New Delhi, India: The keynote session on ‘The Big Ticket Projects’ at Geobuild Infrastructure Conference 2013 highlighted the role of technology in building a sustainable infrastructure. Kamal K Gupta, Executive Director (Rail Infrastructure), RITES explained how geospatial technology is used in surveying, construction and operations and maintenance processes of RITES. He said GIS is making a huge difference to project costs, saving time and enhancing safety. Talking about the future plans of RITES, Gupta said, “We aim to add 25,000 km of new railway lines by 2020.” He highlighted how RITES, with the help of new age technology, was able to identify eight high speed rail corridors across the country. He further revealed that RITES aims to modernise the freight train network, eliminate level crossings and increase the speed of regular passenger trains.
Kaushik Chakraborty, Vice President, Hexagon India gave a brief overview of Hexagon’s cutting edge products and solutions for the infrastructure industry. With the help of some case studies he revealed how Hexagon solutions are offering smarter ways to manage the needs of a growing population and how their solutions are helping in monitoring changes at a global level.
Plan and design
The role of technology in creation of master plans, visualisations, 3D analysis and simulations for developing a sustainable infrastructure were highlighted in the technical session on ‘Plan and design’. Bharti Sinha, Executive Director, Association of Geospatial Industries revealed how BIM technology is helping in building information processes across the infrastructure project lifecycle. Highlighting how critical road infrastructure is to the Indian economy, Sinha said that “roads can be made intelligent with the use of geospatial technology”. She further said that GIS is helping in the planning, designing, building and maintenance phases of an infrastructure lifecycle. With the help of some examples she explained how “integration of BIM and GIS is helping in building intelligent models of urban infrastructure.”
Dr Vivek S Kale, Head – Geospatial, Kalyani Global Engineering Pvt Ltd highlighted how geoinformatics is a mission critical ingredient of infrastructure development. He gave examples of two case studies (Mundra project and Khed City) where “GIS made meaningful contribution to the lifecycle of these infrastructure projects.” He further revealed that integration of BIM and GIS helped the company on an average to reduce plan deviation, stakeholder conflict, idle time of staff, etc.
Sunil Joshi, Associate Vice President, NeilSoft gave a presentation on the topic ‘BIM for infrastructure’. He said that investment and interest in 3D technology is increasing since last 2 years. He explained that BIM and GIS can provide a virtual construction stage to an infrastructure company.
Giving a brief overview of Navyuga’s three major projects (Krishnapatnam port, Delhi-Noida bridge and DSSDI project), Alok Upadhyaya, Head GIS & International Business Development, Navayuga Group explained how they reaped huge benefits through the implementation of GIS. He highlighted how satellite imaging, laser scanning, GIS, BIM for planning and design were used to complete these projects on time and in a cost effective manner.
Source: Our Correspondent
