NGDI: Is India Prepared?
Ravi Gupta Centre for Spatial Database Management and Solutions (CSDMS) A - 13, Sector 22, NOIDA 201 301 Tel: +91-118-4544410, 4527044, 4554335, 4535436 Email: Ravi.Gupta@csdms.org Abstract Geographic information is today being extensively used in decision-making processes because it has become a fundamental element to provide better understanding about one’s surrounding. Sustainable development relies on the control of the consequences of public decisions regarding natural resources, people and the involved interrelationships. More importantly, geographic information is a tool of democracy, which must be used in public debate, as it enables visualisation of the impact of the planning decisions on the society and to explain the rationale behind a particular decision. Today, most of the countries are set to exploit the potential of mapping technology. The present paper tries to assess India’s preparedness in adopting the concept of National Geospatial Data Infrastructure (NGDI). Economic Imperatives for Building up an NGDI Governments are spending large sums of money on collection of geographic information knowingly or unknowingly. For example
And surely these investments are not without reasons. A report by, Economic Studies and Strategies Unit of PriceWaterhouse, on the economic benefits arising from the acquisition and maintenance of the nation’s land and geographic information has estimated that for the period 1989-94 approximately $1 billion has been spent in Australia on investment in geographic data. This investment produced benefits within the economy in the order of $4.5 billion. The study also found that this investment has saved users approximately $ 5 billion, meaning thereby that there is a saving of $5 on the investment of $1. The study concluded that the existing infrastructure for supplying data had provided information to users at a lower cost than alternative methods. Had this infrastructure not been in place, and users had been forced to meet their data requirements from other sources, their costs would have been 6 times higher; if the benefits were to continue, an additional investment of 30% of existing funding levels would have been required to meet the growing demand for data usage7. Thus it is clear that governments all over the world realise that geographic information is an important infrastructure for a nations development. The government is the biggest geographic data generator. It happens to be the biggest consumer also. In India, for example, out of the Rs. 14.30 crore revenue of National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) from sale of remote sensing imagery in 1998-99, 83% revenue was from the government departments themselves8. India’s Strengths in Geographic Information Good geographic information acquisition Infrastructure India has a good institutional infrastructure for geographic data collection. There is a network of institutions collecting information on every conceivable socially and scientifically relevant subject. The Survey of India and the Indian Remote Sensing Satellites are the most important generators of this data. Survey of India The Survey of India (SOI), which was established 232 years back in 1767, is responsible for all topographical and development surveys in India. India, with an area of 32,87,263 km2, is covered by both topographical maps and geographical maps. The topographical maps are on scales of 1:25,000, 1:50,000 and 1:250,000, which are ideally suited for the professional work of geologists, geographers, foresters, engineers, planners, tourists, trekkers, mountaineers and others. India is covered by nearly 385 toposheets on 1:2,50,000 scale which are also called Degree Sheets, where each degree sheet has 16 toposheets of 1:50,000 scale. At present the entire country is covered by 1:50,000 rigorous metric surveys in more than 5000 toposheets. This is undoubtedly an impressive record for any country in the world. Each 1:50,000 scale sheet contains four 1:25,000 scale sheets. More than 35% of the country has also been covered on 1:25,000 scale. Therefore, there is no dearth of modern toposheets9. Indian Remote Sensing Programme The satellite based remote sensing was established in the country with the launch of the first operational Indian Remote Sensing Satellite, IRS-1A in 1988 which was followed, by the successful launch of IRS-1B in 1991. IRS-1A and 1B satellites provide imagery with spatial resolution of 72.5m and 36.25m respectively. These satellites have been providing data for monitoring and management of our natural resources and environment. IRS-1C and IRS-1D launched in 1995 and 1997 respectively incorporate enhanced capabilities in terms of spatial resolution, spectral bands, stereoscopic imaging, Wide Field Coverage and revisit capability. They provides 5.8m spatial resolution in panchromatic mode. India also launched Oceansat in 1999 with Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) and a Multi-frequency Scanning Microwave Radiometer (MSMR) on its board. India plans to launch Cartosat with 2.5m panchromatic data resolution by the year 2000. This satellite will have a cutting-edge technology in terms of sensor systems and provide sate-of-the-art capabilities for digital terrain modeling, contour mapping (~5 m contour levels) and many specific needs of cartographic applications. The data provided by Cartosat will be useful for giving cadastral level information. The Indian Remote Sensing programme has been a major factor for the growth of importance of geographic information in India. The National Natural Resource Management System (NNRMS) programme by the Department of Space has played a key role in using the capabilities of the Indian Remote Sensing satellites for the benefit of the masses10. Other institutions involved Many other agencies and initiatives of the government like Natural Resource Data Management Systems (NRDMS) and National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation (NATMO) under the Department of Science and Technology, National Informatics Centre, have played an important role in geographic data generation in the country. Hosts of other organisations under various central and state governments are also involved in geographical data acquisition in the country. A summary of the main data producers is provided in the Table 1. Moderate estimate of the total budget of the listed organisations in the table is more than Rs. 2,000 crores per year, which is comparable to spending on geographic information done by Australia or US, if we take the operating costs in these countries are nearly seven times that of India.
