GIS and tell
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COMMENTS 
Geographic Information Systems are a way of compiling and presenting electronic data in an intelligible and ordered manner, especially significant in disaster management. India has made some inroads into this new technology, but will 'security considerations' and lethargy come in the way of its development?
The uninitiated -- among whom I include myself -- aren't exactly sure what GIS stands for, much less what it is supposed to do. To get the first out of the way -- Geographic Information Systems are a way of compiling and presenting electronic data in an intelligible and ordered manner. Steve Benner, from the US-based multinational company ESRI, told an audience assembled in Mumbai by the Maharashtra Economic Development Council recently that even in the US people didn't always know what GIS stood for.
It is a way of presenting data, he explained. "GIS represents the real world digitally." Data could be gathered in many ways -- for instance, environmental, social and physical data could be overlaid to present maps, which could enable people to make the right decisions. The obvious example would be in relation to the recent hurricanes in the US.
Prior to Rita, which hit Texas recently, ESRI had produced models of what would have happened to the coastal city of Galveston (like New Orleans, it straddles the Gulf of Mexico) with wave surges of different heights. With mapping, anyone could get a graphic picture of precisely which areas would be inundated with surges of varying intensity. As Benner mentioned, census data could be superimposed onto this map to show not only the areas but also the number of people who would be affected. The obvious utility of GIS, then, would be to predict the impact of natural or man-made disasters -- 9/11 being no exception. In any such event, there could be command posts in trailer vans at affected sites from where data could be uplinked.
GIS developers like ESRI, which is presumably one of the global leaders (with an Indian subsidiary), like to think of themselves as computer geeks who pore over data and model things with them incessantly. They probably see themselves as somewhat eccentric data and image-crunchers who are motivated by some arcane philosophy. Brenner put it thus: "GIS is about people who use data and get people to work together with software. It's a system of connecting, communicating and collaborating."
However, he clarified that contrary to popular perception it wasn't easy to get Americans to share data or make data available in the same format. There were social and political problems in such an exercise, he hastened to add. His Indian audience need hardly be reminded of this fact, considering that the central government's right to know bill, which is about to come into effect this October, is facing a last-minute attempt by bureaucrats to dilute the provisions (they want notings on files to be excluded from the purview of the law, which makes one wonder why anyone acting in the public realm should be worried about such exposure).
Brenner stated that the value of GIS far exceeded the cost, especially in life-saving situations. It is used extensively in disaster management for all phases: intelligence-gathering, analysis, planning, response and recovery. It could serve to provide early warnings -- typically, in the event of floods. The entire command and control functions in such disasters would be greatly facilitated by GIS. Applications would include hospitals, the military, shelters for evacuees and transport, not to mention threat data. The entire post-disaster response is the right terrain for this technology. Even for medical treatment, for example, victims can be identified by their blood group for easy medication.
In a word, GIS can help us understand human vulnerabilities, including terrorist attacks. Benner illustrated its uses by referring to forest fires in California, where helicopters monitoring their spread were able to send data to a centre that ran models to predict where the fires would spread on an hourly basis, thereby literally proving to be a matter of life or death. A more benign instance is that of road construction, where citizens can obtain information on which agency sponsored the construction, what the expenditure was, the design, and what utility services lay below the road surface. Such knowledge would be of immense help to the harried citizens of Mumbai: the authorities have had to face the ignominy, these post-monsoon days, of requesting motorists to avoid the highways and take the old roads because the former resemble lunarscapes!
Rajesh Mathur, president of ESRI India, explained how GIS was being employed in India. The organisation is Delhi-based, a joint venture with NIIT, and has been in existence since 1996. It has been responsible for 7,000 applications, enjoys a 70% market share, and has won several Map India awards for excellence in digital mapping. Major users of GIS in Maharashtra -- a bewildering array of acronyms! -- include the remote sensing nodal agency in Nagpur, the Disaster Management Information System (DMIS) and the Maharashtra Earthquake Emergency Relief Programme (MEERP, an obvious outcome of Latur, which has a control room in Pune University with a back-up in Mantralaya, the state secretariat).
Unknown to anyone -- perhaps excluding only the practitioners! -- Maharashtra also has a geo-referencing of village maps project, a road information system, municipal mapping (Pune takes the lead) and coastal zone mapping. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has been using GIS for a decade for its development plan and sewerage system.
However, the point could well be made that GIS, and any human intervention for that matter, was conspicuous by its absence in the traumatic days after the Mumbai deluge on July 26. The City and Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO, which is in charge of Navi Mumbai) has used land-use mapping, while the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has been resorting to it for its regional planning. The Pune Municipal Corporation has taken steps to use GIS for its records. Among private users, Reliance Industries has been mapping land for its various cable services.
