02-00 | Industrial | ||
| 01-01-03-00 | Commercial | ||
| 01-02-00-00 | Villages (Rural) | ||
| 02-00-00-00 | Agriculture | ||
| 02-01-00-00 | Crop land | ||
| 02-01-01-00 | Kharif | ||
| 02-01-02-00 | Rabi | ||
| 02-02-00-00 | Fallow | ||
| 02-02-01-00 | Current Fallow | ||
| 02-02-02-00 | Permanent Fallow | ||
| 02-03-00-00 | Plantations | ||
| 02-03-01-00 | Tea | ||
| 02-03-02-00 | Coffee | ||
| 02-04-00-00 | Acquaculture | ||
| 03-00-00-00 | Forest | ||
| 03-01-00-00 | Evergreen/ Semi evergreen | ||
| 03-01-01-00 | Dense/ Closed | ||
| 03-01-02-00 | Open | ||
| 03-02-00-00 | Deciduous (Moist/Dry) | ||
| 03-02-01-00 | Dense/ Closed | ||
| 03-02-02-00 | Open | ||
| 03-03-00-00 | Forest Plantations | ||
| 03-04-00-00 | Mangroves (Littoral swamp forest) | ||
| 03-04-01-00 | Dense | ||
| 03-04-02-00 | Sparse | ||
| 03-05-00-00 | Shifting cultivation | ||
| 03-05-01-00 | Old Shifting Cultivation | ||
| 03-05-02-00 | Abandon Shifting Cultivation | ||
| 03-05-03-00 | Current Shifting Cultivation | ||
| 03-06-00-00 | Crop Land in Forest | ||
| 04-00-00-00 | Wastelands | ||
| 04-01-00-00 | Salt Affected Land | ||
| 04-02-00-00 | Gullied/ Ravenous Land | ||
| 04-03-00-00 | …. | ||
| 05-00-00-00 | Water bodies | ||
| 05-01-00-00 | River | ||
| 05-01-01-00 | Water channel area | ||
| 05-01-02-00 | Sandy area | ||
| 05-01-03-00 | …. | ||
| 05-02-00-00 | Canal | ||
| 05-03-00-00 | Lakes/Ponds | ||
| 05-08-01-00 | Back waters | ||
| 05-08-02-00 | Estuary | ||
| 05-09-00-00 | Cut-off Meander | ||
| 06-00-00-00 | Wetlands | ||
| 06-01-00-00 | Inland Wetlands | ||
| 06-01-01-00 | Water logged | ||
| 06-01-02-00 | Marshy/ Swampy | ||
| 06-02-00-00 | Coastal Wetlands | ||
| 06-02-01-00 | Marsh Vegetation | ||
| 06-02-03-00 | Mud flat | ||
| 07-00-00-00 | Grass land / Grazing land | ||
| 07-01-00-00 | Dense | ||
| 07-02-00-00 | Degraded | ||
| 08-00-00-00 | Snow covered | ||
| 08-01-00-00 | Perennial | ||
| 08-02-00-00 | Glacial area | ||
Decentralised Implementation Strategy
NRIS is being implemented on a nation-wide scale by a number of agencies, which are geographically spread all over India. Furthermore, these agencies represent a variety of specialisation in implementation of GIS and Remote Sensing based information systems. These include
- State Remote Sensing Centres, with expertise in Remote sensing applications and exposure to GIS. These centres are placed in the state headquarters, and are the nodal agencies for realising and managing the NRIS nodes for the districts falling in state purview.
- Various centres of ISRO-DOS, geographically spread all-over India. These centres are entrusted with the task of database design, database organisation, data quality assurance and applications s/w development.
- Private entrepreneurs from all-over country who were initially entrusted with the task of analogue to digital data conversion and are progressively getting ready to take-up up the development of turnkey systems.
The inputs for NRIS are from different sources in a variety of formats including spatial as well as non-spatial form at various levels of details vis-ŕ-vis the scales and the spatial units of observance. All these had to be brought to a common framework in order to realise the seamless and integrated database.
