Inaugural Session Download

Geographical Information Systems and Science: Today and tomorrow by Mike Goodchild Download

A review of recent advances in the technologies of geospatial data acquisition, modeling and dissemination, analysis, and decision support. Geographic information science has made significant advances and discoveries regarding the major issues surrounding geospatial technologies, notably in areas of ontology and data modeling, visualization, and uncertainty. A sketch of series of future scenarios based on likely developments, and discuss their implications. The presentation ends with a series of major research challenges.

Mike Goodchild:

Mike Goodchild is currently a Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most influential work has involved research on Geographic Information Science. After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988, as part of the establishment of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, which he has directed for nearly 20 years. more

Mike Goodchild received the B.A. degree in Physics from Cambridge University in 1965 and the PHD degree in Geography from the McMaster University in 1969. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, and received the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal in 2003. As a doctoral student at McMaster University, Goodchild rediscovered Castleguard Cave (20 kilometers long, the longest cave in Canada). His student Alan Glennon discovered an entrance and made significant discoveries to the Martin Ridge Cave System, Kentucky (51.8 kilometers long). Goodchild's dissertation advisor, Dr. Derek C. Ford, is a highly-influential Canadian geomorphologist and karst scientist.

Spatio Temporal Data modeling and analysis by Shashi Shekhar Download

This talk briefly introduces the fundamental ideas underlying the emerging spatial sciences, systems and services to address new challenges. Representative sciences include spatial cognition, spatial statistics, geographic information science, computational geometry, vision, robotics, graphics, spatial databases, spatial data mining, etc. Representing services and systems include web-service (e.g. mapquest, Google Earth), geographic information systems (e.g. ESRI Arc family), databases (e.g. Oracle SDO, IBM DB2 SDC, Postgres postgis), spatial data mining (e.g. R, Splus), etc. more

Spatial computing includes computations about geographic phenomena (e.g. climate), and instrumented physical environment (e.g. roads or building, immersive environments), as well as computations using distributed device-collections with distance-dependent interaction ability (e.g. geo-sensor networks, ant colonies). It is important for current applications in sustainable development, energy, mobility, public safety, security, and health, as well as emerging application such as augmented reality, local advertisement, and m-commerce.

However, traditional computation models often abstract out physical locations in space. This leads to blind-spots, semantic gaps, inadequacies and inefficiencies. For example, a prominent e-commerce company claimed that geography is dead in Internet era only to discover logistics and distribution challenges. Sorting is often used to speed-up searches, but is not intuitive in spatial computing. Data-types (e.g. numbers, text) in common programming languages have a semantic gap with spatial computing needs (e.g. maps, gps-tracks). Independence assumption may simplify data mining and statistical reasoning, but is often inappropriate for spatial datasets. Graph models provide a simple shortest path algorithm (e.g. Dijktra's, A*), but may not be straightforward for geometric questions about turns, lane changes, etc.

Shashi Shekhar:

Shashi Shekhar is a McKnight Distinguished University Professor at the University of Minnesota. For contributions to spatial databases, spatial data mining, and geographic information systems(GIS), he received IEEE-CS Technical Achievement Award and was elected an AAAS Fellow and an IEEE fellow. more

Shashi Shekhar received the B. Tech degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1985, the M.S. degree in Business Administration and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, in 1989. He co-authored a textbook on Spatial Databases, co-edited an Encyclopedia of GIS and served on the Mapping Science Committee of the National Research Council (National Academies). He is serving as a co-Editor-in-Chief of Geo-Informatica: An International Journal on Advances in Computer Sc. for GIS; and steering committee member of the ACM Intl. Conference on GIS.

Geo-sensor networks by Silvia Nittel Download

Silvia Nittel:

Dr. Silvia Nittel's is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spatial Information Science & Engineering and a faculty member with the National Center of Geographic Information & Analysis at the University of Maine.Her current research interests are in extending database technology to support stationary and mobile sensor networks, especially geosensor networks. more

She received her Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Zurich in database management systems, and joined the UCLA Computer Science Department as postdoctoral researcher in 1995. At UCLA, she worked on high-performance integration platforms for scientific data mining application for climate change. From 1998 to 2001, she was the Co-Director of the UCLA Data Mining Lab. In Fall 2001, she started as Assistant Professor at the University of Maine. Her research focus is on in-network data aggregation for quantitative and qualitative spatial queries in geosensor networks, as well as real-time querying of continuous sensor data streams stemming from various sized sensor devices creating sensor data of different spatio-temporal scale. She is the co-founder of the conference series "Geosensor Networks", and author of two books on Geosensor Networks.She is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Early CAREER award, and her research has been funded with grants from NSF, NGA and NASA.

NRDMS - Towards setting up of multi-level Spatial Data Infrastructures by P.S. Acharya Download

Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) - an S&T programme of the Government of India has been launched by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to catalyse the evolution of methodologies and techniques for formulating development strategies. In a scenario of large diversity of data sets, data users and data generating agencies, the Programme aims at strengthening S&T inputs in developing tools and techniques for integrated resource management and for capacity building at various levels of planning and implementation in a multi-level framework. Present thrust of the activities has been on development and demonstration of standards-based geo-portals/ clearinghouses, setting up of state and district level Enterprise GIS, provision of geo-web services, and R & D in areas like Interoperability, Workflow Management, Geo-visualisation, and Cartographic Generalisation. Training and capacity building through a network of academic and R & D institutions and the recently established Centres/ Laboratory for Geo-information Science at Universities of Kerala and Kumaon and IIT Bombay receive prior attention. Relevant policies at the national level have been revised to provide the desired framework for spatial data sharing and utilization. Specific application areas being pursued include Hydrology, Biodiversity, Sustainable Agriculture, and Landslides. The Programme is now poised towards organizing a multi-tier Geo-spatial Information Infrastructure in various application themes at national, state, and local levels to provide the required information base for a multitude of planning/ resource management decisions.

