Conference Proceedings: National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)

There are also major programmes of GIS databases that have been taken up and are a right step towards NSDI. Some of these efforts include:

National (Natural) Resources Information System (NRIS) of the National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) – for which the Department of Space (DOS) is the nodal agency. Establishment of National (Natural) Resources Information System (NRIS) is a critical element of the operationalisation of the National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS). NNRMS aims to contribute to the optimal management of the nation’s natural resources and support an environmentally benign sustainable development. Through NRIS, NNRMS enables the availability of a national inventory of natural resources information in spatial formats and with proper linkages to other socio-economic data within a framework of a smart information system to enable customized retrieval and analysis of data for specific needs. The NRIS is visualized to be a network of GIS based Nodes covering data/information for districts, aggregated thru states to the whole country. These Nodes will be the repositories of natural resource information and will assimilate other tabular socio-economic data, thus providing vital inputs to decision making at district/state/central levels – specifically in spatial and tabular formats. NRIS would cover the entire country in a phased manner – building from districts, through states and the entire country. The use of NRIS has been made by district and state authorities for Watershed Development Planning; District Plan Generation; Amenities (schools, hospitals and do on) planning and Facilities location in districts; Environmental Impact Analysis; Land Capability and Land Irrigability Analysis; State Plan Generation; Landuse Change Analysis; Monitoring of Developmental Programmes; Spatial representation of non-spatial data of demography, occupation structure and Index Analysis of Development at village/taluk level. NRIS has been established in many districts and states already. Yet another major achievement of NRIS has been the “NRIS Standard” - a content and design Standards that has become a de-facto national GIS standard and including about 22 layers of spatial information and about 8 items of non-spatial attributes at village-level. NRIS is now available for 30 districts in 17 states on 1:50000 scale and for 4 states fully on 1:250000 scale. The NRIS is being expanded to cover all states in a phased manner. ANNEXURE-I shows in summary the concept and achievements of NRIS. NRIS will become a part of the NSDI by enabling a national network of GIS based information systems at local, states and national level on key parameters of natural resources management.
Digital Cartographic Data Base (DCDB) of SOI: Survey of India has completed the creation of DCDB with the maps on scale 1:250,000 as input. This data is also available in the National Standard Exchange Format for Digital Vector Data (DVD). SOI has presently engaged in the task of completing digitization of maps on scale 1:50,000. Recently, Ministry of Defence (MOD) has authorized DST to have a separate series of maps on WGS-84 for the civilian use. Once SOI completes the project of determining the transformation parameters between WGS-84 and Everest spheroids, it will be possible to convert the digital map data on Everest to WGS-84 easily. This initiative will help in users obtaining data pertaining to any part of the country with out any restriction.
Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) is a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional program launched by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for developing a scientifically proven database approach for operationalising the concept of micro-level planning. Major objectives of the programme include development of integrated district level resource databases on natural resources and allied sectors, research and software support for spatial data management technology, modelling and operation research, demonstration of the utility and use of the databases and spatial data management tools in local level planning, and development of Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) in different sectors of integrated rural development. Thirty-three district GIS Centres have been set up in different states in collaboration with concerned state governments. The state of Karnataka is being covered in entirety to demonstrate the efficacy of the methodology on a statewide scale with the establishment of one State center and thirteen district centers in the first phase. The databases contain data on natural resources, demography, socio-economy, agro-economy, and infrastructure with village as the unit. Preparation and updation of the databases by collating the available data sets from the different sources like Survey of India, National Atlas & Thematic Mapping Organization (NATMO), National Bureau of Soil Survey Land Use Planning (NBSSLUP), Geological Survey of India (GSI), Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), Census of India, India Meteorological Department (IMD), state and district level line departments are the main activities at the district GIS Centres. The databases are used to develop spatial decision support systems in selected sectors relevant to integrated rural development planning viz. water management, land use planning, energy budgeting, and infrastructure development. An indigenously developed GIS package, Geo Referenced Area Management (GRAM++) on Windows 95/NT platform has been developed under the programme for organising district level databases and subsequent information generation through spatial analysis and modelling. Application studies are supported under NRDMS in prioritized research areas like land & water system analysis, spatial data management technologies, micro wave remote sensing, disaster mitigation, ground water modelling, ecological modelling to upgrade the methodology. To facilitate use and analysis of spatial data sets stored in the district level GIS databases, metadata standards have been defined.

Apart from the above, there have been initiatives by many government and private sector agencies – like GSI, NBSSLUP, CWC, and FSI etc for establishing GIS-based information systems for their thematic requirements.

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