ISRO Utilizes Geospatial Technology for Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan

ISRO Utilizes Geospatial Technology for Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan

A novel initiative to contribute in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan using the Geospatial Technology (GST) was taken up jointly by the central Government institutions in Dehradun. This initiative was supported by Nagar Nigam, Dehradun (local authorities).

Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), a Unit of ISRO, coordinated this programme in collaboration with the Anthropological Survey of India, Archaeological Survey of India, Botanical Survey of India, Defence Electronics Application Laboratory (DEAL), DRDO, Indian Institute of Petroleum, Indian Institute of Soil & Water Conservation, Instruments Research & Development Establishment (IRDE), DRDO, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Wildlife Institute of India and Zoological Survey of India.

Geospatial Technology (GST)

Geospatial technology (GST) includes a suite of three technologies:

  1. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), or more popularly, Global Positioning System (GPS) which provides geographic location or positions of specific points on the Earth
  2. Space-borne satellite images which provide pictorial description of the point in the context of neighbourhood locations
  3. Geographical Information System (GIS) which integrates these two along with many other information layers like road and infrastructure, topography, land use, soil, geology, etc., and also allows people to generate and use maps required to manage our resources for the benefit of common man.

Today, GST is being used as a working platform for realising e-governance with a large number of applications from natural resources mapping and monitoring to infrastructure and development planning, meteorology, disaster management support, to name a few.

With the availability of GPS data through smart phones at affordable cost, better governance and providing location based services to the public has become feasible. Application of GST in Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan has been attempted for the first time by IIRS, Dehradun.

Geospatial Technology for Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan

Methodology

The reconnaissance survey using India’s GPS-Aided Geo-Augmented Navigation (GAGAN)  receiver was carried out to precisely locate the authorised and unauthorised garbage dumping sites covering five main routes in Dehradun city. The road network connected to the dumping sites was also mapped for route planning. Geo-tagging of all the participating government institutes were also done.

GIS techniques such as geo-fencing (buffering), geospatial analysis (spatial and attribute queries), etc., were used to develop an optimum implementation plan. A map was prepared to represent geo-fencing of each institute considering time constraints and resource allocation. Each route was supported with respective teams of both IIRS and collaborative institutes (471 volunteers and 43 Nagar Nigam personnel) to impliment the proposed activity. Real-time monitoring and support were provided to the overall activity from IIRS control room.

Twenty-two garbage dumping sites and roadsides were cleaned within a span of 3 hours. Around 45 m3 (approximately 10 tonne) of garbage was collected and disposed of during this entire exercise. The details of this event are available at www.iirs.gov.in/SBA.html.

 Mapping and monitoring of Garbage site through Crowd sourcing

One of the unique results of this novel multi-institutional initiative is the conceptualisation of crowd sourcing tool to identify, map and monitor the dumping sites. A Swachh Bharat Mobile Application (beta version) is being developed by IIRS in collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi which will allow any user to install the mobile app in their smart phones and send the garbage site geo-tagged information to the Nagar Nigam server (if available) for further action. Thus, crowd sourcing for Swachh Bharat will be soon realised and implemented with the help of Academic Institutions as a regular exercise for the cleanliness of the city.

Source: ISRO

Categories: GIS

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