P.S. Acharya:

P.S. Acharya was involved in the implementation of the Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) Programme that primarily aims at developing and demonstrating spatial data technologies in decentralized planning. The Programme has an annual budget of about Rs. 15 crores and has identified four broad thrust areas (www.nrdms.gov.in ). 'Spatial Data Technologies' is one of the thrust areas. Since 1988, he has been working on various Research & Development projects associated with this thrust of the Programme.

Distributed Natural Resources Repository by P.S. Roy Download

The paper will present a framework based on distributed GI network to provide a total solution for natural resource management by taking examples in different spatial and temporal context. The paper also presents the mechanism and mode of data sharing and dissemination adopted under various programs and the future thrust areas in geo-spatial domain. more

India is bestowed with the bounty of natural resources including minerals, soils, water and forests. Timely and reliable information on natural resources and their spatial distribution, intra and inter annual changes in cropping systems, forest cover, surface water bodies and snow cover is a pre-requisite for development planning. In other side systematic organization of these geo-spatial data and information and it's sharing in interoperable domain for effective utilization is a challenging area on geospatial community. India has a very long tradition of systematically collecting spatial data through various organizations at national and state levels and creating a broad and powerful installed base. These organizations have historically acted in a compartmentalized manner with limited sharing of data or applications with the citizens or private sector, but also for other government agencies. This reflects a poor appreciation of information dissemination by these organizations. In order to make the spatial information on natural resources available to user community, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has initiated programme to create "National Natural Resources Repository (NRR)". The NRR consists of data generation, database organization and spatial data services to the user community. The National (natural) Resources Census (NRC) project addresses the database generation element of NRR. The NRC envisages generating spatial information on (i) Land use / land cover (ii) Land degradation (iii) Soils (iv) Geomorphology (v) snow cover or glaciers (vi) wetland and (vii) vegetation cover at 1:50K scale using high resolution satellite data. The national level programme on decentralized planning using space based inputs also addressed the mapping of various themes in 1:10K using high resolution satellite data. Although during these national level programmes a huge amount of geo-spatial and information at national level is being generated for resource planning at different levels and also for research. But these data and information are often insufficient to provide a total solution for any GIS based theme specific problem. There is a need to evolve distributed geo-spatial information and analysis system in interoperable environment. It would play a key role in effective utilization and application of geo-spatial data and information for various scientific and resource planning. The emerging new technologies in spatial data access and disseminations can be integrated in a virtual network through digital data products. It is here the distribution and dissemination of spatial data assumes greater significance. Integration of geo-spatial technologies with information and communication technology provides tremendous opportunities as well as challenges in spatial data storage, access, analysis and dissemination. The data and information generated by other knowledge institutions are very important and crucial for resource planning and management. To integrate the data and information in a interoperable environment, the issues related to data formats, metadata, various standards (metadata standard, exchange standard, and application protocol), network framework, macro- policies, data- pricing and dissemination policies, copyrights, and clearinghouse are need to be addressed in systematic and problem solving environment. There is a need to understand the nature of socio-technical networks that constitute Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), including data, databases, information, technical interoperability, standards, access networks, communication technologies, people, frameworks, institutional practices, and applications.

Dr. P.S. Roy:

Dr. Partha Sarathi Roy (Roy) is currently Deputy Director of National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organization, Hyderabad India. Dr Roy, professionally an ecologist and has made scientific contributions in developing remote sensing based methods to study vegetation, landscapes and ecosystems. He is leading multidisciplinary natural resource scientists and made enriching contributions in Geo-information science and Remote Sensing technology. During last 32 years he has contributed in measuring, mapping and monitoring of natural resources, conceptualizing solutions for disaster management and investigative exploration of geospatial analysis & modeling. He has published more than 125 papers in peer reviewed national and international journals, edited 4 books and contributed 29 chapters in different books. more

Dr Roy, professionally an ecologist has made scientific contributions in developing remote sensing based methods to study vegetation, landscapes and ecosystems. He has been the team leader for the first ever national level satellite remote sensing application for the generation of geospatial information on forest cover mapping and monitoring. He is part of international geospatial mapping and validation team (South Asia) for Global Land Cover - 2000; initiative undertaken in Millennium Ecosystem Program of UN-FAO and ESA. Presently, Dr. Roy leads the national initiative on 'Biodiversity Characterization at Landscape level`, a major inter-institutional countrywide initiative to create biodiversity database in natural landscapes through a geospatial model. Geospatial model - SPLAM developed by him, is a major contribution to the science of Landscape Ecology and Conservation Ecology. Presently, his most significant contribution is in the planning, designing and execution of the consequential National Database for Emergency Management (NDEM) - a multi-institutional initiative of Ministry of Home Affairs to create national database for handing multiform contingencies at three different levels. He has made key contribution in setting up the establishment of 24/7 Decision Support Centre (DSC). The centre provides operational services in the event of disaster like flood inundation, drought, forest fire, landslide, earthquake and cyclone. The geospatial information are acquired (aerial, satellite and ground), processed, converted as information products and served to state departments, central agencies and other agencies involved in disaster relief, rescue and mitigation.

