The Governor Krishan Kant Paul inaugurated the 37th international congress of the Indian National Cartographic Association (INCA) at the National Hydrographic Office here on Wednesday. The theme of the congress is “Geoinformatics for Carto-diversity and its Management".
Addressing the gathering on the occasion the Governor said that the theme was very relevant and significant as geoinformatics was playing an important role in urban planning, land use management, public health, local and national e-governance,environmental modeling and analysis, military, transport network planning and management, agriculture, meteorology and climate change.
He said that today, even school children were using spatial and temporal data and can appreciate the product and derived applications of cartography for daily use. Maps and GPS receivers are available on all mobile phones, and geo tagging is a norm in social media communication and interactions.
He said the Global Positioning System is a space based radionavigation system. It is important to reduce dependence on this system as during certain crucial moments the services may not be available.Russians have developed GlONASS, which can be integrated with GPS or operated separately. China has BeiDou, EU has Galileo positioning system.
“Our expertise in satellite launches has helped, and now we have our own system Gagan, which is currently being used by the Aviation sector. Gagan is GPS aided Geo augmented Navigation,” he said.
The Governor gave away prizes to winners of various competitions held at the Naval Hydrographic Office. He also went around the exhibition organised as part of the congress. Present on the occasion were Chief Hydrographer vice admiral Vinay Badhwar , joint chief hydrographer rear admiral Adhir Arora, the surveyor general of India, major general Girish Kumar, Surveyor General of India and experts participating in the three-day event.