nnrms bulletin june 2012

8/12/2019 NNRMS Bulletin June 2012

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BULLETIN OF THE

NATIONAL NATURAL RESOURCES

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMNNRMS (B) - 36

Geospatial Applications andDecision Support Systems

June 2012

NNRMSDepartment of SpaceAntariksh Bhavan, New BEL RoadBangalore - 560 231INDIA


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Editorial Advisors

Kiran Kumar AS, Director, SACDadhwal VK, Director, NRSCShivakumar SK, Associate Director, ISAC

Editorial Board

Diwakar PG, Director, EOSKrishnamurthy YVN, Deputy Director, (RSA), NRSCSaha SK, Dean (Academics), IIRSAjai, Group Director, MPSG/EPSA, SAC

Technical Guidance

Shantanu Bhatawdekar, Associate Director (A), EOS

Technical Support and Compilation

Paul MA, Scientist/Engineer SE, EOSArunachalam A, Scientist/ Engineer SF, EOS

For details and inputs, please write toDirectorEarth Observations SystemISRO HeadquartersAntariksh BhavanNew BEL RoadBangalore 560 231

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 91-80-23413806

Published by

P&PR Unit, ISRO Headquarters on behalf ofNational Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS)ISRO HeadquartersAntariksh Bhavan, New BEL RoadBangalore 560 231

Designed by

Imagic Creatives Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore 560 071

Printed at

Aditya Printers, Bangalore


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Page No.

1 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Tools for

Web Based Geospatial Solutions 1-11

Arunachalam A and Diwakar PG

EOS Programme Office, ISRO HQ

2 NRDB Versatile Cyber Infrastructure for Spatial Data Repository

and Dissemination 13-18

Pushpalata Shah, Rajendra Gaikwad & NRDB Team

Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad

3 Bhuvan - Gateway to Indian Earth Observation Data Products

and Services 19-27

Team Bhuvan

National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad

4 ISRO's contribution in the Field of Meteorological and

Oceanographic Studies 28-32

Yagna Mankad & Pushpalata Shah


5 India-WRIS WebGIS-Design and Development of Web Enabled

Water Resources Information System of India 33-43

Sharma JR and Project Team

RRSCs / National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad

6 In Season Progressive Assessment of Rain Fed Agricultural

Crop Status in India using Geospatial Technique 44-49

Manab Chakraborty and Panigrahy S


7 Decision Support System for Integrated Development of Apple

Orchards in Himachal Pradesh under the Technology Mission 50-56

Sushma Panigrahy1, Bhatt NB1, Oza SR1, Alka Sharma2, Parihar JS1and Singh H P3

1Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad

2HP Remote Sensing Cell, Shimla

3ICAR, New Delhi

C O N T E N T S


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FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE(FOSS) TOOLS FOR WEB BASEDGEOSPATIAL SOLUTIONS

Arunachalam A and Diwakar PGEOS Programme Office, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)Headquarters, Bangalore 560 231, IndiaEmail: [email protected]

Introduction

Geospatial information is a set of data referenced to a physical location or a

place through a set of geographic coordinates, which can be gathered, processed and

visualised on a simple computer system. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a

combination of data and software tools configured on a computer system that helps to

store, query, analyse and display geographically referenced data. Such data, also known

popularly as geospatial data, describe both locations and characteristics of spatial

features such as roads, land parcels, natural features and others on the Earths surface

(Chang, 2006). In recent years, with the advent of cheap and powerful computers, the

consumer demand for such location specific data and information has increased by

many folds that has made GIS tools and technologies more popular than ever before.

(www.physicalgeography.net). This has also enabled the common man to be sensitised

on the subject, including the utilisation of these technologies on a daily basis.

GIS operates on multiple levels; on the most basic level, GIS is used for

computer based cartography, i.e., for mapping; but the real potential of GIS comes

from its ability of using spatial data and statistical methods to analyze, process and

depict geographic information (Sutton et al., 2009). GIS can manage unlimited layers

of geographic data attached with attributes that are stored and organised in database

management systems. Use of databases makes the process of managing geo-data

faster and efficient, besides providing flexibility to query based on keywords, display

and visualisation of required area. Within the last decade itself, the involvement of

GIS as a key technology for management support and aid in almost all possible fields

has made GIS as a part of common mans life. The application of GIS software in

several sectors has become very relevant in the recent times (Paul Bolstad, 2008).

Traditionally, GIS as a technology was dominated by a few commercial software

packages and hence the usage, applications and database organization were

dependent on the functionalities provided by such tools. While such tools helped in

addressing various user requirements with regard to data organisation and customised

solutions, there were limitations for which one had to wait for upgrades and

improvements in the software. The traditional model of GIS was more a desktop

version with some geospatial functionalities provided through tools and techniques

in a desktop environment. Slowly this grew into enterprise class of solutions, advanced


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2management, land management and

cadastre projects. In a few years from now,

geospatial data would be integrated in

all types of information systems that

provide visualisat ion solutions in a

web based environment. Some of the

important GIS applications area is shown

in Figure 1.

What is FOSS?

In the context of free and open-

source software, free refers to the

freedom to copy and re-use the software,rather than the price of the software

(Ghosh et al., 2002). FOSS is liberally

licensed to grant the right of users to use,

study, change, and improve its design

through the availability of its source code.

This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance, as the potential benefits are

increasingly being recognized by both individuals and corporations. FOSS is an inclusive term

that covers both free and open source software, which despite describing similar development

models, have differing cultures and philosophies. While free software focuses on the

philosophical freedoms it gives to users, open source software focuses on the perceived

strengths of its peer-to-peer development model.

The Open Source Init iat ive (OSI) maintains the Open Source Definit ion

(www.opensource.org), which states that for a program to be considered as open source, it

must satisfy the following:

Be freely distributable with no requirement for fees or royalties for doing so.

Make the source code of the program freely available and distributable.

Allow for the modification of the source code and distribution of the modified work

under the same terms as the original.

Support the integrity of the author's code. The author may restrict the distribution of

modified source code as long as they allow for the distribution of patches to the code.

Not to discriminate against what people or groups may make use of the program.

Not to discriminate against how and for what purposes the program will be used.

Not to place any additional license on the receiver of a copy of the program.

Not to have a license that makes it specific to a single project or product.

Not to have a license that places restrictions on other software.

Have a license that is technologically neutral.

Hence, FOSS can be defined as software where the developers gain free access to the

software, understand how it works, adapt and improve the code according to specific needs

Fig. 1: Wide variety of Web-GIS applications

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and redistribute code to other users. In simple terms, the source code is available for modification and redistribution

by the general public. The main advantages of using FOSS in the development of WebGIS are the absence of license

fees, vendor independence, access to source code, permission to modify and redistribute the code.

The growing trends of the adoption of open source GIS tools and technologies for Geographic

Information System (GIS) is largely due to the fact that many successful open source software projects have

proven record of performance at acceptable level and sometimes even at exceptional levels. The trend can be

seen more and more through Government and Private organizations support for open source projects and

widespread adoption of open source technologies.

Web based Geospatial Information System - Architecture

The basic architecture of Geospatial Information system is shown in Figure 2. WebGIS can be built using

open source software, proprietary (license required) software, or a combination of the two. Open source GIS

software is rapidly improving and, in most cases, can provide a robust alternative to proprietary software.

The GIS architecture, as shown in Figure 2, basically consists of four major components, which are

described hereunder:

User interface

Web browsers: Increasingly popular choice for interaction with the GIS.

Desktop software: Used for complex spatial data manipulation and visualization tasks with direct connection

to the GIS server.

Mobile devices: Support one-way and two-way data replication tasks.

Web application server

HTTP server: The Web server that processes the HTTP requests.

Application server: Contains the Web application and supports client-side APIs (such as JavaScript) and

server s ide logic (such as servlets,

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs)) to invoke GIS

server tasks.

Database connection: Java Database

Connectivity (JDBC) or Open Database

Connectivity (ODBC) API to connect to the

database.

GIS Server

Provides visualizat ion, spatial data

analys is, mapping, and spatial data

management services.

Supports complex workflow activities,

including versioning.

