Many private entrepreneurs Architects, Civil Engineers, Surveyors, Service agencies, etc., who have adopted informatics based tools for their profession. With a considerable number of agencies involved in the technology and applications of Geomatics, there is a large body of professionals who are involved in pioneering work in this field and there is a need to promote interaction between these professionals and also promote the advancement of the technology and applications of Geomatics, So that it becomes a part and parcel of the information management and decision making processes. It is to serve to them the Indian Society of Geomatics has been formed. Geomatics Technology includes Geographic Information System, Remote Sensing, Global Positioning System, Digital Image Processing, and Total Station Surveying.

Development of Mapping and Surveying Methods

Traditional Method
Traditional survey includes the measurement of distances by tape, stadia, angles by compass, mapping by plane table survey, leveling by auto level, angle measurement by theodolite, distance measurement by EDM (Electronic Distance Measurement ) and the most recent one TS (Total station), which is a combination of theodolite and EDM. But surveys by these traditional methods are labour intensive and time consuming. With time, there has been a need of integrating these data and maps to the GIS, which is again time consuming and labour intensive.

Aerial Photography
This technique is relatively more accurate and quick. One can generate 1:4000 or even larger scale maps using a 1:20,000 photograph with modern digital photogrammetry techniques. However, due to security issues, in India this techniques is not that popular and is not available to everyone.

Satellite Remote Sensing
The recent advances in space technology have the potential of identifying the sub-meters of an object on the ground. Hence in rural mapping the high-resolutions images like IRS – PAN with the resolution of 5.8 meter is being used to identify the rural road network and update the boundary information. Similarly the launching of IKONOS data with the 1mt spatial resolution and 4mt multispectral data is widely used in mapping even a small hut in a village level. However, the high cost of the IKONOS images (US $30 per sq km, and a minimum of 49 sq km) has deters most of the users

Global Positioning System(GPS)
Lately GPS has become the de-facto standard in mapping. The removal of S/A and availability of low cost hand-held GPS has promoted the use of GPS for low cost mapping. The accuracy of the derived positions varies from few ‘mm’ to several meters. Manufacturers also have started innovating and coming up with miniature GPS (Satyapraksh, 2002 ). With the availability of coast guard beacons, all over the coast, the differential corrections are available to the users, all over world, for free. Another innovation is the integration of GPSs with mobile devices, like PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). The developments in the field of data collecting devices and miniaturization of GPS receivers has led to the use of GPS and data loggers for common mapping practices for collection of data for GIS.

Laser Range Finder
These are devices, which tries to overcome the disadvantages, GPS has. GPS may not work in highly dense area or with more than 20-30% canopy. However, there are GPS available, which works even in more than 30% canopy. The advantages with the laser range finders and data loggers are that they are hardware and operating system independent. However, at present, they have not made their presence felt due to cost factor, but with time, they will be available at a fraction of cost to its present cost, and it will be widely used for mapping for GIS projects.

Remote Sensing
Remote Sensing is a method of obtaining information about an object on the Earth surface with the help of sensor which records reflected electromagnetic energy from the objects without being in contact. Various objects are thus identified with the help of variation in the reflected electromagnetic energy from them. It is a methodology used to study form a distance the physical and chemicals characteristics of objects. Human sight, smell, and hearing are examples of rudimentary forms of Remote Sensing