Indian Bio-resources Repository by H. Karnatak Download

The information on distribution of biological diversity at its various hierarchy levels extending from gene to landscape level is vital for building effective conservation plan and taking up policy actions. India being one of the mega biodiversity centers of the world is also known for its traditional knowledge of conservation. The varied regions of the country, with unique floristic and faunal richness, their vastness, endemism, heterogeneity and also inaccessibility of large areas have necessitated creation of authentic baseline data on bio-resources. The country is one of the twelve mega-diversity centers and harbors three of the 28 global hotspots. At the same time, its natural resources are subjected to the most severe anthropogenic pressures: being the second largest populated country, a high proportion of Indians depend on bio-resources for their livelihood security. Conservation of our vast biological resources for future while continuing to utilize them to meet our present needs is a complex and challenging task. more

This demands that we take stock of the country's resources status and their potential use in a highly systematic manner and on a comprehensive scale. India is home to an estimated 89,450 described species accounting for about 7.3% of the global biodiversity. However, data on most of these is highly scattered and not easily accessible. Indeed, the lack of readily accessible information on how much of what bioresources occur where has become a limiting factor in conservation planning and converting our bio wealth into economic wealth. The National Bioresource Development Board, set up under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India initiated a country-level programme to address this problem. The programme aimed at developing a digitized inventory of the biological resources of the country. The concept of Indian Bio-resource Information Network (IBIN) is initiated by DBT in collaboration of Department of Space (DOS) and University of Agriculture (UAS) Bangalore.

In the initial stage of developing of IBIN is based on the data collated by about 400 scientists from over 150 units, for the first time ever, an electronic database was developed on spatial distribution of vegetation type, biological richness, plants, animal, marine and microbial resources of the country. All the digital databases were developed with a common basic structure such that they could all be eventually compiled on to a single servicing plot form. There are also needs to offer these spatial and non-spatial data (attribute data) sets' on a wide network such that they become available to all the potential end users.

The spatial outputs on Indian Bio-resources are available in the country at various scale and level. In the process of spatial investigation of Indian biodiversity DBT had also launched countrywide programs with collaboration of Department of Space Government of India to characterize and map the biodiversity of the country. The national level programme on Biodiversity characterization at landscape level using Remote Sensing and GIS was initiated by National Remote Sensing Centre (formerly NRSA), ISRO Hyderabad with collaboration of various national level institutions/universities. During this programme the spatial outputs along with field sample data is generated on the spatial aspects of the distribution of the bio-resources, which would be of value to range of end users. The maps generated on Indian Biodiversity include vegetation type map, fragmentation, disturbance Index and Biological richness on 1:50,000 scale to 1:250,000 scale in restricted coordinate system. The distribution of plant species is available with location specific information. During the DOS-DBT project (Phase I & Phase II) about 20,000 sample plots was laid down during field sampling and extensive field data on plant resources was collected and recorded. Although the datasets of this national level study is compiled as web enabled Biodiversity Information system (www.bisindia.org) but most of the information is available under restricted domain due to map policy and guidelines. To make a better use of this data and information it is strongly felt to develop a mechanism to share this important national level information to wide range of users and general public. IBIN spatial node is thus conceived. The IBIN spatial node has been developed on grid base data sharing concepts. In the data dissemination process for IBIN spatial node the spatial datasets are converted into uniform grids (3.75' x 3.75' minutes (approx. equivalent of ¼th of 1:25000 SOI toposheet area) with WGS84 datum considering the data sharing and map policy of Government of India. The size of the individual grid are 6.75 km (approx.) (1'=1.8 km (approx) and 3.75' = 6.75 km (approx.) These spatial blocks are made after the thematic generalization in order to retain the spatial patterns. The spatial grid wise plant species distribution is made available to public through internet. In the data dissemination process of IBIN spatial node the latest web GIS techniques like AJAX (Asynchronous Java script and XML) and open source solutions like UMN map server, PHP, Apache web server is extensively used to serve the data in internet domain. The raster data is disseminated through image tiling concepts which enhance the performance of web GIS application. The spatial data is also made available as OGC compliant web Map Service (WMS) under IBIN portal. The IBIN spatial node also provide a utility to browse and download the spatial data as per user defined spatial extant at client end for further study and analysis. The IBIN Web portal (www.ibin.co.in) was developed by National Remote Sensing Agency, Dept. of Space Govt. of India Hyderabad in collaboration with University of Agriculture (UAS) Bangalore and was launched on 25th July 2006. In this paper we are presenting the methodology and data sharing mechanism used for the development of Indian Bio-resource Information Network (IBIN) –Spatial node.

H. Karnatak:

Dr. Harish Chandra Karnatak is working as a Scientist at National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Hyderabad India. His research areas includes DSS/SDSS development, web GIS, Enterprise GIS, spatial database management system, geospatial modeling and analysis. He has more than eight year experience in executing national level Remote Sensing and GIS application projects for natural resource management and disaster management in India. He has received his Masters Degree in Mathematics (1999) and Computer Applications (2001) from Kumaun University Nainital and PhD in Computer Science (2009) from Indian Institute of Remote Sensing Dehradun, Gurukul Kangri University Haridwar India. Dr. Karnatak has more than 25 research and technical publications and 15 project/research reports to his credit.

3D Mapping by Masahiko Nagai Download

Masahiko Nagai:

Masahiko Nagai is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He obtained his B.S. degree in chemistry from St. Cloud State University, U.S.A., his M.S. degree in 2002 in Remote Sensing and GIS from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, and his Doctoral Degree of Eng. in civil engineering in 2005 from the University of Tokyo, Japan. His current research focuses on the development of ontological information as an interoperability arrangement, as well as the construction of 3D modeling by integrating multiple-sensors.

High Resolution Population Datasets by Budhendra Bhaduri Download

The presentation will discuss the recent advancements in geospatial science and technology that hold tremendous promise for enhancing the accuracy and timeliness flow of critical geospatial information to benefit sustainable development in the context of key global challenges of climate and energy. more

Human population distribution data provides a fundamental component to the sustainable development framework. High resolution (sub-Census local level) population data is essential for successfully addressing key issues such as good governance, poverty reduction strategies, and prosperity in social, economic, and environmental health. Geospatial data and models offer novel approaches to decompose aggregated Census data to finer spatial and temporal units. Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s LandScan Global population distribution model is such an approach that produces the finest (approximately 1 km cells) global population distribution data. Since it’s inception in the late 1990s, LandScan has emerged as one of the leading community standard for population data with globally expansive user-base, including key applications focusing on sustainable development in the developing world. In addition to the native Census resolution, the spatial data-driven model, nucleus to LandScan, is sensitive to the quality and resolution of the ancillary (such as land cover and land use) variables. This presents a tremendous difficulty for implementing the model in spatial data poor environments where the availability of most national Censuses are at very large spatial units and the quality of available physiographic data is inadequate. Recent advancements in earth observation have led to better physiographic data. However, mobile population as well as population displacements from natural and geopolitical disasters combined with the lack of timely update of the Census estimations poses a complex challenge for annual refinement of the LandScan database. Rapid ingestion and analysis of high resolution data from a variety of ground and satellite based sensor provide a cost and time effective solution for developing current and accurate high resolution population data.