Database

The database server stores the spatial

and non-spatial data and provides

varieties of data management tools.Fig. 2: GIS architecture (adopted from Scott Crowther et al., 2008)


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2The architecture in Figure 2 is a standard 3-tier architecture, where user interface, middleware

(Web application server and GIS server), and database components are modularized.

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is a non-profit, international industry

consortium of about 440 companies, government agencies and universities that develop publicly

available interface standards (www.opengeospatial.org). These standards support interoperable

solutions that "geo-enable" the web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT.

In general, these standards describe communication protocols between data servers, servers

that provide spatial services, and the client software, which request and display spatial data.

In addition, they define a format for the transmission of spatial data. Some of the important

OGC standards that are required in the development of geospatial and location based

services include:

OGC data delivery standards: Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), Web

Map Tile Service (WMTS), Web Feature Service -Transactional (WFS-T), and Web Coverage

Service (WCS)

OGC data format standards: Simple Feature Specification (SFS), Geography Markup

Language (GML), Keyhole Markup Language (KML)

OGC data search standards: Catalogue Service (CSW), Gazetteer Service (WFS-G)

Other OGC standards: Web Processing Service (WPS), Coordinate Transformation Service

(CTS), Web Terrain Service (WTS), Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD), Symbology Encoding (SE),

Web Map Context (WMC).

FOSS Tools for WebGIS

WebGIS holds the potential to make distributed geographic information available to

a very large worldwide audience. Users will be able to access GIS applications from their

browsers without having proprietary GIS software in their desktops. The Internet and the

World Wide Web have been widely recognized as an important means to disseminate

information. It has increasingly been recognized that future developments in GIS will center on

WebGIS (Caldeweyher et al., 2007), accessing geospatial data and conducting geospatial

analyses on the Internet. This trend has emerged to overcome several limitations of popular

desktop GIS software packages.

Some of the important softwares for various components of Web based Geospatial

Information Systems are discussed hereunder:

i. Database

A database is an organized collection of data for multiple purposes, usually in digital

form. The term database implies that the data is managed to certain level of quality, measured

in terms of accuracy, availability, usability, and resilience. This in turn often implies the use of

a general-purpose Database Management System (DBMS). A successful general-purpose DBMS

is designed in such a way that it can satisfy many different applications. Relational DatabaseManagement Systems (RDBMS) are used to store and manage huge volume of data, wherein

data is stored into different tables and relations are established between them using primary 5


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keys or foreign keys. DBMSs are packaged as computer software products and some of the well-known products

include the Oracle DBMS, Microsoft Access and SQL Server and the Open source DBMS like MySQL, PostgreSQL,

etc. PostGIS adds the spatial support to the well known PostgreSQL relational database. (Rinaudo et al., 2007).

i i. Web Server

The primary function of web server is to deliver web pages on request to clients. This means delivery of

HTML documents and any additional content that may be included in the document, such as images, style sheets

and scripts. User initiates the communicat ion by making a request for a specific resource using HTTP through

web browser and the server responds with the content of that resource. Many generic web servers also support

server-side scripting, e.g., Apache HTTP Server.

iii. Application Server

An application server is a software framework that provides an environment where applications can run.

It is dedicated to the efficient execution of procedures (programs, routines, scripts) for supporting the construction

of applications. An application server acts as a set of components accessible to the software developer through

an API defined by the platform. For web applications, these components are usually performed in the same

machine where the web server is running, and their main job is to support the construction of dynamic pages.

Some of the popular application server software are described hereunder:

MapServer

MapServer is probably the oldest and the most popular open source Internet Map Server. The platform

was originally developed at the University of Minnesota in 1994 with NASA funding (www.mapserver.org).

MapServer is a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) program. CGI is an early Internet GIS technology. MapServer

is now a project of OSGeo (Open Source Geospatial Foundation). It provides cross platform support for various

OGC standards like WMS, WFS, WCS, SLD, GML, etc. It also supports popular scripting and development

environments like PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, and .NET. A multitude of raster and vector data formats like TIFF/

GeoTIFF, ESRI Shapefiles, ESRI ArcSDE, Oracle Spatial, MySQL are supported by the MapServer.

In order to install MapServer package, OSGeo4W, the new Windows installer may be downloaded from

http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/osgeo4w-setup.exe and installed along with Apache web server and

configured. Now, using PHP or Java or .Net, the developer can customize his own application.

In addition, lot of applications

packages for MS4W is also available with

rich functionalities. One such example is

Ka-Map. It is an open source project that

is aimed at providing a JavaScript API for

developing highly interactive web

mapping interfaces using features

available in modern web browsers. Ka-

Map can also be downloaded from the

same URL under applications packaged for

MS4W called Ka-Map Java Script API

and integrated with Map Server. Now, we

can add the data into Ka-Map frame and

view it on the browser. Figure-3 shows

the sample data in Ka-Map frame.Fig. 3: Ka-Map integrated map server showing the sample data


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2 MapGuide

The open source version of Autodesk's MapGuide software is a web-based platform

for developing web mapping applications and services. Autodesk created MapGuide originallyas proprietary software. In 2005, Autodesk released MapGuide-10 as open source and made

the source codes available for open source developers (www.mapguide.org). It features an

interactive user interface that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map

tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure. MapGuide supports most

geospatial file formats and standards and can be deployed on Linux or Windows using Apache

or IIS respectively. It also supports extensive APIs for PHP, .NET, Java and JavaScript to allow

applications to be built around it. MapGuide Open Source can provide a very powerful map

engine and advanced client-side map browser tools and technologies (such as AJAX viewer and

vector-based DWF viewer). MapGuide Maestro is an open source GUI tool that can ease the

management of spatial data in MapGuide Open Source.

The bundled package for MapGuide and MapGuide Maestro can be downloaded and

installed from URLs http://mapguide.osgeo.org/downloads and http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/

maestro/ respectively. After configuration of the MapGuide server, five layers namely data, layers,

symbols, maps and layouts can be created under mapguide maestro and data can be added to them.

GeoServer

GeoServer is an open source software server written in Java that allows users to share

and edit geospatial data (www.geoserver.org). GeoServer can provide advanced Web mapping

protocols such as OGC's WMS and WFS. GeoServer allows data to be published as maps or

images through WMS or actual geographic features through WFS. Using the WFS-T standard,

GeoServer even allows for the insertion, deletion and updation of data. Output map formats

include JPEG, PNG, SVG and KML. Vector data can be delivered as GML and ESRI Shapefile.

GeoServer can display data on any of the popular mapping applications such as Google Maps,

Google Earth, Yahoo Maps, and Microsoft Virtual Earth Open Layers. It can also provide

transactional editing. GeoServer relies on GeoTools, an open source (LGPL) Java code library,

which provides standards compliant methods for the manipulation of geospatial data. GeoTools

implements specifications of the Open Geospatial Consortium including Simple Features, Grid

Coverage, Styled Layer Descriptor.

In order to use GeoServer, javaneeds to be configured in the server. The

Geoserver package can be downloaded

from http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/

Download and installed. Then, user can

create a workspace in GeoServer and add

data to the workspace. When a new dataset

is added to GeoServer, it is displayed in

default style. However, the developer can

create his own Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD)

and upload it to the GeoServer to visualize

the layer in a particular style. Figure 4

shows the Custom Styled Layer of the

sample data in GeoServer.Fig. 4: Sample data displayed using custom SLD in Geoserver7


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CartoWeb

CartoWeb is comprehensive and ready-to-use Web-GIS software for building advanced and customized

applications. Developed by Camptocamp SA, it is based on the UMN MapServer engine and is released under theGNU General Public License (GPL). Written using innovative language, PHP5, CartoWeb is highly modular and

customizable due to its object-oriented architecture (www.cartoweb.org). It runs evenly on Windows or Unix-like

platforms and has powerful features, when associated to PostgreSQL/ PostGIS.

User can download and install

CartoWeb from http://cartoweb.org/

downloads.html, with the demo data and

also plug-in. After configurati on of

Cartoweb, one can upload the Map files

into their project. Figure 5 shows the

sample data displayed using Cartoweb.

