The Odisha Space Application Center ( ORSAC) has made the way for space based surveillance and monitoring through generation of remote sensing geo-coordinated data in sectors like forest, agriculture, mining, land records, water resources, urban property assessment and natural resources.
This was known from a high level review meeting held under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary AP Padhi in the State Secretariat on Wednesday. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ORSAC Sandeep Tripathy presented the updates for discussion.
Chief Secretary Padhi directed various departments to make use of the data generated by the ORSAC for project monitoring and more accuracy in delivery of services. He also directed the ORSAC to complete remote sensing-based Property Tax assessment of Bhubaneswar and Puri municipal areas within three months.
CEO Tripathy apprised that during 2016-17, the ORSAC bagged two prestigious awards from international forums. These were Geo-Spatial Excellence Award-2016 and Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Awrad-2016.
The Special Achievement Award was given by Environmental System Research Institute (ESRI), an international institute for developing of geographic information system software and geo data base management applications.
A review showed that during last years, the ORSAC successfully developed the GPS tracking system of mineral carrying vehicles. As of now, the 3,700 trucks are under its direct surveillance from the point of loading to the destination. Similarly, the center innovatively developed remote sensing and GIS technology data base on actual irrigated area and cultivated area. The center has showed the way for web-based remote sensing crop cutting experiment in the year 2017.
The ORSAC also prepared natural resource data base of the entire State up to village level.
In the current year, monitoring of houses constructed under the rural housing schemes through remote sensing technology has been assigned to the ORSAC. The geo-tagged plot based data base along with satellite image information would be used for surveillance of the construction status of houses by the beneficiaries and sanctioning of phase wise amount by concerned authorities in the State.
Other successful space technology applications developed by the center include DGPS survey of mines and coal blocks of Odisha, high-tech methodology for land survey, survey of forest land proposed for diversion, GIS based monitoring of afforestation and plantations, soil moisture and vegetation monitoring in 256 watershed clusters, ground water mapping at large scale, road data base of 8,310 km of newly declared other district roads, district wise Kharif rice acreage estimation and production forecast for the entire State, coordinated horticulture assessment, GRAMSAT and EDUSAT project, identification of land for land bank, DGPS survey of minor minerals and Sairat sources and urban vacant land bank data etc.
Presently, among other projects, the center is developing the GIS data base under the project “Geospatial Technology for Rural and Urban Development”. Under the project, land use pattern along with information about infrastructure and public assets with plot details where they stand will be developed for 314 blocks of the State.
Chief Secretary Padhi directed to complete the project by end of current financial year and host it in public domain. The ORSAC has also taken up the cadastral based GIS data base generation for CDP preparation in 59 towns.