BHUBANESWAR: Odisha Space Application Centre (ORSAC) will soon partner with IIT-Kanpur to establish a regional geodetic centre in the field of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) based geodesy, plate tectonic movement monitoring and geo-informatics.
ORSAC CEO Prafulla Kumar Mallick said the geodetic centre will be the first of its kind in the eastern India region. The state space centre will also collaborate with ISRO's regional remote sensing centre-east, Kolkata for research and development works on hyperspectral remote sensing, he informed.
At the space centre's 43rd governing body meeting, Mallick said, the geodetic centre will help conduct state-of-the-art research and development activities, including academic research, in Geodesy.
ORSAC has made the way for space based surveillance and imagery based remote sensing data in the sectors like forest, agriculture, mining, irrigation, land records, water resources, urban property assessment and natural resources in the state.
Various applications for land and forest location, integrated wildlife management, irrigation information, plot level validation of paddy crop using remote sensing and GIS based vehicle tracking system for mineral carrying vehicles developed by the Centre have been successfully implemented. Mallick said the web based geographic information system (GIS) developed during the pandemic had helped the inbound migrant workers to locate their temporary medical centres (TMCs) and mapping of Covid cases at gram panchayat levels.
Various application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by ORSAC also helped to provide various GIS information as required by many departments to build their third party applications, he added.
Chairing the meeting, chief secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra advised the departments to make use of the data generated by ORSAC for project monitoring, making any decision for natural resource management, environmental, infrastructure and other development planning activities and more accuracy in delivery of services.
He also directed ORSAC to emphasise more on citizen centric applications and focus on identifying formation of islands, shoreline dynamics, capacity of sand quarry, expansion of peri-urban areas and town development mapping.
The governing body approved the proposal for filling of base level vacant posts in scientific, technical and administrative cadre. Water Resources additional chief secretary Anu Garg, Rural Development principal secretary Sanjay Kumar Singh and Science and Technology secretary Bhaskar Jyoti Sarma were present.