Open Source GIS

Developments at ISRO

ISRO/ DOS has developed many

Web Enabled Geospatial Information

Systems towards spatially enabling the

society with data and information. These

can be categorised under five categories

viz., Natural resources data and services, Satellite Data visualisation, Atmospheric, Meteorological and Ocean

related services, Disaster Management Support and Planetary Data Services. While some of them are developed

using proprietary software, there are several developments using Open Source Software. Some of the Geospatial

Information Systems developed in Open Source Environment are described hereunder:

NNRMS Portal & Natural Resources Database

Natural Resources Database (NRDB) is the spatial data repository of ISRO having natural resources

data generated under various NNRMS (National Natural Resources Management System) programmes.

The access to the databases is channelised through NNRMS portal (www.nnrms.gov.in). Home Page of the

Portal is shown in Figure 6. NNRMS Portal

enables the users to search for a particular

data and provides the visualization of thedataset as well as the complete metadata

about the data. NNRMS Portal adopts a

multi-tier architecture and the data server;

application server, map server and web

server are installed and configured in

distr ibuted network architecture.

The important open source software

components used in the development

are: PostgreSQL as Database server,

Apache as Web server, Mapguide as

Map server and ASP, PHP, HTML as

programming environments.

Fig. 5: Sample data displayed using CartoWeb

Fig. 6: Home page of NNRMS portal


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Indian Bio Resource Network

Indian Bio Resource Network

(IBIN) is a system of distr ibuted

databases where data is available as

web services. The outputs of Biodiversity

Characterizations at landscape level, a joint

project of ISRO and Department of

Biotechnology (DBT) are major inputs for

IBIN spatial node. The spatial data is

available as OGC compliant Web Map

Service (http://www.ibin.co.in) and the

home page of the portal is shown in

Figure 9. The important open source

software in the development of IBIN are:

Postgre SQL as Database server, POSTGIS

as Spatial Database Engine, Apache as Web

server, UMN Map Server as Internet Map

Server and PHP for customisation.

ISRO Data Portal

ISRO Data portal is an effort to

harmonize various geospatial and data

services efforts of IRSO/ DOS (http://

dataportal.isro.gov.in). It provides a well

orchestrated data and services to the user

community from one common frontend.

It helps to discover geospatial data &

services of ISRO and provides information

on Satellite Images, Land & Water, Ocean

& Meteorology, Disaster services and

Planetary Science. Figure 10 shows the

home page of ISRO data portal.

Conclusion

Through this article, an attempt

is made to highlight the various options

for development of open source software

based Geospatial information

development through examples from

ISRO/ Department of Space. Web based

Geospatial Information systems are

becoming most popular tools for various

aspects of decis ion making in thegovernment, private and non-

governmental organisations. The

Fig. 9: Home page of IBIN portal

Fig. 10: Home page of ISRO data portal


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2advantages of open source geospatial solution is in quick implementation, maintenance, on-

line help, multiple developers consortium upgrades, large sized discussion forums and assured

source code. However, the important aspect here is to develop trained manpower to maintain

the software, software domain knowledge and art of trouble shooting to achieve best solutions.

A wide variety of open source tools are now available for desktop and client-server

solutions, content management, geospatial database management and mobile GIS. Recent

years have seen FOSS becoming more mature, interoperable and user friendly. The Open Source

tools offer many interesting alternatives, such as, sharing software solutions, customisation by

exploring newer solutions through web-based developer community and a host of other parallel

possibilities due to worldwide contributors. Continuous improvements and innovations in GIS

technology, ensures better solutions, database management solution as well as innovations in

visualization and geospatial operations. With the open source software solution becomingmore popular, there is ample scope for many users to adopt and use for their domain specific

applications in a cost effective manner.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank all the contributors and the inputs provided by the

designers of various Geoinformation portals of ISRO, Dept. of Space. This has enabled

consolidation of various open source development activities.

References

Chang, Kang-tsung, (2006). Introduction to geographic information systems,Tata McGraw-Hill.

Caldeweyher, D., Zhang, J. and Pham, B. (2007). OpenGIS - Open Source GIS-based web

community information system, International Journal of Geographical Information Science,

20:8, 885 - 898.

Ghosh, R.A., Rudiger Glott, Kreiger, B., Gregario Robles (2002). The Free/Libre and Open Source

Software Survey and StudyFLOSS Final Report. International Institute of Infonomics, University

of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

GIS Institute, (2007). WebGIS Manual

Paul Bolstad (2008). GIS Fundamentals, Third Edition, Atlas Books

Rinaudo F, Agosto E, Ardissone P, (2007). GIS and Web-GIS, commercial and open source

platforms: general rules for cultural heritage documentation, XXI International CIPA Symposium,

01-06 Athens, Greece.

Scott Crowther, Abe Guerra, George Raber, Angel Tomala Reyes and Murali Vridhachalam

(2008). www.ibm.com/developerworks.

Sutton T, Dassau O, Sutton M (2009). A Gentle Introduction to GIS.

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RADAR IMAGING SATELLITE (RISAT-1)LAUNCHED

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in

its 21st flight (PSLV -C19), launched

the Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-1)

satellite into a circular polar sun-

synchronous orbit at an altitude of 480

km on April 26, 2012 at 05:47 am.

The satellite has now been placed in

its final Polar Sun-synchronous Orbit

of 536 km height and is providing

high quality data.

RISAT-1 is a state of the art Microwave

Remote Sensing Satellite carrying aSynthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload

operating in C-band (5.35 Ghz), which

enables imaging of the earth surface

features under all weather conditions.

RISAT-1 provides cloud penetration

and dawn-dusk imaging capability.

These unique characteristics of C-band

Synthetic Aperture Radar enables applications in agriculture, particularly paddy monitoring in kharif

season and management of natural disasters like flood and cyclone.

RISAT-1image showing part of Mumbai (04 May 2012)


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NRDB VERSATILE CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE FOR SPATIALDATA REPOSITORY ANDDISSEMINATION

Pushpalata Shah, Rajendra Gaikwad & NRDB TeamSpace Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad-380115Email: [email protected]

Introduction

The National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) supports the

national requirements of natural resources management and developmental needs

by generating a proper and systematic inventory of natural resources. In doing so,

NNRMS adopts various advanced technologies of satellite and aerial remote sensing;

Geographical Information Systems (GIS); precise Positioning Systems; database and

networking infrastructure and advanced ground-based survey techniques. NNRMS

standards have been adopted to enable technologies imaging, GIS, GPS and

applications thematic mapping, services and outputs etc., to work together. Standards

are important not only to facilitate data sharing and increase interoperability, as is

understood from many international efforts, but also to bring a systematization and

automation into the total NNRMS process of mapping and GIS itself. Towards this the

project has defined standards for all geo-spatial data called NNRMS standards.

Under the NNRMS program, a large volume of spatial and non-spatial data

has been generated. The Natural Resources Data Base (NRDB) is a repository of these

datasets, holding around 1500 thematic maps. The NRDB covers a wide spectrum of

thematic layers dealing with natural resources viz. land use, land cover, soil, soil texture,

soil erosion, reserved and protected forests, forest management boundaries, ground

water potential, drainage, wells, watersheds, surface water, canals, minerals,

geomorphology, structures, slope, lithology, wetlands, wastelands, reservoirs,

desertification status, snow cover, airports, golden quadrilateral, settlements and soon. It is also planned to augment the repository with datasets from Rajiv Gandhi

National Drinking Water Mission, Kutch development project and city based large scale

mapping data. Most of the spatial data is in vector data format. The entire spatial data

is organized into standard data format as per NRDB data organisation schema and

managed in RDBMS environment.

NRDB is a system of distributed databases where the spatial and non-spatial

database resides at various locations well distributed within the country. However,

the metadata is accessible and sharable from a single portal, the NNRMS portal. The

portal provides a sharable framework with metadata as per NNRMS standards, quality

evaluation procedures and their standardization. The Metadata Explorer utility is

accessible only after a successful login. The login is a process of self-registration to

identify oneself on the portal.