Table 1: Status of data policy/practice indicators in data and data generating agencies in India Growing demand for GIS The first system of geographic information appeared in India perhaps in the late 1980s. By late nineties the demand picked up and a market for GIS-related software, data and services came into existence. The technological developments in computer hardware and software contributed greatly to the growth of GIS market in the country, with the market really taking off with the development of powerful desktop PCs. This evolution was encouraged by political and administrative decisions, like the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Information Technology, e-governance initiatives by many states of the country, decentralisation initiatives, etc. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), a leading IT related market research organisation, the GIS market in India is expected to grow from Rs. 29.0 crore in 1996-97 to Rs. 79.0 crore in 1999-2000. The relative share of the GIS market in the design software market is expected to increase moderately from 16.1% in 1996-97 to 19.1% in 1999-2000. According to NRSA, the sale of its data products grew from 5.83 crores in 94-95 to 14.30 crore in 1998-99, an increase of more than 100%. The industry projects the GIS industry growth at 35-40% during the next few years11. According to the report on ‘Export of IT Enabled Services from India to North America’ prepared by the US based consulting firm – Stevens International Consulting (SIC) – for Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (an autonomous organisation under the IT ministry) the GIS exports from India are expected to reach to US $ 150 million in year 2005 from US $ 60 in year 2000. Development of the geographic information market in the country has contributed to the creation of a new group of companies dealing in software, value-added data, and services. The initiatives by NRSA and Space Application Centre (SAC) in vendor development have been creditable. More than 100 companies mainly in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi are into this business. The GIS service industry is expanding at 10-15% per annum12. India is also fast emerging as a data conversion centre for GIS. The GIS companies from USA, Europe, Japan, Australia have either started operating directly or are subletting work to Indian companies. This has created enormous employment opportunities in the sector, which is leading to proliferation of this technology. Why India needs NGDI? India will benefit from a visionary policy on geographic information. Let us look at the available and emerging opportunities.
Why India needs NGDI…Desperately? If we don’t do it, someone else will There is an urgency to act for the simple reason that if we don’t start providing services to our countrymen, someone else will. For example, Microsoft has launched MapPoint, a desktop map visualisation and analysis software at the cost of $ 109. And this includes US demographic data for 1980, 1990, 1999 and 2003. The data includes population, household sizes, household income, and median population by age. By 2000 MapPoint for UK and by 2002 MapPoint for Europe will be out. If the pace remains same, no doubt by 2005-MapPoint for Asia (including India) may be in the market, provided the government does not come in the way. The revenue which SOI or any other agency may have earned by value addition to their existing products, developed with hundreds of years of hard work, will then be earned by someone else. Reduced international and global competitiveness Yes, India does lose its global competitiveness by not making available core datasets to the public. Like electricity, water, clean air, good human resource, information is also a vital factor for attracting investments, increasing tourism, boosting trade and improving quality of life of the masses. So instead of finding trivial reasons to hide the data, we should see the numerous reasons to share data. Continuation of adopting costly ad hoc solutions In spite of the spending by India on geographic data acquisition being comparable to any other developed nation, the benefits have been relatively low. This will continue unless we develop synergy between various stakeholders. In this regard, it may worthwhile to look at examples elsewhere in the world. Although some of the European countries like UK and France were the first to be covered by classical cartography which gave them a lead on a technical, scientific and commercial level, the move towards digitisation of information was slow and it’s position among competitors fell. Today US companies have captured 80% of the Europe’s GIS market. The European companies have just 20% market share in Europe’s market and 5% in the global GIS market16. The situation in India is no different. We don’t have a strategy to change this situation. Lack of Control of information on one’s own territory Although the Indian citizens are denied access to any border area maps. But many of the old maps of these areas are available freely outside India. Is the same going to happen to updated large scale maps of whole of the country? With the spy satellites hovering upon us and monitoring each and every minute activity of the country, there is little left to hide. SPIN 2, the Russian satellite is already selling its 2m resolution data on the web at www.terraserver.com. Indian Remote Sensing satellite with 5.8m resolution and IKONOS satellite with 1m resolution are already in place. Thus it is very difficult for countries to hide geographic information, and instead of being reactionary, we will have to adopt a pro-active approach regarding geographic data availability. The control of information describing one’s own territory and the autonomy of decision models using this information are a major part of independent political decision making. India must endow herself with the means to surpass and be more dynamic than the global trends. Accelerating the process of quality digital data coverage of the territory and India’s control of earth