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The President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said here today
that Cartographic community has a key role to play in national development and
expressed hope that the community will provide value added services to all
national missions. He said this while inaugurating a seminar on
Cartography-Expanding Horizons, organized by Indian National Cartographic
Association (INCA) in collaboration with Survey of India. Speaking on the
occasion, the President said that 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.
He further said
that 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,
he stated 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 (Geographical Information System) 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. He outlined the
following six missions relevant to vision 2020 for immediate implementation for
the cartographers:
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.
Earlier, speaking on the
occasion, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Dr. T. Ramasami
appealed to the cartographers to convert the maps into useful product and called
for greater interaction between the users of the product and its generators.
AT/NC
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Cartographers to play active role in National Development says Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