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2functionalities such as pan, zoom and

identify. The web servers are XEON DUAL

CPU INTEL type with 4GB Memoryattached with 2TB DAS storage. The Master

Data Server cluster caters to request

routing, processing of requests and

houses all the monitoring tools that are

required for managing the pending

requests, network availability, and cluster

availabi lity. The servers are XEON DUAL

CPU INTEL type with 8GB Memory

attached with 10TB storage. This storage

is used for housing the spatial database.Figure 2 gives a pictorial depiction of the

portal cluster, master data server cluster including the storage. Similar configuration servers

are setup at regional nodes with a scaled down data storage capacity of 2TB. The total setup

is depicted in Figure 3.

Database Organisation

The spatial layers generated under NNRMS programme are stored in a geo database.

The commercial package of ArcGIS 9.2 and ARCSDE with ORACLE 10g, as backend RDBMS,

has been used for organising the database. This database is referred as Natural Resources

Database (NRDB). The NRDB contents adhere to a naming convention and category coding as

specified in the NNRMS standards document [2]. Naming convention for a subset of the layers

is given in table 1.

Fig. 3: NRDB overall setup

Table1: NRDB contents with category coding and naming convention

Sr. No. Layer Category NNRMS Layer Name Project

Code

1 Village boundaries 01 Village50CENSUSYear NRIS

2 Canal 03 Canal50NUISYear

3 Drainage 03 Drainage50NRISYear

4 Rail 02 Rail50NRISYear

5 Roads 02 Road50NRISYear

6 Settlement 17 Settle50CENSUSYear

7 Watershed boundaries 03 Wshed50AISLUS

8 Geomorphology 04 Geom50NRCYear

9 Landuse /Landcover 06 Luse50NRISYear

10 Lithology 04 Litho50NRISYear

To simplify the operational activity of organising this huge volume and varied data, a

software tool has been developed in Visual Basic using the object library of ArcGIS 9.2. The

data received from various projects under NNRMS are in ARC Coverage format. Mandatory

inputs required for the software are state name, project name, scale of the data and year of

data creation.15


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Metadata Generation

To simplify and systematize the task of metadata generation, a tool has been developed for handling the

project level and layer level metadata. The project level information along with the project data is stored in anxml file through software with manual entries. The entries have to be made at the project level as well as each

layer level. In the second stage, the metadata (describing the spatial features as well as the bit maps) is generated

through another package, which reads the data directly from the geo database and stores all metadata entries

in Oracle. Ingesting the metadata from these xml files along with generation of bit maps and extraction of

metadata related to the layer (e.g. feature type, number of features etc.,) and storing in Oracle DBMS is done

through a customized package, metadata.exe.

Process Flow

User can browse for the spatial data in the NNRMS portal with simple login procedure. The user is

provided with metadata of the spatial data as well as the view of the spatial data. User can then place the

request for data using the add-to-cart feature. The details of the request are stored in an nnn.xml file and

email is sent to the user with his request-id number (nrdb_nnn) and confirmation of request received. Automated

script on the Toggle server pulls the request (nnn.xml) file and places it locally. Next, the Toggle server disconnects

from the Internet, connects to MDS and pushes the file to the MDS server.

The background process

onlinexmltooracle.exe on MDS reads this

nnn.xml file, inserts an encryption key

into the nnn.xml file and stores the

contents in the table product_catalogue

in Oracle. It also does the routing of the

request to regional nodes.

Another background process

extract.exe, looks for requests to be

processed in the product_catalogue

table. The process picks up such products

sequential ly and does the job of

extraction from the geo database. The

product is zipped and encrypted. The

encrypted products are pulled by the

toggle server between MDS and Portal

and pushed to the ftp server (ftp://

w w w . n n r m s . g o v . i n / n r d b f t p s i t e / ) .

Subsequently, an email is sent to the end

user with details of the ftp site, the

decryption key and the metadata of the

product. Similar processes are setup at

regional nodes for processing requests

and generating products and emailing to

user about product availability. Status codes

are maintained in the product catalogue

table at each stage of the process flow. The

total process flow is depicted in Figure 4.Fig. 4: NNRMS - NRDB process flow


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2Application Potential / Benefits of NRDB Datasets

The NRDB datasets have a very good potential of use in applications of agriculture,

cartography, rural development, Oceanography and Meteorology, Bio Resources, Geology andmineral Resources, Water Resources, Urban Planning and so on. Such data is required for

cropping system analysis, soil mapping, forest type mapping, bio diversity characterization, bio

resources assessment, wasteland mapping, environmental impact analysis, topographic map

updation, generation of digital elevation models, ground water prospects zonation and various

time-series analysis.

Challenges

Creating thematic datasets at the country level covering the vast scope of remote

sensing applications requires subject experts in multiple fields like geology, soil, forests,

wetlands, landuse, agriculture, etc. Again, these subject experts have to be supported with

technology and computer savvy personnel for converting the domain expertise into computer

recognizable language.

When datasets are created by multiple agencies, it becomes very essential to develop

automated algorithms and tools for checking whether the data is as per the defined standards

in terms of data content and data structure as well as identifying missing elements. Further,

the workflows involved in data correction (e.g. seam removal, mosaicing, etc.,) have to be

computerized and automated to handle large volumes of data. Secondly, all the data has to be

brought to a common framework, datum as well as projection system. This has to be done in

a systematic and precise manner. Finally, well defined quality checking procedures have to be

set up before releasing the data for public use. QC rejected data needs to be sent back to the

data creator for rectification.

The most pressing challenges for development of the NRDB-NNRMS setup are summarized

hereunder:

Standardization of thematic data content, structure as well as symbology for all categories

in various levels of classification. The standards that are evolved are now being referred as

NNRMS standards.

Understanding and adopting geo-database technology for a structured and well defined

data organisation mechanism

Setting up protocols for exchange of information through organizational and countrywide

network as well as establishing a decentralized request processing in INTRANET and product

dissemination over INTERNET.

Setting up auto fail over mechanisms for the web site as well as the data services.

Providing the data and metadata services in a secured manner.

Maintaining the cyber infrastructure for smooth operations

Regulating and synchronizing the database content uniformly across all regional nodes

and central master server.17


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Conclusion

NRDB is primarily aimed at creating and maintaining a systematic archive of all the digital spatial data

holdings of thematic and base maps generated using remote sensing images and promote/ encourageits use for government, business and societal needs. NRDB consists of various thematic layers generated

under NNRMS programmes tied through common standards and accessible through a common search engine

over a secured network. The access to these databases are channelized through NNRMS portal. The paper

highlighted the role of cyber-infrastructure to realize the spatial data infrastructure of NNRMS Programmes. The

data from NRDB is being used for various planning and developmental activities, especially for management of

natural resources, disaster management, rural development, land use planning, etc., by government and non-

government organizations.

References

www.isro.gov.in

www.nnrms.gov.in


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BHUVAN GATEWAY TO INDIANEARTH OBSERVATION DATAPRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Team BhuvanNational Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), ISRO, Hyderabad-500625E-mail: [email protected]

Introduction

Bhuvan (the name is derived from the Sanskrit word, which means Earth), a

Geoportal of ISRO and Gateway to Indian Earth Observation Data Products and Services

(http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in), is an initiative of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO),

Department of Space, Government of India. This is to evince the Indian Earth

Observation capabilities from the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) series of satellites. The

images showcased on Bhuvan are from multi-sensor, multi-platform and multi-

temporal domains with capabilities to overlay thematic information, derived from

such imagery as vector layers, on a virtual globe for the benefit of user community.

All the Ministries involved in managing natural resources in the country atdifferent levels can take benefit of Bhuvan. This one-stop versatile Earth browser can

be of vital use for planners, decision makers, social groups, village communities and

individuals. Bhuvan provides a gateway to explore and discover the virtual Earth in 2-

Dimensional and 3-Dimensional space with many new possibil it ies

for value addition at the user end. Towards its enhanced outreach and usage, Bhuvan

is available in three Indian languages too, that is, Hindi, Tamil & Telugu apart from

English. There are plans to make it available in other Indian languages in the near

future (Figure-1).

Apart from its unique visualization capabilities, Bhuvan also facilitates theusers to download the satellite data and products through NRSC Open EO Data

Archive (NOEDA), consume thematic datasets as OGC web services through Bhuvan

and plans are outlined for dynamic user interface for user-data-input, etc. Bhuvan's

versatile tools support development of interactive applications for visualisation,

querying, analysis, applications customisation, and as a browser for participatory

data sharing/ analysis. These capabilities make Bhuvan a unique Gateway to Indian

EO Data Products and Services. Bhuvan has also been recognized by OGC as website

of the month in December, 2010 (http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/

newsletters/201012/#C4).