Nation-wide Spatial Framework
NRIS is visualised as multi-tier network of spatial databases. The obvious requirement is for access of spatial databases across various nodes involving bottom-up, top-down and horizontal data transfers. Moreover, the components of the system had to be implemented through a variety of agencies spread all-over country. Such a requirement raised various design and standardisation issues. The solutions has to comply various requirements as follows:
- Ability of the system to represent database features within acceptable limits of accuracy at different levels of details i.e. Centre, State & District.
- Ability of the system to facilitate across node data transfers in a seamless manner. This would include data transfer from States to Centre, Districts to State and District to District.
- Ability of the adoption of the scheme for easy and transparent implementation using standard GIS S/W tools on all the NRIS nodes. This is important because, the database creation will have to be done through private entrepreneurs using standard GIS S/W tools. Any proprietary restrictions associated with the selected scheme will act as a bottleneck.
- Definition of Control/ Tie point identification scheme, which facilitates unique identification number for every tie point all across Indian territory. The approach adopted is on the basis of Latitude/ Longitude co-ordinates.
- Adoption of Projection co-ordinate system. As an interim measure NRIS has evolved a strategy to adopt polyconic projection for each node. Veracity of this approach is being further examined in order to arrive at a suitable projection/ co-ordinate system. Alternatives being evaluated are Lambert conformal conic projection (LCC), Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), Projection neutral co-ordinate system (Spherical Co-ordinate system in terms of latitude-longitudes). Initial studies indicate that for large size databases such as NRIS, it is best to adopt projection neutral coordinate system.
The need for controlling the quality of database elements needs no special emphasis. Considering the fact that the task of database creation and organisation was decentralised, the laying down of database quality control parameters was of utmost importance. The parameters were thus specified which include
- Accuracy thresholds for different levels of databases categorized into thematic and control accuracy for analog inputs.
- Accuracy thresholds for digitised elements categorised into multi-layer registration accuracy (RMS), tolerable area errors in terms of percentages, co-ordinate weed tolerances, co-ordinate movement tolerances and tolerances for removal of sliver polygons.
- Acceptable age and update frequency for each data element.
- Checking, verification and quantitative assessment of the accuracy of analogue inputs
- Checking, verification and acceptance of digitised inputs.
As listed above, the NRIS Node databases cover various aspects including natural resources, manmade resources and socio-economic backdrop of the area concerned. These include
- Input elements based on mapping & digitisation of themes from Remote Sensing viz. Landuse/ Landcover, Geomorphology, Lithology & Structures, Ground water prospects, Soils and Drainage etc.
- Control/ Reference Layers from Survey of India (SOI) toposheets including administrative boundaries like states, districts and taluk/block, Elevation contours and spot height points, Transportation network including roads and railways, Hydrological network including drainage, rivers, canals, well locations etc.
- Layers from other collateral sources including village boundaries and settlement locations from census maps & revenue maps, soils data and other natural resources data from various line departments.
- Non-Spatial data on demography, economic status and village amenities available at village level in tabular form from census department, National Informatics Centre and State Beauro of Economics & Statistics (BES).
The data on natural resources aspects like landuse/ landcover, hydrogeomorphology, soils, drainage etc is available from thematic maps generated using RS and conventional data. Each of these thematic maps is generated for specific purposes and follows different legends depending upon the intended enduse. A case for example is the landuse/ landcover maps, which are available in form of generalised landuse maps, wasteland maps, forest type maps, inland wetland maps and coastal landuse maps. Many a times the landuse/landcover for same piece of land is shown by different names under different thematic maps. This kind of variations in naming the theme class due to different enduse perspectives leads to serious conflicts while creating digital databases in GIS environment.
The data elements covering terrain, infrastructure and socio-economic aspects again follow different naming conventions. Moreover, each of these data elements follows unique hierarchy at different levels of detail. The codification scheme for each of the data elements had to be worked out based on the following principles:
- Identify a list of mutually exclusive list of data elements.
- Classify the elements into primary input elements and derivable elements in order to minimise redundancy e.g. elevation vs. slope.
- Take note of the hierarchy followed in naming convention of each data element at different levels of detail. The hierarchy could vary for each element and would be in the form of parent child relationship. The relationship could be governed by natural boundary demarcations as in case of watersheds, administrative boundary demarcations as in case of state/district or forest management units, classification schemes like landuse levels or soil phenology.