Budhendra Bhaduri:

Budhendra Bhaduri is the leader of the Geographic Information Science & Technology (GIST) group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and a founding member of the U.S. Department of Energy's Geospatial Sciences Steering Committee. His primary responsibilities include conceiving, designing, and implementing innovative geocomputational methods and algorithms to solve a wide variety of national and global problems involving population dynamics modeling, natural resource studies, transportation modeling, critical infrastructure protection, and disaster management. more

Budhendra Bhaduri received the M.S. degree in Geology from Kent State University in 1995 and the PHD degree in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from Purdue University in 1998.Dr. Bhaduri is a principal member of the LandScan Global and LandScan USA population modeling programs at ORNL, which, in 2006, won a prestigious R&D 100 award as one of the top 100 global technologies serving society. In addition to his contributions in human settlement studies, he has extensive experience in novel implementation of geospatial science and technology in other areas: sustainable development research, including human dimensions of critical infrastructure, urbanization and watershed impacts, and energy resource analysis.

Emergency Management by Sharad Mehrotra Download

Responding to natural or man-made disasters is an information-driven human process in which organizations, agencies, and communities make critical decision under grave uncertainty that directly impact on life and property. The quality of these decisions is strongly correlated to the accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of the information about the situation, the available resources, and the needs. Dramatic improvements in the speed and accuracy at which information about the crisis flows through the disaster response networks has the potential to revolutionize crisis response, saving human lives and property. more

Over the past 6 years, as part of the RESCUE Project and the Center for Emergency Response Technologies, we have explored a variety of IT solutions to bring transformational improvements to the response process. This talk in addition to providing a synopsis of challenge faced in building situational awareness for first responders, will focus on three such artifacts/tools we have developed and the underlying research embedded in them. Specifically, I will discuss SAFIRE - a tool for situational awareness for on-site incident management; disaster portal designed as a mechanism for organization to seek input from as well as to inform the community; and a crisis alert/warning system that focuses on customized information dissemination based on a variety of contexts including geography, language, etc.

Sharad Mehrotra:

Sharad Mehrotra is currently a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of California at Irvine. His research interests include Data management & Distributed Systems - data mining, OLAP, event-oriented systems, data cleaning, multimedia systems, spatio-temporal analysis, uncertainty, privacy, service oriented architectures, sensors, mobility, localization, pervasive computing. more

Sharad Mehrotra recieved the B.Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1988, MS degree in Computer Science in 1990 and the PHD degree in Computer Science in 1993 from the University of Texas at Austin. He won the DASFAA best paper award in 2004 and the SIGMOD best paper award in 2001.

Interoperability Arrangement for Geospatial Data by Masahiko Nagai Download

The geospatial Data is lying on trans-disciplinary fields. Under the trans-disciplinary condition, not only standardization for data structure and geographic information but also communizing particular terminology and classification schema are serious hindrances for data sharing and integration of distributive data. Especially in earth observation data, distributive system to utilize flexibly and easily for various application needs is expected. Ontology registry system is developed to collect, manage, and compare ontological information for integrating geospatial data. Semantic network dictionary and gazetteers are constructed as a trans-disciplinary dictionary for data interoperability.

Masahiko Nagai:

Masahiko Nagai is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He obtained his B.S. degree in chemistry from St. Cloud State University, U.S.A., his M.S. degree in 2002 in Remote Sensing and GIS from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, and his Doctoral Degree of Eng. in civil engineering in 2005 from the University of Tokyo, Japan. His current research focuses on the development of ontological information as an interoperability arrangement, as well as the construction of 3D modeling by integrating multiple-sensors.

OGC technologies by Joshua Lieberman Download

Joshua Lieberman:

Josh Lieberman has worked with geospatial information systems for 25 years. Trained as an earth scientist, he spent more than a decade in academe and the environmental science industry before devoting himself full time to enterprise geospatial and Web enablement. more

As vice-president of information architecture at Syncline, Inc., Josh worked on the design of the company's two major geospatial products, Mapciti and Mapaccess, as well as leading a series of engagements with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). These engagements included Open Web Services test beds, specification development (e.g. Web Map Server, Web Feature Server, Styled Layer Descriptor), as well as several pilot projects including CIPI-2, in which Syncline built the first Webbas prototype. Josh has continued to serve as coordinating architect for a number OGC initiatives and specification activities, as well as pursuing further development and testing of the Webbas system. He has at the same time expanded his interests and activities into the areas of geospatial semantic web and spatial data infrastructure design. Most recently, Josh has served as coordinator and architect for an OGC "Interoperability Experiment" extending OGC specifications towards Geospatial Semantic Web capabilities. Josh received an A.B. from Dartmouth College and PHD from the University of Washington.

NSDI location-based technology developments by Mike Jackson Download

The presentation describes SDI developments in the UK and Europe particularly in the context of the European Community INSPIRE Directive. The INSPIRE programme has stimulated multiple governmental initiatives linked to its implementation and there many active research projects funded through the EU Framework 7 Programme . more

The European approach to NSDI is one that is very much top-down and institutionally driven. The potential impact of rapidly developing and disruptive technologies for geographic data capture and its management and use in both a governmental and mass-consumer context has not yet been fully assimilated in this context and the presentation explores the potential impact and relevance to NSDI. It explores potential strategies for good governance in the face of such rapid change, the value of a persistent test-bed programme in this context and how the new technologies may be deployed to advantage in both developing and developed countries.