National users include the Survey of India (for its digital mapping project, which maps the country), Geological Survey of India (for mineral surveys), Natural Resource Information Systems (NRIS), Registrar General of India (for census data), the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) and the Department of Space. The National Informatics Centre has a utilities mapping project that covers Delhi, and now Mumbai and four other big cities: at the very least this ought to help avoid the constant digging and re-digging of roads to lay new service lines. Among educational institutions, there are the IITs for civil engineering and environmental sciences, among other disciplines. The Symbiosis Institute in Pune runs an Institute of Geo-Informatics, while Pune University itself has a number of applications, as we have seen.
ESRI India prides itself on its work after the Gujarat earthquake. With funding from the UN Development Programme (UNDP), it mapped badly affected districts like Kutch and towns like Bhuj. Thus, those in charge of relief operations could tell how many deaths there had been -- even at the level of a single village -- or how many homes had been damaged. The entire mapping exercise was completed in 45 days, enabling the Confederation of India Industry (CII) to adopt certain villages, among other applications.
After the tsunami last December 26, GIS was used to map the topography of the Tamil Nadu coast. Data was obtained regarding such crucial parameters as elevation of the coast, which would explain which areas would be inundated with high tidal waves. Models were assembled for waves of heights varying from three metres to 10 metres (the latter resembling the situation in Galveston in Texas). According to Mathur, such information would put a question mark over measures like a ban on construction within 100 metres of the coastline. The impact depended on the elevation: if the coastal area was flat, a tsunami could travel even seven kilometres inland. Satellite images were used to examine how the Camorita island in the Andamans had been affected.
In Tamil Nadu, GIS data earlier showed how natural sand dunes had formed, blocking the intrusion of high tides into the Adyar estuary. The quality of the Adyar had improved as a consequence. However, after the tsunami, these dunes were washed away, leading to the intrusion of saline water deep into the estuary; the surrounding groundwater turned brackish as a consequence. This is how computerised information can help us understand the ecological consequences of natural and man-made disasters.
In answer to a question from the audience, an ESRI India official hesitated to put a figure on the return on investment in such technology. However, Benner mentioned that in San Diego, where he is based, the city authorities had worked out a return of 18%. He cautioned that it was by no means a onetime investment, but that any user had to constantly update data and keep it authentic. This Californian city had found that the technology had led to considerable savings in time in accessing information, which translates into dollars saved.
He cited how there had been snafus in such applications in San Diego. The city sprawls some 60 miles from north to south, and crews using GIS once arrived to repair a road only to find that they were at the intersection of two parallel streets! "There is tremendous need for validation of data," stressed Benner. "This is the responsibility of the collectors." San Diego had actually made an inventory of 40,000 trees -- by location and species. The task was assigned to students but had to be confirmed by surveys from helicopters. Some of the dots on the tree map turned out to be in the middle of a street and had to be corrected.
Benner was questioned, inevitably, as to why with all the technology at its command the US administration had moved so slowly in the case of Hurricane Katrina. He was reluctant to be upfront about this, but insinuated that even in the US there was a reluctance to share data, even more so to act on it. He pointed out, incidentally, that much of the satellite and other data regarding hurricanes is available in the public domain. As has recently been reported in the Indian media, with the advent of popular search engines like Earth Google, even so-called security-vulnerable Indian locations had become accessible to public view. Mathur mentioned how there were tremendous obstacles because of security considerations in accessing maps in this country.
More pointed questions were levelled as to why, if there were disaster management information systems in place in Maharashtra, at Pune University, with a back-up control room in the Mantralaya in Mumbai, such systems had not been activated after July 26. Its brief was apparently to tackle the state as a whole, not the capital -- obviously in response to disasters like Latur or Koyna a few decades earlier. For that matter, the present Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, Johnny Joseph, was relief commissioner at Latur after the earthquake; he presided over the subsequent two-year period when, with World Bank and UNDP funding, the state drew up a comprehensive disaster management plan. The plan was never activated. It is on the state government website -- it looks good in cyberspace but has yet to be put into practice on the ground.
This just about sums up the shortcomings of GIS and all computerised and other technologies. Ultimately, the value of such systems is only as good as the data that is fed into it. If bureaucrats and politicians here are congenitally afraid of parting with information and never hesitate to raise one obstacle after another for any public-minded person who seeks access to it, one really wonders how many decades it will be before this country employs these admittedly highly effective technologies. There is nothing bureaucrats like more then exercising power, and providing information apparently means parting with their authority over it.
Mumbai has computerised its land records, which is a great step forward, but GIS would help greatly in taking this process further and seeing how the city administration can tax property owners effectively. The technology would enable the authorities to cite each street by the name of the building, its occupant and his telephone number (MTNL updates its directory on its website). In Andhra Pradesh, some 54,000 km of roads have been mapped, each segment spanning just one kilometre. This states, among many other details, the name of the contractor -- which would be very useful in any post-monsoon situation. But, despite such examples, security considerations and sheer lethargy, it would seem, will keep computerised technologies at bay for some years to come, even in a country that prides itself on being an IT leader.
InfoChange News & Features, October 2005