- Assign a unique code for each land parcel within each data element in order to avoid duplication of feature codes and thus maintain database integrity.
- Accommodating the needs of sectoral and project level information systems like Geology, Urban, Disaster Management System etc. This may not only require extension of codification schemes for already identified data elements in the standards document. Certain additional data elements also may be appended to the standard list.
- Area specific variations in the feature classes, which are likely to surface as we go along with the project implementation.
- Incorporation of further detailed level codification into certain thematic layers e.g. level-4 codes for landuse. This may be required due to extension of the level of details in the data elements owing to availability of better resolution data from Remote sensing and/ or incorporation of cadastral level data into the system.
Design of NRIS had to recognised the fact that the effective use of such a system will be possible only when the system can be accessed directly by the planners and decision makers who are the experts in their own respective fields of activity, specifically in the problem solving domain. In order to be able to use such a complex and technology heavy system, end user would have had to not only possess complete understanding of the problem in hand, but also the:
- Full understanding of the capabilities of the GIS, which in itself could be a combination of multiple software packages; high level of proficiency vis-ŕ-vis usage of GIS system along-with the related software packages. This would include system commands and sequencing the commands.
- Complete knowledge of the details of the underlying database, including the database design, reference details of the database elements and the relationships amongst the various data elements.
The task of developing such access shells was also decentralised and could be possible due to the fact that the database design and standards had been already specified.
Conclusions & Future Work
NRIS in the initial phase has clearly demonstrated the possibilities of creating digital databases for selected districts and proved its utility for the State/District administration in a decisive manner. Under the phase-I of the NRIS implementation, databases have been implemented for 30 districts using NRIS standards, one of the major contributions under the project, as the basis for database creation. The ultimate scope of the project is to create digital databases for all the states and union territories of the country and provide remote access to the NRIS databases and decision support systems under the web technology framework. With the growth in the technology it is now found feasible to implement web-GIS technology which would be a cost-effective and most amicable solution for the State Governments. The major focus of the future NRIS mission would therefore be to:
- Create state level databases for entire country
- Provide web access to these databases and the front-end decision support systems for use by the users at district/ block level. In this context, various alternative technologies are under scrutiny.
The design concepts and standards, formulated as a part of NRIS, are being harmonised with data exchange standards like Survey of India DVD to evolve National Spatial Data Exchange formats which will facilitate for data interoperability across various systems likely to be implemented at different Resource Domain agencies concerned with various National Resources Survey, Inventory and Development. These could include agencies concerned with Geology, Topography, Soils and Landuse, Forests, Zoology, Demography, Infrastructure e.t.c. The database design approach followed under NRIS could also be gainfully used for evolving the design of databases at various domain servers envisaged under National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Mr A K S Gopalan, Director, Space Applications Centre (ISRO) and Programme Director, NRIS for his guidance and encouragement. Thanks are also due to our colleagues and co-workers who have contributed to the realisation of NRIS Programme.
References
- Dasgupta A.R., The National Natural Resources Information System, Proceedings, GEOMATICS-2000, Conference on Geomatics in Electronics Governance, Organised by Indian Society of Geomatics & Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, India.
- Goel R.K., 1999, Framework for Realising Spatial Decision Support System, Proceedings, Map India ’99, published by CSDMS, A-13, Sector 22, Noida, UP, India.
- Indian Space Research Organisation, 200, National (Natural) Resources Information System - NRIS Node design and Standards, A publication from National Natural Resources Management System (ISRO), Bangalore, India.
- Udani P.M., Yadav P.D. & Goel R.K., 1999, Design of Large Area Spatial Framework for NRIS, Proceedings, Map India ’99, published by CSDMS, A-13, Sector 22, Noida, UP, India.
- Vaishnav Bharat, Kharod Ketki, Yadav P.D. & Goel R.K., 1999, Ensuring the Integrity and validity of NRIS databases, Proceedings, Map India ’99, published by CSDMS, A-13, Sector 22, Noida, UP, India.