Spatial India 2007 stresses on the importance of GIS in infrastructure

Jaipur, October 25: “Infrastructure is an important element of economic development but a holistic approach has to be taken to develop the same,” exhorted Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria.

Participating as the chief guest and speaking at the inaugural session of the two-day conference, Spatial India 2007 with the theme, ‘IT and GIS Strategy for Infrastructure’ at BM Birla Science and Technology Centre, Kataria said Rajasthan has taken the road to development and is no longer one of the BIMARU states. It has adapted technology quite well in all its development projects and is the first state to implement PM Sadak Yojana and all the villages with more than 500 population are already connected with well-laid roads. He said the state would complete the project much ahead of the targeted deadline.

Vikas Darpan, one of the initiatives of Rajasthan government, is a comprehensive portal, which utilizes technologies like Information Technology (IT) and Geographical information Systems (GIS) effectively to provide all information about even the smallest villalge at one place. He also cited various GIS-based programmes that the government has taken up in connecting the major cities of the State. He exuded confidence that the state will catch up with the top 4-5 states in the country in the next two years.

Earlier, KR Sridhara Murthi, Executive Director, Antrix Corporation (Commercial arm of ISRO), said India is in the midst of interesting times and the country is seeing tremendous growth and the country is all geared up in terms of technology to overcome the challenges. He said GIS and imaging technology are the tools that help tremendously in developing infrastructure. It is now important to mobilise the resources and utilize them optimally to achieve the targeted growth rate.

Management of assets is very important for sustained development, Dr Mukund K Rao, CEO, Navayuga Spatial Technologies, opined and stressed on the need to develop a national GIS foundation dataset that everyone in the country can utilize. He also stressed on the importance of developing urban cadastre, and the urgency of integrating all the city maps of the state and placed on the internet for easy access.

Earlier, Dr MP Punia, Head, Remote Sensing Division, BM Birla Science and Technology Centre, welcomed the guests and said the two-day conference is an ideal platform for industry, academia and the government to interact and share their expertise.

Ravi Ramprasad, Organising Secretary, Spatial India 2007, gave a brief overview of the conference and said Spatial India is a highly focussed conference dealing with the importance of IT and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in various infrastructure verticals like power, telecom, oil and gas, civil aviation and urban infrastructure.

About 200 delegates from industry, academia and government are participating in the two-day conference, which will have various technical sessions on all the infrastructure verticals.