Address at the Xxvi Congress of the Indian National Cartographic Association

Cartographers: Partners in National Development 
"Map the earth to enrich the globe"

I am delighted to participate in the 26th Congress of the Indian National Cartographic Association (INCA). My greetings to the organizers, delegates of the Conference, cartographers, scientists and technologists, users of cartographic products and distinguished guests. India has a vision of transforming itself into a developed nation before 2020. There are number of missions which need inputs from cartography technologies that will certainly accelerate the process of development. The programme such as Bharat Nirman Programme including PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas), networking of rivers, infrastructure development in 63 cities through Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewable Mission, mapping of earthquake prone areas and recurring floods in north Bihar and Assam require vital inputs at the stage of planning and implementation level. The mission of INCA should be to assist the implementation of developed India vision using their core competence in cartography in partnership with ISRO, NRSA, Survey of India, State Remote Sensing centers, Thematic map making organizations, Indian Remote Sensing Industries, Academia, Research Institutions and other IT organizations. Hence, I would like to talk to you on the topic ?Cartographers: Partners in National Development?. Let us now look at some typical requirements of rural and urban development programmes of the nation, where cartographers are major partners.

PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas)

India is on the mission of establishing 7,000 PURAs (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) in different parts of the country integrating six hundred thousand villages (2 lakh village Panchayats). This integration will bring prosperity to rural India. PURA envisages four connectivities: the physical connectivity of village clusters through quality roads and transport; electronic connectivity through tele-communication with high bandwidth fiber optic cables reaching the rural areas from urban cities and through internet kiosks; knowledge connectivity through education, skill training for farmers, artisans and crafts persons and entrepreneurship programmes. These three connectives will lead to economic connectivity through the establishment of enterprises with the help of banks, micro credit and marketing of products. Since the PURA Clusters need road connectivity, the optimum road alignment without damaging the environment, uprooting the trees and disturbing the water bodies is a prerequisite. The information has to be generated for each block for meeting the 11th plan demands of establishing number of PURAs in the State. As a part of physical connectivity, link roads emanating from PURA clusters joining the main roads have to be planned in such a way that they can meet the growing traffic resulting out of higher economic activity in the PURA Clusters. A combination of ground survey, satellite remote sensing data, and Arial pictures has to be used to derive relevant maps at larger scale better than 1:10,000 and even at the level of 1:2000 as appropriate in a time bound manner within the next two years.

Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission

The Government of India has undertaken several initiatives to encourage sustainable urban development in the country, including the recent declaration of a national incentive-linked fund, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). The JNNURM covers 63 of the largest cities in India. The Ministry of Urban Development (MUD) has been designated as Executing Agency (EA) for the infrastructure and governance component of the JNNURM. India?s cities require structured infrastructural development, environmental upgradation and adequate urban infrastructure, particularly the planned sewage and drainage system. The entire infrastructure needs improvement quantitatively and in qualitatively. Urban development and management is necessary to deliver better quality of life to our citizens, considering the local and national economic growth. Thus, JNNURM envisages provision of modern drainage system, provision of drinking water in each house, electrical and electronic connectivity, rain water harvesting and water recycling and provision of congestion free roads. JNNURM is a time bound programme. It is very important for the cartographers to provide cartographic data for each of the 63 cities and towns, using the satellite imagery coupled with GIS. They should first establish the existing road network with contours, green areas, location of original water bodies, existing sewage and drainage systems. New alignment has to be provided keeping a 50 years growth profile in mind updated at an interval of ten years. Availing temporal information obtained through satellite remote sensing will enable better planning and regular monitoring. Based on this study, they must provide new connectivity contours, the new sewage system alignment, possible transportation of sewage system remains after treatment and above all a multi-layered road system to remove traffic congestion. It should be made mandatory for the city administration to use such data and information for decision making.

Disaster Management

Earthquake:

Though India is rich in natural resources, many parts of India also faces different types of natural disasters such as earthquake, incessant down pour leading to localized floods, drought, avalanche and landslide in hilly areas, storms and tsunami. It may not be possible to avert the natural disasters, but the suffering and misery due to loss of life and adverse socio-economic impact can be minimized. First the mapping of the earthquake prone areas with suitable details enables the detailed precautions in construction and emergency actions. A powerful-enough earthquake just a few seconds in duration can still make current maps suddenly out of date, at the same time severing power lines, gas mains and water pipes. Secondary disasters such as landslides may have taken place in some areas. Satellite images can provide updated views of how the landscape has been affected, while images before and after the event enable authoritative damage assessment as a basis for planning remedial action.

Flood and water management:

I have observed certain unique features in the river system of Bihar. Though Ganga, the main river is flowing from West to East, there are two types of flows coming into the Ganga. Because of the flow from both the directions no water is saved and everything goes to the Sea. Also, the main flood bearing river the Kosi when it comes into Bihar is already in the plains and we have to find innovative flood management techniques. Cartographers should provide high resolution maps in partnership with agencies involved in satellite imagery and aerial photography for planning water harvesting and water management system leading to flood control even in the steep slopes of hill area.