Significance of Bhuvan

Bhuvan allows scientists, academicians, policy makers, or general public to


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Fig. 1: Multi-lingual Bhuvan

leverage the integration of vast amounts

of geospatial data in an easy-to-use

interface without any additional resources.

The unique features of Bhuvan are:

Availabil ity of uniform high

resolution data (6m for the entire Indian

territory), multi-sensor, multi-temporal,

multi-platform data from IRS series of

satell ites, thematic information,

Automatic Weather Stations (AWS), Ocean

Services (Potential Fish-catch Zones (PFZ)

information for fishermen community

provided by INCOIS, MoES), Disaster

Services, Collaboration/ Sharing/

Community Participation (Volunteered

Geographic Information), OGC Web

Services towards Interoperability Online

GIS (Shape file Creation - facilitates the

users to download the delineated/

interpreted content using Bhuvan satellite

data as a shape file), Urban Design Tools(to build roads, junctions and traffic lights

in an urban setting), Terrain Profi le

(displays the terrain elevation profile along a path), Mobile Compatibility (supports Android, Symbian, iOS and

Windows Operating Systems), WMS Manager, Multi-Lingual (EN | HI | TA | TE ) interface and Data Download

(CartoDEM, Ortho rectified AWiFS (56m) and LISS III(24m) data).

Components of Bhuvan

Initial version of Bhuvan was launched on August 12, 2009 and since then, it has taken many steps

forward to reach users with wide range of services and applications. In this time frame, two more versions were

released with several advanced features and now its moving towards its fourth release.

Milestones of Bhuvan during the period 2009 -2011:

Release 1 August 12, 2009 - Bhuvan 3D

Release 2 August 14, 2010 Bhuvan 3D with enhanced functionalities and indigenously developed

Bhuvan 2D

Release 3 April 29, 2011 Bhuvan with Multilingual Support (4 languages-English, Hindi, Tamil & Telugu)

and enriched features both in 2D and 3D

Mobile Version July 15, 2011

High resolution data with the release of RSDP-2011, Bhuvan Discussion Forum, Single Sign-on (SSO) -

August 12, 2011

NRSC Open EO Data Archive (NOEDA) September 28, 2011 to provide download of CartoDEM and

AWiFS data at free of cost.


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Fig. 2: Bhuvan 3D

Fig. 3: Bhuvan 2D

21

Bhuvan Thematic Services December

17, 2011 to provide thematic datasets

as OGC web services to the users towards

interoperability

Addition of 24m Ortho rectified LISS III

data in NOEDA January 03, 2012

Bhuvan 3D

Bhuvan 3D showcases images in

a multi-sensor, multi-platform and a

multitemporal domain. It lets the user to

access, explore and visualise IRS imagery

and a bundle of rich thematic information in 3D landscape. On Bhuvan 3D, users can fly to

different locations on the terrain and experience interesting 3D navigation (Figure 2).

3D Bhuvan has many unique features and is an easy-to-use intuitive interface, where

users can virtually experience the physical characteristics of the terrain, especially the Indian

landscapes. The urban design tools are a magic galore. Here the user can virtually build roads,

junctions and traffic lights in an urban setting. At the moment, Bhuvan 3D requires a 10 MB

plug-in download and is compatible with windows environment.

Bhuvan 2D

In order to meet the requirement of large number of people who need a lighter,

platform independent and simpler browser-based version, Bhuvan-2D was evolved. Development

is carried out using the very robust Open Source Geospatial solutions like UMN MapServer,

GeoServer and POSTGIS with Postgres to organize the satellite imageries and map data along

with myriad information, with no server side dependencies. PHP (widely-used general-purpose

scripting language) and OpenLayers (Open Source javascript library) are also used for making it

more dynamic, interactive and rich in Web application. Thus, the entire development and

deployment of Bhuvan 2D is accomplished using open source solution (Figure 3).

Some of its functional capabilities include map navigation, map panning, and overviewmap, drawing line, point & polygon on

the map, linear and area measurement etc.

Also tools providing capabilities of Geo-

Processing, GetCapabilities, online shape

file creation & download, simple and

combo graph generation using archived

weather data, Potential Fishing Zone

Information, mailing current location to

other users & allowing Bhuvan imagery to

embed into third partys web pages

towards the benefit of the common man

are being provided. Users can use both


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Fig. 4: Pocket Bhuvan

Fig. 5: NRSC Open EO Data Archive (NOEDA)

2D and 3D version of Bhuvan

complementing each other with better

benefits and usability.

Pocket Bhuvan (Mobile Version

of Bhuvan)

Mobile browsing generally

demands a different method of map

navigation. OpenLayers built- in

Navigation and TouchNavigation controls

are used to handle this appropriately.

Supported Touch events are Map

Dragging (touchstart/ touchmove/

touchend), Pinch Zoom (multiple touch

events), Tap Panning (support touch

browsers which do not support touch

events).

In Pocket Bhuvan (Figure 4), Zoom In, Zoom Out, ZoomBox, ZoomBoxOut, Navigationmap (Rediffmap as

transparent overlay layer) and search function are presently available. Users can access Pocket Bhuvan by visiting

http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in in their mobile and reach Pocket Bhuvan 2D using Enter Bhuvan option. The

application checks the http user agent

(computer or a mobile) and

redirects automatically to Bhuvan or

Pocket Bhuvan based on the http user

agent. This mobile Bhuvan development

and deployment has been realized using

Open source Drupal Content Management

System (CMS) and OpenLayers controls.

NRSC Open EO Data Archive

(Bhuvan-NOEDA)A new initiative of NRSC/ISRO to

make available the satellite data and

products coarser than 24 m is realized

using Bhuvan 2D solutions because of its

open standard, modular nature and its

components reusability.

NOEDA facilitates the users to select, browse and download satellite data and products. Through

NOEDA, Bhuvan has laid a step forward in serving much required data to the Scientific and Research community

(Figure 5). At present DEM derived from Cartosat-1 of 1 arc sec, Resourcesat-1 AWiFS Orthoimages (2008-2009)

at 56 m resolution, Resourcesat-1 LISS-III Orthoimages (2008-09) at 24 m resolution for Indian region are

available for download. It gives the option to select the area based on bounding box, Mapsheet (SOI), Tiles, and


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Fig. 6: Bhuvan-Thematic Services

23

Interactive Drawing. Users can see

thumbnail v iew, metadata (as per

NSDI 2.0 standards) and download the

selected tiles.

Bhuvan Thematic Services

Bhuvan-Thematic services

facilitate the users to select, browse and

query the thematic datasets. Users can

consume these thematic datasets and

integrate into their systems as OGC web

services. Presently Land Use and Land

Cover (50K):2005-06 datasets are

available and it is planned to extend the

services for other themes like land degradation, soil, etc (Figure 6).

It has the options of getting state and district wise statistics, Area of Interest (AOI) based

analysis, URL for WMS/WMTS services, adding external WMS layers and printing based on view. It

is another example of versatility of Bhuvan 2D components. The OGC web services are realized

for interoperability and it is planned to extend them as online Geoprocessing services.

Bhuvan online Discussion Forum

ISO has defined user experience as a person's perceptions and responses that result

from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service". So, user experience is subjective

and focuses on the use. Since its launch, Bhuvan has always strived to reach its users through

rich data and applications, addressing the users requirements and queries through mails,

forums, feedbacks, surveys.

To capture all kinds of user experience, address various needs and requirements, share

ideas and post case studies, a dedicated online discussion forum has been evolved using

phpBB, an open source bulletin board.

Various Bhuvan components and features can be accessed by visiting

www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in. It is an open visualisation system. Registrati on in Bhuvan

is optional. Users can use the Central Authentication Service of Bhuvan for creating an account

on Bhuvan towards Single Sign-On (SSO) developed using open source Java server component

(Jasig). However, some features require registration. Registered users are having privilege to

share and download the data, collaborate with other users, participate in discussions forums etc.

