In less than three months’ time, Mangaluru will be all set to become the first taluk in Karnataka to have its government facilities mapped in all its gram panchayats.
The project which has been undertaken by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat and Alva's Institute of Engineering & Technology (AIET) will list all the facilities like post offices, healthcare centres, banks, educational institutes, ATMs, sewage treatment plants and government offices of all the 55 villages on Bhuvan portal.
The Bhuvan Panchayat Project is aimed at providing geospatial information support and capacity building for an inclusive and participatory decentralized planning process. It helps in visualization of the selected area of interest by making available the high-resolution satellite imageries and the datasets.
“The Asset Directory will be a comprehensive compilation of different types of assets and resources created under various schemes to help the local population. This project is looking to fill the gap of spatial data at the panchayat level" said AT Jayaseelan of National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) to the Deccan Chronicle.
This step was taken as a part of making local governance more effective and having a stronger decentralization process in place.
"All the 270 assets of each village, like the ATMs, bridges and so on will be mapped using this project. The information about the whole village will be made available in this map." said Vivek Alva, Managing Trustee, Alva Education Foundation.
When asked about how the people are going to benefit from it, he said that everything will be available online which is a huge advantage for the public. He added that it will help in making the government bodies stronger in terms of its planning and implementation process. The government authorities will be able to look into the matter and work on it if there is any deficiency in the different facilities available.
The mapping is being done by a mobile application developed by ISRO. The application has been developed to do the mapping directly from the field through geo-location as well as photographs. Five students have been identified from every village who will conduct cluster meetings along with the super moderators who have undergone training.
Even though the project is expected to be completed in three months, they are hoping to finish it much before, "within a month if possible" said Vivek.