Centre to employ geospatial technology to build smart cities

Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu has said the centre would extensively utilise geospatial technology in order to realise its vision to build 100 smart cities across the country.

???Cities in the past were built on riverbanks. They are now built along highways. But in the future, they will be built based on the availability of optical fibre networks and next-generation infrastructure. Our Government???s vision is to build 100 smart cities across the country. And Geospatial Science & Technology (GS&T) is the means to realise this vision,??? he said, addressing a conference of Geospatial World Forum.

Geospatial technology (GST) makes use of satellite navigation systems and computer databases known as Geographical Information System (GIS) to create, capture, store and retrieve geographic and spatial information of any place.

???GST enables efficient, effective, relevant and integrated planning through the use of real-time data and data analytics,??? Naidu said.

A common thread running in the urban development sphere, including Smart City Programme, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Urban), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), AMRUT and HRIDAY, is the extensive use of ICT and geospatial information systems, he said.

The Centre, under the Housing for All (Urban) scheme, has envisioned that individual houses should be tracked through geo-tagged photographs for effective monitoring. The Urban Development Ministry has entered into a MoU with the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad for this, Naidu added.

Source : Urbannewsdigest