observation satellite technology are the primary means to guarantee autonomy in her choices. Will the ‘patent’ experience be repeated in case of maps? Important projects exist today, which aim to build up data bases of geographic information on South Asia, and also on the whole world. These are the Regional Geographic Information Infrastructure (RGII) project of UN, Earthmap projects of American institutional stakeholders, Japan’s Global Mapping programme, etc. In spite of the Indian technological leadership in Remote Sensing and software technology, Indian organisations have been taking an increasingly limited part in international bodies. Whether it be the UN’s specialised commissions, international standardisation organisations like ISO, India’s seat is empty or only symbolically occupied. However, an active presence within these bodies means preventing them from taking options which are prejudicial to the interests of national companies and gaining recognition of expertise, which is a first step towards intervention in the definition of the major international projects. Indeed, the limited presence of national experts’ in the upstream phases of projects would appear to be one of the causes of the limited performances of national companies in terms of turnover. All the players must mobilise to ensure this presence and an organisation, for instance the Department of Science and Technology or Indian Space Research Organisation initially, must be in charge of making sure that India is present effectively in all these bodies. Our limited or no presence in international bodies can be illustrated by following examples. The international body ISO/TC 211 is working in the field of standardisation of digital geographic information. In this organisation the presence of India is as an Observing Member along with Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Columbia, Cuba, Estonia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Mauritius, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine. The point to be noted is that India is not a participating member of the organisation. Countries not only like Australia, Canada, UK and US but also Countries like Iran, Jamaica, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and Thailand are participating members. Do we need to be satisfied with the status of observer or we need to play more active role in these organisations17? In the background of these several international initiatives, India cannot afford to be an isolated entity. It is essential to speak a global language if we want to participate in global projects. We should not forget how the patents of basmati, neem, turmeric, etc. by foreigners caught us unaware. We could find ourselves in a situation where foreigners will sell us maps of India. This possibility cannot be ignored. Bottlenecks in the development of NGDI in India In India, it is extremely difficult to access any government-generated data. Moreover, existing datasets have been collected to different specification making it difficult to integrate the data collected from different sources. Very often, the agencies collect and utilise their own data as part of their institutional mandate and therefore are less concerned with the problem of access to public domain data and it is unlikely they provide data to other major players. Most of data generating agencies do not have the mandate for data dissemination. This results in ad hoc arrangements that benefit neither the government sector as a whole nor the private sector, which functions in a climate of extreme uncertainty. As mentioned in Table 1, very few data generating agencies have any worthwhile information on their sites. This reflects the poor appreciation of these organisations about the importance of information dissemination. Most of the organisations are plagued with severe “vision crunch” in terms of the importance of the data for the people outside their organisation. Coming specifically to the status of geographic data, the situation is worse. Maps of restricted areas are not easily accessible. Aerial photography is virtually banned. Digitisation of Survey of India toposheets can be done by only a few government agencies. Digital data are not available with most of the data producing agencies and at times even analogue data are not accessible. The major impediments to the widespread and successful use of geographic information in India are not technical, but political and organisational. There is a lack of concerted action and political critical mass at both state and national level. Attempts to develop a coherent information policy are likely to opposed by sections advocating conflicting goals. There is no national mandate on geographic information. This retards development of information strategies and causes unnecessary costs, and stifles new goods and services. Worse, there is lack of awareness among the decision-maker at all levels. Geographic information arena in India is still immature with broad set of issues yet to be resolved. There is no cohesive geographic information community that can take up these problems with the top echelons of the government. The Hope In spite of the various problems being faced by the geographic information community in India regarding accessibility of data, the GIS and Remote Sensing industry in India is growing fast. The government has realised the importance of managing the geographic information and is taking steps to develop a national geospatial data infrastructure for the masses. It has also envisaged the creation of national topographic maps on the WGS84 datum, which will be totally derestricted. Few organisations like Eicher, Mapsofindia.com and CE Infosystems have also been able to get clearance from the government for digital publication of maps on the Internet. The NGDI Taskforce constituted by the Department of Science and Technology is a good step forward and one hopes that it will fulfil the aspirations of the geographic information community of the country. References
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