Datasets Available in Bhuvan

Huge volume of multi-temporal Geospatial datasets (Raster and Vector) along with

non-spatial datasets are created and organized on Bhuvan to facilitate this network basedapplications development and deployment. The spatial resolutions of raster datasets stored in

Bhuvan varies from 360m to 1m and vector data scale varies from 1:250000 to 1:50000. The

spatial data layers available in Bhuvan are given in the following sub-sections:


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Raster Datasets

Satellite Imagery

Satellite/Sensor Spatial Resolution (m)

Oceasnsat-1 OCM 360

Oceasnsat-2 OCM 180

Resourcesat-1 AWiFS 56

Resourcesat-1 LISS III 24

Resourcesat-1 LISS IV Mx 5.8

Casrtosat-1 PAN Merged with Resourcesat-1/2 LISS IV Mx 2.5

Casrtosat-2 PAN Merged with Resourcesat-1/2 LISS IV Mx 1

Thematic Layers

Layer Name Scale / Spatial Resolution

Land Use/Land Cover 1:250000

NADAMS NDVI India Mosaic (Year 2002, 2008 & 2009) 56 m

Flood Krishna, Kosi and Bihar 1:50000

Chlorophyll 1 km

Sea Surface Temperature 1 km

Vector Datasets

Thematic Layers

Theme Scale

Wasteland 1:50000

Soil 1:50000

Ground Water Prospects 1:50000

Watershed 1:50000

Land Use/Land Cover 1:50000

Base layers

Layer Name Scale

Administrative Boundary(Country, State, District, Taluk

and Village with Census 2001 information) 1:250000

Towns 1:250000

River 1:250000

Reservoir 1:250000

National Highway 1:250000

Golden Quadrilateral 1:250000


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Fig. 7: Land services (e.g. groundwater prospects map)

Fig. 8: Weather services (e.g. temperature, humidity etc)

Fig. 9: Ocean services (e.g. potential fishing zone, CHL, SST)25

Other Datasets/Information

Weather Information from ISROs Automatic Weather Stations (AWS)

Potential Fishing Zone Information from Indian National Centre for Ocean Information

Services (INCOIS)

Forest Fire alerts from the Indian Forest

Fire Response and Assessment System

(INFFRAS)

User shared data(Point of Interest/

Attribute) through crowdsourcing

Navigation map integration from

Rediffmap

All these datasets are grouped as

services in Bhuvan like Land services,

Weather services, Ocean services,

Disaster services and Collaboration

services (Figures 7 to 11) to cater to the

scientif ic community, planners and

administrators for their needs towards

societal good.

Use Cases

Since its advent, Bhuvan is being

referred in several forums, journals for its

usage. Few of the areas where Bhuvan has

been used are: APNIC showcasing school

information using Bhuvan (Sarva Siksha

Abhiyan), India Geoportal towards

National Spatial Data Infrastructure,

INFFRAS - Dissemination and Visualization

of Forest Fire alerts through Bhuvan, MP

Forest Department - Visualization of

information related to Forestry using

Bhuvan (Prototype developed),

Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) - Technology

demonstrated to NGO (SPARC, Mumbai)

on how to use Bhuvan for delineating

the Slum Boundaries and visualizing

them on Bhuvan. Researchers using

Bhuvan data for various scientific studies

like landslide study reported in Current


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Fig. 10: Services (e.g. flood layer with village boundary)

Fig. 11: Collaboration services (add content, communities, developer API)

Science, Vol. 98, No. 7, 10 April 2010,

Usage of Bhuvan in Microbiology of

Mangroves communicated by author

(Mr. S. Gopinath, Bharathidasan

University, Tiruchirappalli) to Aquatic

Journal, Usage of Bhuvan in Educational

book covering Himalaya (glaciers and

mountains) and Ganga river from a

California based charitable non-profit

organization - Self Enquiry Life Fellowship

collaborating with a Varanasi based Trust:

Vedanidhi Charitable Trust.

Freely available elevation data

and ortho corrected satell ite data

through NOEDA facilitates the student

community, researchers and other

users for various applications. More

than 30,000 data sets have been

downloaded during past few months.

Online shape fi le creation uti l ity

available on Bhuvan provides the platform

to the users with multi-temporal data for

various types of resource mapping of

users choice.

Future Plans

Many more value added

functions and features are envisaged

under Bhuvan, which wil l be addedfrom time to time. The basic objective

of Bhuvan is to provide such

functionalities to engage users in participatory data creation, coupled with tools for scientists to solve simple

problems easily and interactively. To state few of important functions/ features that are planned in

near future are: Dynamic User-data Input for crowd sourcing with necessary validation (through

a volunteered approach-Trusted Users), Routing for Navigation (Proximity analysis), Online Geoprocessing

towards interoperability as a Web Processing Service (WPS), Uniform High resolution data (2.5m)

for entire country, Distributed Architecture for Bhuvan to improve the user experience, Live video

streaming through Bhuvan for monitoring traffic and surveillance activity, Web Catalogue Service (CSW)of al l Indian Earth Observation datasets for evaluation and exploitation, Robust Bhuvan API for

customized add-ons/ Apps, Robust Earth Observation Data Archive and Dissemination System to


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access land cover change for local to global systems (Enhanced NOEDA), enhanced Bhuvan

Thematic Services to cater to various themes, customized Bhuvan Mobile apps to cater various

user needs towards user centric map applications etc.

Online References

http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in

http://geoserver.org/

http://httpd.apache.org

http://json.org/

http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu

http://mysql.com

http://nnrms.gov.in

http://opengeospatial.org

http://openlayers.org

http://tilecache.org

http://wikipedia.org

http://w3schools.com

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/newsletters/201012/#C4


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ISRO'S CONTRIBUTION IN THE FIELDOF METEOROLOGICAL ANDOCEANOGRAPHIC STUDIES

Yagna Mankad & Pushpalata ShahSpace Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmadabad-380015Email: [email protected]

Introduction

Since ages, scientists have been studying oceanographic and climate patterns to

understand the vagaries of nature. Extreme conditions of climate and drastic variations in

ocean current systems lead to gross destruction of property and human beings. Continuous

studies in ocean and climate sciences have brought the awareness of global warning. This

awareness has now led to strategies and policies and plans for combating global warming

and thereby save Mother Earth. Conclusive results in the fields of climate and oceanography

are possible only when respective parameters are measured from varying platforms, at different

scales and in continuous mode. Many models are built around datasets of almost hundred

years to interpret and understand climatology and oceanography. Hence, it becomes extremely

essential to continuously generate and archive oceanographic and climate related data.

Objectives

The study of Indian climatology and improved forecasting models calls for

an end to end program in terms of satellite based observations as well as ground based

observations. This objective has been achieved in the past two and a half decades through

the Indian National Satellite (INSAT) system carrying many meteorological instruments.

Established in 1983, INSAT system is a joint venture of the Department of Space,

Department of Telecommunications, India Meteorological Department and All India Radio

and Doordarshan. Meteorological data from INSAT is used for weather forecasting and

specially designed disaster warning receivers have been installed in vulnerable coastal areasfor direct transmission of warnings against impending disaster like cyclones. At present,

repetitive and synoptic weather system observations over Indian Ocean from geostationary

orbit are available only from INSAT system. INSAT VHRR data is available in near real-time at

90 Meteorological Data Dissemination Centres (MDDC) in various parts of the country. With

the commissioning of direct satellite service for processed VHRR data, MDDC type of data

can be provided at any location in the country.

The INSAT system has been providing valuable climate data covering the Indian sub

continent. Upper winds, sea surface temperature and precipitation index data are regularly

obtained. The products derived from the image data include cloud motion vectors, sea

surface temperature, outgoing long-wave radiation, quantitative precipitation index, upper

troposphere height, solar insolation etc. These products are used for weather forecasting,

both synoptic as well as in numerical weather prediction. The ground segment is covered


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2through the establishment of unmanned data collection platforms like the Automatic Weather

Stations (AWS). Around 1500 AWS stations are installed across the country. These stations

measure surface parameters like temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction,sunshine hours and rainfall on an hourly basis. This data is received through satellite link at the

data reception server setup at Space Applications Centre, Bopal. Further dissemination of the

weather related information is done by Doordarshan Television Channel by displaying INSAT-

VHRR imageries during news coverage and by newspapers as part of weather reporting.