Mike Jackson is a non-executive director of the Open Geospatial Consortium Inc (OGC), Chairman of OGC Europe, Chair of Commission 5 (Networks) EuroSDR, a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) GI Board and a member of the UK Location Council Interoperability Board. He has presented and published widely on digital mapping, GIS, geospatial intelligence and location-based services. more

Professor Mike Jackson was appointed to the Chair of Geospatial Science at the University of Nottingham in April 2005 and established the Centre for Geospatial Science (CGS) in November 2005. Previous posts include: Director of Space Division, QinetiQ 2002-2005; Head of Location Platform at Hutchison 3G (“3”) with design responsibility for the 3-G location-based services for Hutchison Wampoa's 3G telecommunications companies; CEO of geospatial software developer Laser-Scan Holdings plc.; Principle Scientific Officer, NERC (during which time he was a PI for NASA); the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell and the Department of Environment. Mike has a 1st in Geography and a PhD in Civil Engineering (Univ. of Manchester) and an honorary doctorate from Kingston University.

Ocean Data and Information System by Pattabhi Rama Rao Download

The Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS) is a one stop shop for providing data and information on physical, chemical and biological parameters of ocean and coasts on various spatial and temporal domains that is vital for both research and operational oceanography. It is an end-to-end ocean data management system, developed by adopting the advances in the field of information and communication technology that brought revolutionary changes in data acquisition, processing, analysis and data availability at a click away. ODIS is fed by voluminous (~5 Tb per year) and highly heterogeneous oceanographic data in real time, acquired from the Ocean Observing Systems (both in-situ and remote sensing) established in the Indian Ocean. The challenges involved in developing ODIS are integration of heterogeneous data received from a wide variety of ocean observing systems, generation of metadata, quality control and generation of database for providing web-based data services. The web-based data services facilitates the user with Web-GIS capabilities to query, analyze, visualize and download the ocean data, information and advisory services on different spatial and temporal resolutions.
In this paper, we describe the development of ocean data and information system, data flow from various ocean observing system, formats, metadata base, quality control procedures and web-based data services that facilitates online data discovery, visualization and delivery. We also give an account on the challenges involved in ocean data management and web-based services. Further, we briefly discuss on the efforts with regard to open standards and interoperability issues pertaining to marine data management for seamless exchange of data.

Water Resource Management by A.K. Gosain Download

A.K.Gosain:

A.K.Gosain is currently the Head of The Department of Civil Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. more

He recieved the M.Tech degree in Water Resources Engineering and the PHD degree in Water Resources Engineering (Hydrology) from IIT Delhi.

Integrated Water Resources Management Using Numerical Models, GIS & Remote Sensing Techniques by T.I. Eldho Download

The digital revolution in the last few decades made possible the modeling of various water resources systems by integration of different hydrologic processes occurring on the system. The recent advances in water resources / watershed modeling are the integrated use of numerical methods, remote sensing and GIS technologies. Numerical methods are used in the solution of the governing equations for the rainfall runoff simulation. more

Remote sensing technology solved the problem of data needs of water resources modeling. GIS made its usefulness in the processing of large quantities of data, which is essential in water resources/ watershed modeling. In this study, characterization of watershed for the key parameters such as drainage, slope, Land Use (LU) / Land Cover (LC) by using Geographical information systems (GIS) and remotely sensed data has been discussed. Runoff estimation by Finite Element Method (FEM) based model by using inputs derived from the watershed characteristic maps will be presented. GIS has been used to prepare the finite element grid map and input files such as Manning's roughness and slope used in the model for the watershed. LU/LC of the watershed has been derived from remotely sensed data. FEM has been used to solve the diffusion wave equations for one dimensional surface runoff model which is coupled with Philip infiltration model. Further models will be presented for flood simulation of coastal urban watersheds considering the rainfall and tidal effects. Watershed characterization and flood estimation will be presented for few agricultural and urban watersheds. The methodology can be used in various watershed development and urban flood simulation problems.

T.I.Eldho:

Dr. Eldho T.I. is currently a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. His research interest include Water Resources & Environmental Engineering. more

He recieved the PHD degree in Civil Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1995 and the Postdoctoral degree from the University of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany in 1996.

mKRISHI by Arun Pande Download

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)'s new initiative called mKRISHI, a mobile agro-advisory system that allows farmers to send queries to agricultural experts in their local languages through a mobile and receive personalised advice or relevant information in the local language. more

TCS Mobile Agro Advisory System has evolved from the efforts of TCS Innovation Labs-Mumbai, which researches into sensor as well as speech recognition. The company has also used an internally developed IVR (interactive voice response) type platform " packet interactive multimedia response (PIM2R) " which uses the inexpensive data channel for transferring rich content. Through mKrishi, farmers can send their queries to a remote expert by their mobile CDMA handsets. Along with their queries, they can also send a photograph of the crop through a camera phone. The information related to crop, soil and micro-environment, gathered by sensors, is sent to experts through an automatic weather station using the cellular network. Farmers receive responses to their queries through the same channel. The end-to-end mKrishi solution has been developed through the integration of technologies such as sensors, solar power, CDMA modem and CDMA network, GPS, handset with camera, binary runtime environment for wireless to develop multiple applications on the handset, client software (on mobile phone), expert console software, and an engine to assist in displaying mobile screens in Indian languages. Presently, the company has tied up with Tata Teleservices to use their CDMA services.The project is being implemented in close cooperation with various eco-partners such as Tata Teleservices, M.S. Swaminathan Foundation, Tata Chemicals & Rallies, National Centre of Grapes, Cotton Research Centre and (National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange Limited) NCDEX.

Establishment of Karnataka Geo-portal by H. Hemanth Kumar Download

Under a joint project of Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) of Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, and the Government of Karnataka, Karnataka State Council for Science & Technology (KSCST), Bangalore has developed district level GIS databases to support the process of Local Level Planning at the levels of district, taluk and village. Each District Database contains spatial and attribute data sets useful in local level planning processes in the sectors of Natural Resources, Demography, Agro-economy, Socio-economy and Infrastructure facilities. Respective Zilla Panchayaths and Line Departments have been depending upon the databases for meeting their data requirements. more

Over the past one and a half decade all the twenty nine districts of Karnataka State have been covered under NRDMS. With increasing dependence of the Zilla Panchayaths/Urban local bodies, Line Departments and other stake-holders of local level planning on spatial datasets, a need has been felt to speed up the process of discovery of and access to up-to-date spatial datasets, the Council with the support DST - GoI and DST – GoK has developed a Geoportal and Data Clearing House to discover/ access spatial data sets useful in the local level planning process through Karnataka State Spatial Data Infrastructure (KSSDI) Project. The geo-portal is expected to serve as a centralized hub for other spatial data generating agencies in the State. Web-enabled centralized database of various existing spatial, attribute or statistical data has been generated at KSCST, Bangalore.
The State Council is in the final stages of the setting of geo-portal and clearing house necessary for spatial data exchange over web by adopting Open GIS Consortium standards. The Council is initiating to set up state level committee to sensitize various departments/agencies of the government of Karnataka on the concept of SDI and the utility of Geo-portal and clearing house in order to secure their cooperation in the development of portal.
The KSSDI portal has passed preliminary stage of development and has been released to users for portal functionality testing. The release will allow the testing of the portal to undergo usability testing with selected users who will provide feedback to the project team. Any identified malfunctions will be rectified before launch. This is the first version released outside the Council for the purpose of evaluation.

Hemanth Kumar:

Hemanth Kumar is the Principal Investigator of Karnataka State Spatial Data Infrastructure (KSSDI) at the Indian Institute of Science,Bangalore. He was involved as the Project Investigator and State In-charge of Karnataka State Natural Resource Data Management System (NRDMS) project established and managing district NRDMS centers in creating geo-spatial databases. His areas of interest include Natural Resources Data Management System, resource mapping and housing.

Framework for Interoperability using Ontology Mappings by N.L. Sarda Download

Open standards provide a basis for exchanging data and integrating multiple sources of data. They can effectively address heterogeneity at the so-called 'syntax' level. The main challenge in interoperability is in resolving semantic difference among data at different sources. This area has received considerable attention since data fragmentation among multiple applications is a common problem in many domains. We have proposed an ontology-mapping based framework which allows establishing mapping among data at various sources based on their meaning (as derived from descriptions associated with the data definitions). We use lexical mapping and structural similarities to infer correspondence between data definitions (schema), and associate ranking between alternatives so that possible choices can be presented for confirmation manually. Once the correspondence is established, we generate wrappers for automatic data extraction from various sources and their final integration in response to a user data request. We assume sources to be WFS-compliant. There are further elements of distributed data processing that arise. We investigate several such questions related to selection of sources, semantic matching with query translation, and strategies for query partitioning and merging of data from such multiple heterogeneous sources.

N.L. Sarda:

Dr. Nandlal L. Sarda is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. His research interests include Database Management Systems, Information Systems and Software Engineering. more

He recived his Master's (M.Tech.) and PhD degrees from IIT Bombay, and joined as faculty at IIT Bombay, where he is teaching since 1972. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at University of New Brunswick, Canada from 1986 to 88. He was Head of the Computer Science & Engineering Department at IIT Bombay from 1994 to 1997. He served as Professor-in-Charge of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, from October 2004 to Feb. 2006, in which role he coordinated with the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) hosted by IIT Bombay to encourage and actively facilitate IITB's faculty and students to convert intellectual property developed by them into business ventures.

From OGC Compliant Services to Useful Applications - Technology Perspective by Umesh Bellur Download

While OGC has done an admirable job in setting base standards for geo spatial services and data models, much remains to be done to ensure that these standards can be used in decision support applications. Typically such applications can be abstracted as distributed workflows that cuts across multiple organizations and line departments. These workflows engage different services that have to be discovered and used dynamically. In this talk, I will outline some of the technologies that exist already and point out the gap that needs to be filled with research and development.

Umesh Bellur:

Umesh Bellur is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. His current research interests revolve around adaptability in service oriented environments, autonomic computing techniques for distributed component based applications and model driven development techniques in software engineering. more

He recieved the B.E. degree in Electronics Engineering from Bangalore University,India in 1989 and the PHD degree in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, N.Y. in 1994. He worked in the industry where he helped establish distributed object standards such as CORBA with OMG and J2EE with JCP . He worked for over 10 years at Oracle Corporation, Teknekron Communication Systems and Covad communications after which he helped found a startup in Silicon Valley called Collation Inc. in 2001.

Geo-spatial portal for Earth - A Perspective by Ravi K. Yelluripati Download

Geographic Information System software, GIS for short, has touched every industry that we can name, starting from revenue, municipal authorities to space sciences. In short, if you are dealing with information over a region, either on Land, Sea or Air, then you are in the context of a Geo-spatial setup. Over the last two decades the setting of GIS infrastructure has caught up rapidly by various organizations - private, government and research institutions alike - giving rise to implementations varying in complexity, utility, portability, integration of data from various electronic equipment including in-situ devices, Satellites, Radars, and from several other instruments. We may call these implementations as multitudes of 'clouds' disseminating information. The present work brings out the various open source technologies available to see if all the 'clouds can coalesce' using an integrated portal and thereby serving various communities, yet maintaining the diversity of the 'clouds'. The paper ends with details of some of the modules implemented at INCOIS.

