India: A group of officials from Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI) of Australia met Minister of State, Ministry of Science and Technology & Earth Science Y. S Chowdary and Dr Swarna Subba Rao, Surveyor General of India here at the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
The meeting coincided on the value of collaboration in fostering innovation in the utilisation of Geospatial Technologies and assistance in the further development of Geospatial Information industries in India and Australia.
Emphasising the importance and value of Geospatial Information, the officials from both India and Australia discussed the potential of geospatial in forming a decision based on intelligence evidence. The development of geospatial technology and India’s contribution in providing geospatial information was also discussed in the meeting.
“We know that these geospatial technologies going to be very significant into the future. And there are some tremendous opportunity for collaboration between Australia and India,” said Dr. Peter Woodgate, CEO of CRCSI.
The meeting also recognised India’s development on technology that provide geospatial information, and the development by the Commonwealth of Australia of advanced decision support system capabilities for geospatial information, consequently, there is great potential for cooperation between India and Australia in the utilisation of Geospatial Technologies.
“India is very strong in the positioning satellites, and the earth observation satellites. And Australia is a great user of those satellites. And is particularly strong in the analytics of the processing of data they provide. So there are wonderful mutual benefits,” said Woodgate.
At last, the officials also acknowledged the importance of holding a collaboration workshop in India or Australia to identify and evaluate potential collaborative projects in the fields of capacity building for positioning – CORS, Development of Geospatial Technology and Policy and development of the Data Cube for geospatial mapping and products.
