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South Asia co-operation in GIS technologies - Some thoughts
Data standardisation and
protocol for data sharing.
GIS in Asia
Pacific :
Lots of a awareness, realisation and
utilisation of GIS in Asia-Pacific is ON. GIS is being increasingly used by
infrastructure and telecommunication industries to assist them in their
preparation for the new Information age (also for strategic purposes). It will
have
- Ability to manage huge relational databases.
- Instantly produce computerised maps, based on
modelling.
- Analysis of What if Scenarios.
Andhra
Pradesh (India) - an example
Entire Andhra Pradesh road network map with details on type,
present status, traffic load, date of last repair, number of bridges etc. are
available as a centralized database in Chief Ministe's office who monitors the
status and checks its proper functioning.
Qatar's nation-wide GIS. 1994 installed. It wants that base
maps be available to all Ministries. Uses dual ring star topology FDDI (100 MB p
sec.)
The Cabinet Minister said
"GIS has brought all Government Directors and we have decided to use". That
unity to "go ahead". Every one shares the view that Decision making needs
GIS. OMAN and BAHRAIN integrated GIS functioning in communications. Telecom
Companies feel that the same wires, which are used for Telecom, can be used for
high speed data links. It is an Integrating Technology for all aspects of the
Telecom industry.
Today it is
used in typical AM/FM applications such as planning, fault tracing and
engineering design.
Soon it will
have applications in demand forecasting and strategic marketing.
GIS will have much better
comprehension of market segmentation and recognition of population distribution
patterns. It will therefore help understand better, the customer base and
therefore better service. At the present juncture some GIS that are used in
municipalities are accessed by many user departments for doing their respective
functions such as scheduling the day maintenance teams and construction. When
such a situation develops, i.e. the organisations activities are also integrated
with its GIS, then there is a great advantage to the organisation in terms of
savings on efforts and improvement in efficiency due to the timeliness of
information availability. As a natural corollary to the above, it may be a good
ides if GIS is dove tailed into the organisation's computerisation or office
automation processes even though at a first glance it will appear that there is
not much in synergy between the two. The utilisation of IT as a method of
working or a resource by itself has to become a part of the culture. The point
is that the GIS needs to contribute to the organisation activities and people in
an operational way; for day to day work, from small things to big projects. If
on the other hand, it is an isolated ivory tower feeding information only to the
decision makers or planners, it is bound to slowly lose its relevance and decay.
Geoinformatics beyond 2000 An international conference organised at IIRS, Dehra
Dun during March 9-11, 1999. With real international gathering , the 3 days were
reverberating with many paper presentations and poster sessions on Key GIS
development, applications studies and trends. GRAM
++
Georeferenced Area
Management (GRAM) is a PC-based raster GIS software package developed at IIT,
Mumbai. It is now available in windows 95/NT along with modules on Network
analysis, spatial query language support for combined attribute and map based
queries, Vector analysis and Digital topographic vector data. This package GRAM
++ will assist the planners and decision makers at district/block level in
development planning.
Geo-data bases for natural resource management : the NRIS
experience
The National (Natural) Resources
Information System (NRIS) is an important component of the National Natural
Resources Management System conceived and developed by Department of Space
(DOS), Govt. of India. The NRIS provides an integrated database with Remote
Sensing data and collateral information in the framework of spatial information
system. The data at 1:50,000 scale at district level, at 1:250 K scale at state
level and at 1:1M scale at country level is analysed. Earlier ISRO developed a
PC based GIS package, called "Geospace" that handles spatial and non spatial
data and runs on PC-AT and also under xenix environment and also ISRO-GIS.
Currently 4 shells namely GELAP (Geographic Land Action Plan), GEOLAWNS (for
land and water), GEOSMART and Decision Space using Arc Info are in use. Besides
these, there are many other GIS packages developed both under Government and by
private organisations such as NRDMS of Dept. of Science and Technology, ESRI,
CSDMS, Intergraph, Rolta, SIEMENS, ...
A number of journals are also available for may countries,
GIS Developer, Geo Asia Pacific, GIS Asia Pacific, etc. etc.
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