India—The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has reached an agreement with NIIT GIS Limited (ESRI India), ESRI’s distributor in India, to equip its five Regional Remote Sensing Service Centres (RRSSCs) with ArcGIS Server and the Image extension. The centers in Jodhpur, Dehradun, Kharagpur, Nagpur, and Bangalore use Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite and other imagery to create thematic maps and GIS databases that provide valuable societal applications to various government agencies throughout India.
With India’s success in remote-sensing technology through the IRS constellation, several new imagery-based and GIS-centric projects of national relevance are gaining visibility and importance. ISRO is presently implementing major programs related to natural resources, disaster management, environmental oversight, and groundwater and watershed management.
The remote-sensing centers are establishing a distributed architecture of server-based solutions designed to be the foundation for publishing, hosting, and serving images and data. Over time, the RRSSCs have collected large volumes of map data and integrated them with attribute data. The centers plan to combine and assimilate all the data with new-generation IRS high-resolution images and serve the data and application sets across the government sector.
The RRSSCs needed a GIS solution that met their needs and was scalable to meet growing demands for services from a large number of users for a variety of advanced applications. The centers selected ESRI’s proven technology and superior solutions after several rounds of technical presentations, demonstrations, and discussions. The RRSSCs and ESRI India have concluded a comprehensive training session, and RRSSC users have started developing the solution.
