Expanding India’s geospatial technology

Recently, in a briefing to announce the second United Nations World Geospatial Information Congress (UNWGIC), the Union Science Minister said that India’s geospatial technology industry was expected to cross ?63,100 crore by 2025 at a growth rate of 12.8%.

Background

• In 2021, India has announced plans to prepare digital maps of all its 6, 00,000 villages, and pan-India 3D maps will be prepared for 100 cities.
• The Ministry of Science and Technology has released new guidelines for the Geo-Spatial Sector in India, which deregulates existing protocol and liberalises the sector to a more competitive field.

What is Geo-spatial Technology?

• In simple terms, geospatial refers to location-specific Geospatial information relates to features on the surface of the earth and their geographic locations.
• Geospatial data is any data that has a geographic component to it. It can describe features, objects, or even events that have a specific location.
• Geospatial data will combine information about the location and attributes of an object.
• Location information can be either ‘dynamic’ or ‘static’.

How the data is collected using Geo-spatial Technology?

• The data can be collected in a variety of ways such as using remote sensing and geospatial data can be collected without close proximity to the area.
• For example, vast amounts of information can be gathered using unmanned aerial vehicles which make gathering this information fast and effective.

• India’s geospatial sector is managed by the Survey of India (SoI), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Remote Sensing Application Centres (RSACs), and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in particular, and all ministries and departments.
• In 2021, the geospatial market was dominated by defence and intelligence (14.05 %), urban development (12.93 %) and utilities (11 %) segments, cumulatively accounting for 37.98% of the total geospatial market.
• However, it is now expanding in all the areas exploring its uses.

• A Potential Sector: The sector has potential to grow to Rs. 63,100 crore at 12.8% by the end of 2025 as per India Geospatial Artha Report
• Applicability in important areas: A major segment of its utility is applied in areas like agriculture, telecommunications, disaster and climate management, environmental studies, architecture, etc. 
• Employment: Private Companies like Amazon, Zomato etc. use this technology to smoothly conduct their delivery operations which supports livelihood generation.
• Implementation of Schemes: The schemes like the Gati Shakti program can be smoothly implemented using geospatial technology.
• Make in India: Focusing on the sector allows Indian companies to develop indigenous apps like an Indian version of Google maps.
• Management of Land records: Using the technology, the data related to a large number of landholdings can be appropriately tagged and digitised.
• It will not only help better targeting but also reduce the quantum of land disputes in courts.

Challenges associated:

• Lack of skilled manpower for using the technology and data sourced out of it.
• Unavailability of Foundation or previous data to compare with the new data obtained.
• Lack of collaborative approach among ministries and departments regarding geo-spatial data.

Recent Government Initiatives

• Large amounts of spatial data are already being utilised in key infrastructure programmes like the National Hydrology Project (NHP), Bharatmala, AMRUT, Smart Cities, SVAMITVA and National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP).