CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu government has procured Geographical Information System (GIS) maps and data for eight cities from National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) which will help the State plan how these cities will grow in the next 10 years. This is to be done by preparing land use plan for developing infrastructure. K Venugopal Rao, group head, Urban Studies and Geo-informatics, NRSC which is helping the State in creating GIS platform for the State, said there has been technical delay and the process for preparing maps and other data for the eight cities had just got over and large maps have been handed over to the State recently.
Interestingly, this comes as the government has convened a meeting of User Committee on Monday, to create GIS platform for the State.This meeting is being held nearly two years after the government passed an order wherein the idea of Tamil Nadu Geographical Information System was conceived. Under this, the data sets of various departments will be integrated under a uniform GIS platform for the State.
The user committee, headed by IT secretary and chief executive officer of Tamil Nadu e-governance agency, will convene the meeting. It will be attended by committee members from Agriculture, Revenue, Disaster Management, Public Works, Municipal Administration and Water Supply, Housing and Urban Development and other departments.
Officials said the existing and proposed geo-spatial databases of towns and cities available will be updated and integrated with the State-wide GIS platform for application development which will provide single-window services to citizens to increase efficiency and productivity.
Rao said that NRSC is helping in developing large-scale maps for 16 cities using the satellite data for city land use and infrastructure development under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut) cities in Tamil Nadu. “We are also helping Tamil Nadu in developing an open source GIS platform.”
An important reform under Amrut is preparation of masterplan using GIS technique. Union government has identified 33 towns in Tamil Nadu for Amrut implementation. Of them, eight are within the jurisdiction of Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) and 25 in DTCP areas.While 16 are being developed by NRSC, the others are being developed by other agencies of the State, Rao said.
Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) has been nominated as a nodal agency for implementation of GIS for the entire State and accordingly Tamil Nadu Geographic Information System (TNGIS) will be the central repository of all digital maps.
How GIS can help sustainable development
Use of geospatial technologies is expected to help these towns in effective land use management and utilisation, spatial growth management, enabling project planning and urban management
These GIS-based master plans will help in different types of urban planning exercises which include preparation of development, zonal, utility and infrastructure plans