Study of Oceans was initiated through the OCEANSAT series, with the launch of IRS-P4

(OCEANSAT-1) on May 26, 1999. This satellite carries Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) and a

Multi - frequency Scanning Microwave Radiometer (MSMR) for oceanographic studies. The

Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) has a solid state camera operating in eight narrow spectral

bands. The OCM camera is used to collect data on chlorophyll concentration, detect and

monitor phytoplankton blooms and obtain data on atmospheric aerosols and suspended

sediments in the water. The MSMR operates in four microwave frequencies, both in vertical and

horizontal polarisation, is used to collect data on sea surface temperature, wind speed, cloud

water content and water vapour content in the atmosphere above the ocean.

OCEANSAT-2, Indias second satellite in the OCEANSAT series, was launched for the

study of the oceans as well as the interaction of oceans and the atmosphere, to facilitate

climatic studies. Additionally it helps in to charting sea levels, a vital indicator of climate

change, on a globe-circling voyage. The major objectives of OCEANSAT-2 are to study surface

winds and ocean surface strata, observation of chlorophyll concentrations, monitoring of

phytoplankton blooms, study of atmospheric aerosols and suspended sediments in the water.The data is also used to provide information on Potential Fishing Zones to fishermen.

Birth of MOSDAC

Till 2005, the data received from the above mentioned missions were archived and

disseminated by the identified organisation like IMD for weather data and NRSC for IRS data.

But weather is dynamic in nature and hence the near real time data is very important. For this,

a data centre was envisaged. The Standing Committee on Meteorology (SC-M) of National

Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) has recommended establishing a data archival

and dissemination system for helping Indian users. Subsequently, Meteorological and

Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Center (MOSDAC) has been established in March 2006

at Space Applications Center ISRO, Bopal campus, Ahmedabad, to cater to the needs of

research community in the country from meteorological and oceanographic fields.

The major objectives of MOSDAC are:

To acquire and process the data from ISRO science missions

To disseminate quality data products from ISRO Science missions for meteorology and

oceanography on near real time basis

To promote synergy of different sources of satellite data into a practical and usable data

sets for R & D in atmospheric and oceanic studies

To promote the use of satellite data through numerical modeling

To ensure long term archival, management and services of all ISRO science missions

products and related information29


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The data are acquired at data reception facility established at SAC Bopal campus. These data then get

archived at archival and dissemination facility established in the same campus. These data products are

disseminated to the users through its web based service http://www.mosdac.gov.inand ftp://ftp.mosdac.gov.in.The home page is a store house of a good quantity of weather related information. Actual data sets are made

available only to registered users. The users are classified under various categories. Depending on the policy, the

user has access to specific data sets and can place the request. The requested data is made available on an FTP

server through individual accounts. For launch campaign users and under special observation periods, the data

is made available on-line i.e. without any request, the data is made available on FTP server.

MOSDAC Setup

Presently, the setup receives the data in real time from Satellites like Kalpana-1 (K1), INSAT-3A and in-situ

observations like Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) and AgroMet Stations (AMS). These data then get processed

and generated products are put in pre-defined Prod area. The interface systems configured under archival

setup pulls the data and archives as per the predefined structure. The archived data is then disseminated to the

registered users as per the policy. The

Figure 1 shows the setup configured for

this and Figure 2 shows the data flow

diagram or user connectivity.

Satellite Based Data Sets

Presently, MOSDAC has data from

Kalpana-1 satellite acquired at every half

an hour, where as INSAT-3A data five or

ten acquisitions per day. Some of these

products are depicted in Figure 3.

A cooperative agreement has been

signed with EUMETSAT for using

meteorological data from Meteosat-5 at 63

degree East in exchange for weather pictures

collected by INSAT. These data sets are made

available for internal consumption through

MOSDAC. Sample products from EUMETSAT

are shown in Figure 4.

In-situ Data Sets

ISRO has taken up indigenous

development of low cost Automatic

Weather Station (AWS) for deployment in

the country in large numbers. The data

collection is proposed to be carried out in

TDMA mode instead of the present

random access mode. The AWS data are

also received at one hour interval and Agro

Met Station (AMS) data are acquired at

half an hour. Presently, data from about 1500 AWS stations and 24 AMS stations are being received at MOSDAC

Data Reception System (MDRS) SAC. Data Collection Platforms (DCP) services are provided using the Data Relay

Fig. 1: Data acquisition, processing, archival and dissemination setup

Fig. 2: Data flow diagram


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2Transponders of Kalpana-1 and INSAT-3A.

Addit ionally, IMD has also installed

100 meteorological Data CollectionPlatforms (DCPs) and other agencies

have installed about 200 DCPs all over

the country. One DCP is also installed

at Schiramacher, the Indian base station

in Antarctica.

OCEAN Related Products

Some of the ocean related

products derived from Oceansat-2

satell ite are depicted in Figure 5.

These products wil l soon be made

available from MOSDAC.

Information Dissemination

For quick dissemination of

warnings against impending disaster

from approaching cyclones, specially

designed receivers have been installed at

the vulnerable coastal areas in Andhra

Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, West Bengal

and Gujarat for direct transmission ofwarnings to the public in general, and

officials in particular, using broadcast

capability of INSAT. IMD's Area Cyclone

Warning Centres generate special

warning bulletins and transmit them

every hour in local languages to the

affected areas. There are 350 such

receiver stations installed by IMD in the

country, out of which, 100 are Digital

CWDS (DCWDS) based on advancedtechnology. The DCWDS has been

deployed with acknowledgement

transmitters to get confirmation at

transmitting station.

MOSDAC disseminates weather

related information and alerts through its

web site. It provides weather forecasts for

major cities for 24, 48 and 72 hours as

depicted in Figure 6. Similar forecast is

available for densely populated areas

across the country as shown in Figure 7.

Similarly, the research studies on cyclone

Fig. 3: Sample products from INSAT-3A / KALPANA

Globe TIR Asia Visible Linear Stretch Cloud Motion Wind

Sea Surface Temperature Water Vapour Wind Upper Tropospheric Humidity

Outgoing Longwave Radiation Normalised Diff. Veg. Index Land Surface Temperature

Fig. 4: Sample products from EUMETSAT

Near Real Time Imagery Visualised Products RGB Composites

Fig. 5: Sample products from OCEANSAT-2

Hourly Analysed Winds 12 Hourly Analysed Winds31


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formation have resulted in a model for

predicting cyclones and forecasting its

path. This event based information is alsohosted from MOSDAC. A sample forecast

is presented in Figure 8.

Future

Megha-Tropiques, an Indo-

French Joint Satellite Mission for studying

the water cycle and energy exchanges in

the tropics, was launched on October 12,

2011. The main objective of this mission

is to understand the life cycle of convective

systems that influence the tropicalweather and climate and their role in

associated energy and moisture budget

of the atmosphere in tropical regions. The

satellite will provide scientific data on the

contribution of the water cycle to the

tropical atmosphere, with information on

condensed water in clouds, water vapour

in the atmosphere, precipitation, and

evaporation. With its circular orbit inclined

20 deg to the equator, the Megha-

Tropiques is a unique satellite for climate

research that should also aid scientists

seeking to refine prediction models.

The SARAL / AltiKa, another Indo-

French joint satellite mission is planned

for studies in the environment monitoring

domain. This will support measurements

of Ocean Surface Topography, surface

wind speed, and surface wave height. The

INSAT3D mission is envisaged to providean operational, environmental & storm

warning system to protect life & property

and also to monitor earths surface and

carryout oceanic observations.

These missions of ISRO wil l

provide valuable data to the scientific

community in the field of Oceanography

and Meteorology.

