India: The second day of Geointelligence Asia 2015 ended on a high note here in Delhi. The exclusive session on 'Public Safety and Disaster Management' brought together experts and government officials from different organisations under one roof. Gp Capt (Dr) AV Lele (Retd), IDSA, gave a recap of the different kind of disasters that have taken place in the recent past (Japan's Tsunami and Mumbai rains). "We need communication equipments and updated maps. GIS, GNSS, remote sensing and mapping are needed to overcome disaster related challenges. Satellite imagery helps understand before and after comparisons of a disaster," stated Lele.
While giving a presentation on 'Crisis mapping through crowdsourcing', Lt Col Saravanan, Senior Instructor, Defence Institute of Advancement Technology, threw light on the term 'Neogeography', that comprises of open source, dynamic mapping tools, mobile data collection etc. 'Neogeography is essentially about people asking and creating their own maps," said Lt Col Saravanan. He also dicussed the roll out of Google earth, calling it a major platform for interactive mapping. Saravanan also stated that there are three key components to crisis mapping. These are: information collection; visualisation and analysis. Commenting on the future of crowdsourcing, Saravanan said "crowd, that collects the information and cloud that stores the information, are two things that are crucial for crowdsourcing."
Speaking at the technical session of 'Coastal and Maritime security', RAdm S Kulshrestha (Retd), discussed the meaning of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). Kulshrestha defined MDA as the effective understanding of anything associated with the global maritime environment that could impact the serenity and safety of a country. "MDA's core process is the monitoring of vessels and cargos. Strategic MDA requires a good perspective and capabilities at the highest levels of analysis, intelligence and policy," explained Kulshrestha. Cdre M Bhargava (Retd), Vice President, L&T, Self Reliance- The Navy Way, shed light on the 'Make in India' initiative, which aims to encourage FOEMS manufacture products in India. Bhargava revealed that the programme focusses on 25 sectors in India. "Salient expectations from 'Make in India' are: generating large scale employment; reducing imports and enhancing exports; promoting defence exports; acquiring cutting edge technology, infrastructure and skills," said Bhargava.
Daniel Forsberg, Marketing Director, SAAB, concentrated his presentation on 'ground surveillance system'. In his talk, Daniel discussed the challenges for ground surveillance system, stating that many of today's threats deploy and act from deep concealment in forests. He also discussed in great detail, Saab's CARABAS system, a system that has been designed to enable superior foliage and camouflage penetration (FOPEN) capabilities, wide area surveillance and automatic target detection. "CARABAS can perform target detection under foilage, target detection under camouflage and area mapping under foliage.
Organised by Geospatial Media and Communications, the theme for this year’s GeoIntelligence Asia Conference was ‘Converging Geointelligence, Information Technology and Engineering for National Security'.
Source: Our Correspondent
