India’s journey from traditional cartography to high-tech GIS mapping

Map-making is not new for India. It has seen great cartographers such as Bhaskaracharya, Aryabhatta, Brahmgupta and Varahmihir. GIS services are the modern form of this great art as they promise integration of information – textual and graphic – from different databases.

The nation, with its highly developed GIS mapping capabilities, has earned a name for innovations that boosted citizens’, enterprises’ and the government’s efforts in achieving sustainable development.

India’s tryst with aerial photography began in 1920, and by the early years after 2000, it was using it for topographical mapping, besides several other remarkable surveying and mapping techniques and the prestigious space programme, which was backed by the revolutionary IT reforms.

India’s aerial way of surveying and mapping had taken off during the early 1960s, leaving behind the traditional approach of cartography. The country’s rapid progress in space research in the late 1960s, led to the establishment of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and later the formation of the Space Commission.

In 1974, when the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) was formed, its main task was to support the defence ministry and facilitate aerial surveys for research. The country’s Earth Observation (EO) programmes were initiated with the launch of Aryabhatta. ISRO built and operated its first satellite in space. The launch of Bhaskara I and II followed within the next 7 years, which brought valuable insight into sensor system development and experience in several other processes, some of which were:

- Implementation of a space platform- Data interpretation and utilization - Ground based data reception and processing

It also taught Indian scientists how to manage natural resources by integrating remotely sensed data into conventionally installed systems.

Meanwhile, satellite communication had already begun in the late 1960s. The first project itself proved to be a training ground for engineers and scientists across the globe. Towards the end of the 1970s began the satellite telecommunication experiments (STEP) with an aim to use GIS mapping for enhancing the quality of domestic communications and other operations. This also was the preparation for the launch of INSAT - Indian National Satellite System, which went on to become a major support system for broadcast, forecast, telecommunications, and search and rescue operations, all of which require GIS services.

By the mid-1980s, GIS massively enhanced India’s communication facilities. It further helped in creating tele-education facilities in rural areas. Another major community centric deliverable, the disaster management support, got its emergency communications systems, which was effectively a combination of remote sensing and space communications.

The INSAT series boosted a lot of things such as satellite navigation that provided locational reliability. The growing access to a lot of satellite data led to the formation of National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS), which pushed the infusion of remote sensing technology into information and communication systems of resource planners.

Many large scale projects got operational with the infrastructure that was subsequently built up, and this prompted the government to encourage remote sensing service centres at the regional and state level. The projects that NNRMS triggered were really enormous, e.g. the National Wasteland Monitoring Project, or the Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development.

The top factor behind the introduction of GIS services and its adaptation by the formal markets is the advancements in technology. The fast developing IT infrastructure of India during the past five decades rapidly brought GIS software into the mainstream.

Thus, the geographic information system, which began as a modest effort in India, evolved into an enormous system, that brought about drastic changes in the industry. The subsequent space programmes that it set off have become a mark of India’s sophisticated technological capabilities and its ability to build space infrastructure to speed up various developmental processes.