Ravi K. Yelluripati:

Ravi K. Yelluripati is working as a Scientist in INCOIS. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from University of Colorado, Denver, USA. He has over 15 years of experience in working with scientific data - preparation, analysis and dissemination. His work areas are in the analysis and visualization of scientific data, and programming in parallel environment.

Industry Applications

Uncertainty in Geographical Information by Mike Goodchild Download

Uncertainty is endemic in geographic information, and review some of the more important sources. In applications uncertainty has been described as the Achilles Heel, because of the vulnerability of any policies, regulations, or decisions based knowingly on uncertain data. A review of the relevant terms and issues in the representation and propagation of uncertainty. Standards have been the traditional approach to data quality management, and review some of the more prominent, and discuss their limitations. Recent research has led to a series of successful models of uncertainty, but several major problems remain, including the modeling of uncertainty in area-class maps. Communication of knowledge of uncertainty to users, through visualization or other means, remains a challenging but important issue.

Mike Goodchild:

Mike Goodchild is currently a Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most influential work has involved research on Geographic Information Science. After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988, as part of the establishment of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, which he has directed for nearly 20 years. more

Mike Goodchild recieved the B.A. in Physics from Cambridge University in 1965 and the PHD degree in Geography from the McMaster University in 1969. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, and received the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal in 2003. As a doctoral student at McMaster University, Goodchild rediscovered Castleguard Cave (20 kilometers long, the longest cave in Canada). His student Alan Glennon discovered an entrance and made significant discoveries to the Martin Ridge Cave System, Kentucky (51.8 kilometers long). Goodchild's dissertation advisor, Dr. Derek C. Ford, is a highly-influential Canadian geomorphologist and karst scientist.

Monitoring Global Forest Cover Using Data Mining by Vipin Kumar

This talk presents data mining based techniques for determining forest cover changes that address the limitations of the existing techniques for this problem. Results of the applications of these techniques on regional and global scales to detect changes due to fires and logging will be presented. more

Assessing change in forest cover is of critical importance in studying natural and anthropogenic impacts on natural ecosystems. For example, the contribution of greenhouse gases from deforestation is one of the most uncertain elements of the global carbon cycle. Without information about global deforestation patterns and fluxes, it is difficult to balance the present-day carbon budget and predict the effects of climate change. Recent research suggests that the role forests play in regulating global climate is larger than previously thought and will likely become even more important as alternative carbon sinks become saturated while forests continue to act as sinks throughout a century of climate change. In fact, changes in forests account for as much as 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, an amount second only to fossil fuel emissions. Thus, the need to assess the state of forest ecosystems and how they are changing has become increasingly urgent. Rich amounts of data from remotely sensed images are available for detecting changes in land cover. However, in spite of the importance of this problem and the considerable advances made over the last few years in high-resolution satellite data, data mining, and online mapping tools and services, end users still lack practical tools to help them manage and transform this data into actionable knowledge of changes in forest ecosystems that can be used for decision making and policy planning purposes. Previous change detection studies, while useful, have primarily relied on examining differences between two or more satellite images acquired on different dates. These approaches have a number of limitations; for example, changes that occur outside the image acquisition windows are not mapped, it is difficult to identify when the changes occurred, information about ongoing landscape processes cannot be derived, and they are inherently unsuited for application at large spatial scales.

Vipin Kumar:

Vipin Kumar is currently William Norris Professor and Head of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include High Performance computing and data mining. He has authored over 200 research articles, and co-edited or coauthored 10 books including the widely used text book "Introduction to Parallel Computing", and "Introduction to Data Mining" both published by Addison-Wesley. more

Kumar has served as chair/co-chair for over a dozen conferences/workshops in the area of data mining and parallel computing. In 2001, Kumar co-founded SIAM International Conference on Data Mining and served as its steering committee chair until 2007. Kumar is a founding co-editor-in-chief of Journal of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining, editor-in-chief of IEEE Intelligent Informatics Bulletin, and series editor of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Book Series published by CRC Press/Chapman Hall. Kumar is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM and IEEE. He received the 2009 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Computer Science Department, University of Maryland College Park, and 2005 IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award for contributions to the design and analysis of parallel algorithms, graph-partitioning, and data mining.

Geo-spatial applications: Transportation by Ashish Verma Download

The paper will focus on current state of research and practice of geo-spatial applications in transportation in India, and will throw up research issues and challenges facing the country in more comprehensive and effective use of geo-spatial technologies for transportation. more

Transportation is a significant spatial system, and one that has substantial influences on the ways in which human settlements evolve. The study and analysis of transportation phenomena is essentially a map-intensive process. Over last 30 years, there have been technological challenges in the way transportation and geography have been studied that have come together to produce a transport geography that builds on past issues, such as location, land use, infrastructure, and modeling, but using data and information in ways that were not possible previously. The difference is that not only can real-time geocoded knowledge of transport-spatial systems be integrated into analysis but also it can be used to intervene directly in transport flows on a network through direct vehicle guidance. The technology to do this includes the Global Positioning System (GPS), used for tracking movement on to a Geographic Information System (GIS), which can integrate and respond to rapidly changing and erratic movements such as network flows and congestion build up, and slower but continuously changing processes such as land use and infrastructure adjustments. Further, these observations can be communicated directly and precisely to transport participants – passengers, drivers (individual and mass transit), and potential participants in real time through intelligent transportation systems (ITS) or telematics. These new and revolutionary technologies focus on the spatial organization of transportation movements with the opportunity for real-time guidance, advising, and intervention in transportation processes. However, even with these advances, fundamental interdependencies of transport and society remain centrally important to land use and traffic generation; urban design and travel demand; emissions, congestion, and air quality; local and community decisions relative to regional and national priorities; and mobility considerations versus environment concerns.