Referenceswww.isro.gov.in

www.mosdac.gov.in

www.imd.gov.in

Fig. 6: Weather forecast disseminated from MOSDAC

Typical Forecast for Ahmedabad city

Fig. 7: All India weather forecast disseminated from MOSDAC

Fig. 8: Cyclone related forecast


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INDIA-WRIS WEBGISDESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OFWEB ENABLED WATER RESOURCESINFORMATION SYSTEM OF INDIA

Sharma JR, Project Director (India-WRIS) and Project TeamRRSCs / NRSC/ ISRO, Hyderabad-500625Email: [email protected] & [email protected]

Introduction

In the emerging knowledge society and wide spread use to IT tools in different

sectors, up-to-date information on water resources is the vital to support economic

development, improve the quality of life as well as to conserve the nature and the

environment. In this regard an operational water resources information system at

national level is essential for planning and development of the country.

Decision-making processes in water resources management are characterized

by a typical hierarchical structure and a high degree of complexity (Kaden et al., 1989).

Water resources planning require a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together

a collection of technical tools and expertise along with stakeholders of varied interests

and priorities. Generally, the water management scenario is designed and influenced

by a set of linked physical, biological, and socio-economic factors such as surface

water hydrology, groundwater hydrology, climate, soils, topography, land use, water

quality, ecosystems, demographics, institutional arrangements and infrastructure

(Biswas, 1981; Loucks, 1995;Bouwer, 2000; Zalewski, 2002). An information system

is a set of data and functions, which is developed and deployed to meet the needs of

users. Key functions of an information system are viewing, presentation, interpretation,

analysis and modeling of data (Maidment, 1997).

India-WRIS WebGIS portal aims a Single Window solution of all water

resources and related data & information in a standardized GIS format in national

framework to all departments, organizations and stakeholders for water resourceassessment, monitoring, water resource planning, development and integrated water

resources management. It provides comprehensive, authoritative and consistent data

of India's water resources along with allied natural resources data & information, web

enabled tools to search, access, visualize, understand, look into context and study the

spatial patterns. The WebGIS portal is designed and developed, keeping in view multi-

stakeholder users from all sections of society, varied and multi-source data input,

current map policy, requirement of regular updates and near real time data accessibility,

data security domains, scale of information and level of access of the portal as well as

download of different GIS maps, data and value added products along with tool kit

for further analysis and value addition under three user categories namely:

All General Users (public domain fast track system)- Users are able to visit web

portal and get the snapshots of the data sets on reduced scale of selected database

and tools.


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Premium Users- Users are able to get the access to the India-WRIS web application detail datasets and tools

by registration and password.

CWC Intranet Users - These privileged users are able to get the full access to the India-WRIS web application

and database. All the facilities developed are accessible these users.

The information system on water resources has four key elements besides other facilities namely:

1. Data input/entry/collection system

2. Data storage, analysis, and transformation into user friendly information

3. Interactive system for geo-visualization and temporal analysis and

4. Information dissemination system in public domain as downloads and furtherprocessing tools for value

addition and customization.

Storage, processing, retrieval and dissemination of data constitute the most important aspects as the

water resources management being multi stakeholders involvement, peoples participation and information

sharing to increase transparency, public awareness, elevating the importance of water information and enlighten

public involvement in water management. The thrust has been towards development of an open source user end

web enabled information system. It provides adequate and contemporary information on the state of water

resources, which are must for planning and water resources management strategy. This, in turn, will ensure

increase in public awareness about the crucial issues related with water and attract their participation in

management, planning and development of water resources of the nation leading towards the holistic goal of

water security.

Water Wealth of India

Water is one of the most important renewable natural resources for supporting life. With the increasing

population of India as well as its all-round development, the utilization of water is also increasing at a fast pace.

On an average, India receives annual precipitation (including snowfall) of about 4000km 3. However, there exist

considerable spatial and temporal variations in the distribution of rainfall and hence in availability of water in

time and space across the country. It is estimated that out of the 4000km 3water, 1869km3 is Average annual

potential flow in rivers available as water resource. Out of this total available water resource, only 1123km 3 is

utilizable (690km3from surface water resources and 433km3from ground water resources). The water demand

in the year 2000 was 634km3and it is likely to be 1093 km3by the year 2025. Due to rapid rise in population and

growing economy of the country, there will be continuous increase in demand for water, and it will become

scarce in the coming decades. (Table 1)

According to the international norms, a country can be categorized as water stressed when water

availability is less than 1700m3per capita per year whereas classified as water scarce if it is less than 1000m 3

per capita per year. In India, the availability of surface water in the years 1991 and 2001 were 2309m 3 and

1902m3. However, it has been projected that per capita surface water availability is likely to be reduced to

1401m3and 1191m3by the years 2025 and 2050, respectively. The per capita water availability in the year 2010

was 1588m3against 5200m3of the year 1951 in the country.


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2Water Resources India at a Glance

Area of the country as % of World Area : 2.4%

Population as % of World Population : 17.1%

Water as % of World Water : 4%

Rank in per capita availability : 132

Rank in water quality : 122

Average annual rainfall 1160mm ( world average 1110mm)

Range of distribution 150 -11690mm

Range Rainy days 5-150, most rain 15 days in 100hrs.

Range PET 1500-3500mm

Per capita water availability (2010) in m3-1588

Table 1: Indias water wealth

Sl. No. Water Resource at a Glance Quantity Percentage(km3)

1 Annual precipitation (Including snowfall) 4000 100

2 Precipitation during monsoon 3000 75

3 Evaporation + Soil water 2131 53.3

4 Average annual potential flow in rivers 1869 46.7

5 Estimated utilizable water resources 1123 28.1

Surface water 690 17.3

Replenishable groundwater 433 10.8

Current utilization of total 634 15.85

Current utilization of utilizable water 634 56.45

Storage created of utilizable water 225 20.03

Storage (under construction) of utilizable water 171 15.22

6 Estimated water need in 2050 1450 129

7 Estimated deficit 327 29

Interlinking can give us 200 17.8

Source: Water Resources at a Glance 2011, CWC, New Delhi, (http://www.cwc.nic.in)

Remote Sensing and GIS in Water Resources Studies

The effective utilization of satellite remote sensing and GIS in water resources

information generation and management can be broadly categorized as follows:

Water Resources Assessment It includes snow & glacier studies, surface water mapping

and monitoring, wetlands mapping, runoff & hydrologic modeling and water balance studies.

Water Resources Management It comprises of irrigation water management, salinity

and waterlogged area mapping & monitoring, monitoring new irrigation potential creation,

evapo-transpiration studies, reservoir management, reservoir sedimentation and catchment

area treatment

Water Resources Development It covers interlinking of rivers, ground water prospecting

and recharge - systematic planning & development.35


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2Based on the requirements and data availability, comprehensive information have

been collected, categorized and arranged in GIS environment under 12 major and 30 sub

information systems besides sub information system having large number of attributes data oflast 5 50 years. (Table 2)

Table 2: Main and sub Information Systems of India-WRIS

Sl. No. Main and Sub Information Systems

I. BASE DATA INFORMATION SYSTEM

Administrative, Infrastructure, Terrain (DEM)

II. SURFACE WATER INFORMATION SYSTEM

1. Water Resource Region Information System

2. Basin Information System

3. Watershed Information System

4. River Information System5. Surface Water Body

6. Water Resources Projects Information System

7. Command Area Information System

8. Minor Irrigation Information System

9. Canal Information System

III. GROUND WATER INFORMATION SYSTEM

10. Aquifer / Litholog / Information System

11. Ground Water Level Information System

12. Ground Water Potential Information System

IV. HYDRO MET INFORMATION SYSTEM

13. Meteorological Information System

14. Climate Information System

15. Hydro-Observation Information System

V. WATER QUALITY INFORMATION SYSTEM

16. Surface Water Quality Information System

17. Ground Water Quality Information System

VI. SNOW COVER / GLACIER INFORMATION SYSTEM

18. Snow Cover/Glacier Information System

VII . INLAND NAVIGATION WATERWAYS INFORMATION SYSTEM

19. Inland Navigation Waterways Information System

VI II. INTER-BASIN TRANSFER LINKS INFORMATION SYSTEM

20. Inter-basin Transfer Links Information System

IX. HYDROLOGICAL EXTREMES INFORMATION SYSTEM

21. Flood Information System

22. Drought Information System

23. Extreme Events Information System

X. LAND RESOURCES INFORMATION SYSTEM

24. Land Use / Land Cover Information System

25. Land Degrad

nnrms bulletin june 2012

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