The Uttarakhand geospatial services portal will be launched on Tuesday by Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat. This and other developments like release of the Kailash sacred landscape atlas are slated to take place in a day long workshop to be organised by the Uttarakhand Space Application Centre (USAC).
Addressing the media here on Sunday, the USAC director MPS Bisht informed that the Centre will be organising a day-long workshop (State meet) on space based information for decentralised planning. Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat will inaugurate the workshop with Minister of State Dhan Singh Rawat as the special guest while senior officials and scientists from national level institutions will be participating.
One of the main aims for holding the workshop is to provide information to various national and State departments along with linear departments and education institutions about the high resolution maps prepared by USAC in collaboration with National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Space Application Centre (SAC) and the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change among others. These high resolution maps will aid the departments concerned in biodiversity assessment, planning, long-term monitoring and maintenance.
Bisht further said that though USAC conducts various studies and generates database, such information cannot always be shared in the public domain.
Since it is also vital to disseminate useful information among stakeholders in the public, a session of the workshop will have senior officials from national and state level institutions discussing aspects of geo-spatial data sharing. The session will be focused on how governmental and non-governmental organisations can share geo-spatial data on works being undertaken in Uttarakhand.
The conclusions reached at the end of this discussion will be prepared in the form of a scientific document which would work as a basis for the policy document to be prepared for the sharing of data and information. The USAC director further informed that three knowledge products will be launched in the day long workshop.
The Kailash sacred landscape atlas, Space based Information Support for Decentralised Planning (SISDP) and the Uttarakhand geospatial services portal will also be launched during the workshop.
Elaborating on the work being undertaken by USAC, Bisht informed that while earlier maps of Uttarakhand were made on a 1:50,000 scale, the centre has made these on 1:10,000 scale.
He also spoke about the works undertaken by the centre at the Panchayat level, school mapping, cave circuit mapping and polling booth mapping among other tasks. USAC scientists Priyadarshi Upadhyay, Shashank Lingwal and PRO Sudhakar Bhatt among others were also present in the Press conference.