Dr. Ashish Verma:

Dr. Ashish Verma is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, IISc Bangalore . His research interests include transportation planning, optimization of public transportation systems, application of GIS, RS and GPS in transportation engineering travel behavior and traffic management. more

Dr. Ashish Verma received the M.E degree from Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science (SGSITS), Indore in 1999 and the PHD degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, in 2004. He is the Guest Editor for Transportation Planning for Asian Cities, Journal of Urban Planning and Development, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) from March 2007 onwards. He is an Editorial Board Member of Journal of Urban Planning and Development, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) from March 2007 onwards.

Geo-spatial applications: Disaster Management by Anil Gupta & Sreeja Nair Download

Disaster Risk Management and Emergency Response : Role of Geo-Spatial Information and Computer Applications by Anil Gupta & Sreeja Nair

Increasing frequency and intensity of disasters, globally and regionally, have called for greater application of science and technology in understanding the hazards, vulnerability, catastrophic risks, mitigation selection and emergency management. Complexity of challenges accelerate with the impacts of climate-change and environmental degradation resulting in emerging hazards and aggravating vulnerability calling for prudent decision making and planning involving well designed and tested assessment and interpretation process. Disaster management is a complex function involving cycles of (i) risk management and (ii) emergency management. The blurred line between so called 'natural' and man-made disasters, in recognition of anthropogenic influences as a principle cause in most disasters, call for managing huge data/information on spatial grounds along various environmental factors like geomorphology, urban settings, drainage, forests, etc. and socio-economic information like demography, housing, occupation, income, etc. more

Developing 'risk-scenarios' for known hazards - natural or human-induced, floods, drought, landslides, cyclone, coastal erosion, earthquake, dam-break, etc. are partial picture. Identification and visualising the 'un-reported hazards' in futuristic mode, that may occur due to observed in-making environmental and socio-economic settings is equally important. This needs innovations in terms of developing various models by integrating attributes and functions of relevance. Uncertainty is an implicit aspect in the risk management and reliability of mitigation systems have also to be analysed well in advance. Probabilistic risk of a 'hazard' coupled with levels of vulnerability becomes a disaster when realised as major loss event of catastrophic process.

Availability of readily accessible and interpretable data to transform into knowledge is a major challenge in supporting planning and decision process of disaster management. Geospatial technology provides a time and cost-effective environment for processing huge data along modelling, developing scenarios, web-enabled systems and integrating information systems like chemoinformatics and bioinformatics. Recent initiatives of the various ministries and departments of Government of India i.e. Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Environment and forests, Indian Space Research Organisation, National Informatics Centre, along with national networks like NNRDMS, Village Information Centres and ENVIS involving multiple stakeholders are important developments. Present paper carries an in-depth analysis of application of geo-spatial technology and computer application in disaster management in order to emphasize the critical gaps to be addressed by research and innovations.

Anil Gupta

Dr. Anil is working in area of disaster risk management & response since 1988. His academic areas include Environment and Disasters (Coastal hazards/erosion, Urban Flood, Disasters in Agro-ecosystems, Forest areas, River-basin & bank erosion, Environmental Response in Emergencies), Environmental System & Tools (Remote Sensing & GIS, Information, Modeling, Laws, Rapid-EIA of Disasters, Environmental Need Analysis, Audit, Environmental Vulnerability Indices (EVI), EIA of Mitigation Projects, Ecological Risk Analysis, EMS/ISO), and (iii) Industrial Hazards (Chemical, Mining, Hydro-power, HIRA, MCAA, Physical Modeling, Safety Audit, Off-site Emergency Plans). more

Dr Anil holds M.Sc./M.Phil. (Environmental Sc.- Env.Geo, Stats, NRM, Health), Ph.D. (EIA), LLB (Legislative, Crim.). Trained on Design, Management & MoT Training, Remote Sensing/Geoinfomatics, Environmental Law. 8 years institution building & administrative experience. Post-Doc at NEERI-CSIR and worked on projects related to Land Resources, Climate-change, EIA- Coastal/Water Resources/Industrial, Environmental Modeling, Risk Assessment and Developmental Planning.

Disaster Management - A Geospatial Approach by V Bhanumurthy Download

The paper describes the initiatives of ISRO towards disaster management and the applications developed on the geospatial datasets and the challenges ahead.

The past few decades have witnessed a great increase in the incidence and impact of disasters, especially in Asia and the Pacific region. As a result, infrastructure and livelihoods on a large scale suffer frequent damage; further impacts may also be seen in the worsening poverty and the growing disparity. Response to a disaster / emergency event needs rapid decision making. more

The Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) specify the actions for handling sudden unexpected situations so to reduce the possible consequences of the disaster event by (i) Preventing fatalities and injuries, (ii) Reducing damage to buildings, stock, and equipment and (iii) accelerating the resumption of normal operations. Disaster management is multi-disciplinary endeavour, requiring many types of data with spatial and temporal attributes that should be made available to key players in the right format for decision-making. The database can be developed on the basis of an object-oriented database design approach that proceeds from data collection, processing, organization and sharing through centralized data repository. The inability to access information and the lack of standardization, coordination, and communication are all obstacles that need to be overcome. In recent years, the focus of disaster management community is increasingly moving on to more effective utilization of emerging technologies such as remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS), and Satellite Communication, enabling to prepare for and mitigate potential impact.

Having demonstrated the potential use of remote sensing & GIS coupled with communication technology, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched a major programme for providing space based inputs to the nation for disaster management support. Development of multi-scale national geospatial database along with decision support tools for disaster / emergency management has been taken up with multi-institutional participation. Mobile based applications have been developed for real time data collection and for generation of geospatial database on vital facilities required for disaster / emergency response. Disaster products derived from aerospace data are being provided to concerned State and Central government department. Further customized desktop applications and web based applications are being developed for addressing the issues in all phases of disaster management. However, data collection, processing, information extraction and dissemination of right information to the right person at right time is still a challenge.

Participant Presentations

Agenda for Collaboration and Concluding Session