Flood control through Layered wells:

There is an urgent need to find long-term solution to control flood, store and utilize the surplus water during drought. In the Gangetic region, I have recommended construction of layered wells in the entry points of Kosi river. Normally the flood water has certain dynamic flow conditions. The layered wells assist gradual reduction in dynamic flow velocity after filling each storage well. The water thus stored will be useful during shortage period. Similar solution can be found for the north-eastern region. The complex problem today is to find out the location of multi-layered well in the entry point of floods arising from the Himalayan region. Innovation lies in finding a suitable place in finding a solution even though the Indian side entry point contours are very steep. Hence, there is a big challenge to cartographers to provide location of multi-layered wells, taking into account the path of the flood water movement.

Mapping Geothermal potential

In 2005, I visited Iceland a volcanic island, a small European country with highest per capita income in the Atlantic Ocean with the population of 300,000 people. This island has unique phenomena of terrain having volcanoes and earthquakes. This situation has been converted into an advantage by that nation by discovering the geothermal resources at 2 kms depth. These resources provide both hot water and steam. The steam is used for generation of electricity and supply to many parts of the island and the hot water is supplied for heating the homes. We found the cartographers have mapped the island with all its ridges, the volcanic and earthquake prone regions, geothermal resources of the future and its marine resources. Of course they use satellite imagery to locate the school of various types of fishes. May I suggest to the cartographers, to map the geothermal resources in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, of the total 300 islands I understand one or two islands are having active volcanoes. Also, Himalayan states may have tremendous geothermal potential. These are also required to be mapped in a time bound manner.

Technology enabled cartography

To address all the inputs needed for the above programmes, we need to use the latest scientific technologies and tools. In this context, the application of Information Technology in the form of GIS, Satellite Remote Sensing, Satellite photo-grammatry, satellite communication and Internet play a vital role. India has planned for a series of satellites specifically for cartographic applications. The first in the series, CARTOSAT-I launched in May 2005 is the first high resolution satellite that collects the details of terrain surface in stereo mode with the spatial resolution of 2.5 meters. As of today, I understand that more than 90% of the country is covered with stereo images. These images could also be used for better urban planning, cadastral level information of land and water resources. This satellite mission has enabled developing Digital Elevation Model (DEM) This elevation model is useful in GIS environment, providing a terrain model to facilitate drainage network analysis, watershed demarcation, erosion mapping, contour generation and quantitative analysis like location-distance-area-volume calculation. The DEM could also provide scene simulation and fly through visualization of the terrain. I am happy to note that Department of Space has launched a mission called CARTODEM for generating DEM of entire country using indigenously developed software package. The elevation accuracy of DEM will be better than eight meter. It is expected that in the middle of next year, major part of our country will be covered by DEM. Such an input should be made use of effectively by the Cartographers of the country for generating quality input data for PURA planning, design and development of state level waterways, urban planning and disaster management. As you may be aware, CARTOSAT-II is to be launched in January 2007 capable of collecting the terrain features with better than one meter spatial resolution. I am sure that the country will have satellites for acquiring details at sub meter level in the next five years.

Advances in Computer Sciences and space technologies, today provide us the capability not only to integrate diverse data sets but also with real time communication of data from far flung areas. Referencing of these data sets to their geographical locations has given rise to a powerful Geographical Information System (GIS) which is finding increasing use in almost every facet of our day to day life, be it as administrator or as planner or as executive monitoring a project or a tourist finding his way through navigation systems. These applications demand dynamic integration and visualization which in turn provide challenges to the cartographer as to how to integrate and process the data in real time and provide the visualization of out put as per user requirement. Yet another challenge to be addressed by the cartographic community is how do we ensure data integrity, interoperability and accuracy while fusing data from disparate data sources. Also advances in other technologies like GPS, mobile telephones, digital cartography, and photogrammatry will complement the cartographers in their endeavours for national development.

Conclusion: Missions for Cartographers

Since I am in the midst of Cartographers, I thought of giving the following six missions relevant to Vision 2020 for immediate implementation.

1. Creating a network of all organizations and cartographers participating in this Congress so that they can interface and provide inputs for the development of modern cartographic products required for national development missions.

2. Bringing out large scale maps using advanced technologies for various national development programmes like PURA, interlinking of rivers, survey/resurvey of cadasters, Urban development, metro rail, water ways.

3. Provide cartographic inputs to drought, flood and earthquake prone areas to the disaster management teams for effective planning of disaster management delivery system.

4. Making available high resolution digital maps produced in India and placing the maps on website thereby creating virtual Earth for India for easy access to its citizens in a time bound manner with suitable policies and adequate security mechanism.

5. Identifying wastelands which are essential to take up Jatropha cultivation for bio diesel production. Cartographers should come out in identifying the exact quantum of wasteland available in the country and help the government and farmers for enabling the Jatropha cultivation.

6. Training and building a human resource team which can face the cartographic challenges of the twenty first century.

Cartography has come a long way from the days of Ptolemy and is playing a major role in our lives through new technologies such as GIS, GPS. I am told that most of the mapping of the western world is done in Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore. There is a need for a campaign to increase the awareness of the common man regarding utility of geo-spatial data and its use. Cartographic community has a key role to play in national development and I am sure you will provide value added services to all national missions.

With these words, I inaugurate the 26th Congress of Indian National Cartographic Association and my best wishes to all the participants? for success in their mission of providing quality cartographic products to the needy.

May God bless you.