India’s Geospatial Network Has Over 14,500 Users, Govt Reveals

India’s geospatial network has registered  14,677 users who have, in turn, consumed over 19.4 million hours of data, the Ministry of Science and Technology revealed in response to a Parliamentary question.

Furthermore, the government has established 1,105 Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) as part of its implementation of the National Geospatial Policy.

For context, the Survey of India’s (SoI) national network of CORS provides access to a stable, national coordinate reference system, enabling real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning (centimetre-level accurate positioning), which is ideal for surveying, construction, and precision agricultural applications. 

Besides establishing the stations, the government has also constituted the Geospatial Data Promotion and Development Committee (GDPDC) as the apex body for formulating and implementing appropriate guidelines, strategies, and programmes for the promotion of activities related to the geospatial sector, and an advisory body: namely the Geospatial Industrial Development Board (GIDB).

Does the National Geospatial Policy say?

Finalised in 2022, the National Geospatial Policy sought to “develop Geospatial infrastructures, geospatial skill and knowledge, standards, geospatial businesses, promote innovation and strengthen the national and sub-national arrangements for the generation and management of Geospatial information”. The policy set out the goals to achieve the following by 2025:

• Implementing and enabling legal framework that supports liberalisation of the geospatial sector and democratisation of data for enhanced commercialisation with Value Added Services.
• Improving access to better location data across organisations and sectors to enable innovations.
• Establishing an integrative interface for all digital data having a location dimension collected or developed utilising public funds, for easy access, sharing, use, and reuse.
• Developing national/sub-national arrangements in Geospatial information management and related infrastructures with participation of government, industry, private sector, academia and civil society.

The policy came in the backdrop of the 2021 Guidelines for acquiring and producing Geospatial Data and Geospatial Data Services, including Maps. To explain, these guidelines allowed Indian companies to freely collect geospatial data while restricting foreign companies from providing map services with an accuracy of one metre. If the foreign companies want to provide more accurate maps, they need to rely on the data that Indian companies collect.

Other efforts to implement the policy:

The government mentioned that it has aligned the organisational structure of SoI with the changed Geospatial data regime to support “a vibrant domestic Geospatial services industry”. It says that in ongoing projects like National Geospatial Knowledge-based land Survey of urban Habitations (NAKSHA), Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT 2.0), Survey of Villages Abadi and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (SVAMITVA), the government is implementing Ortho-imagery (ORI) and Elevation (DEM)  through a public-private partnership model.

“The foundational geospatial data is being made available through standard web-services, APIs and data-downloads which able Ministries/Departments/Organisations to harmonise their legacy data from their respective federated location,” the government explained.

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It added that geospatial data and location-based services have enhanced the Public Distribution System (PDS) and MGNREGA by enabling real-time tracking, reducing leakages, and optimising resource delivery. “It may help for better targeting, planning, and monitoring, which will improve transparency and coordination across various schemes. It may [also] increase efficiency, reduce costs, and strengthen social accountability,” the government explained.

Besides the details mentioned in the response, earlier this year, the SoI shortlisted 15 companies including MapMyIndia, Jio Platforms, LTI Mindtree, and Deloitte for creating a geospatial data and location-based services platform.  

“This platform will institutionalise a comprehensive, unified and open mechanism for spatial data sharing and develop a collaborative ecosystem as envisaged in NGP-2022,” the authority had explained at the time.

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