Hyderabad: The forum on geospatial capacity building and the student forum at the India Geospatial Forum 2014 was lead by Dr. Shahnawaz, Director (S & SE Asia), UNIGIS International, University of Salzburg, Austria. The forum attracted more than 70 eminent academicians, industry leaders, professionals and young students who discussed about the lessons learned from the past and their vision about the future of geospatial education in India. UNIGIS has been contributing in organising a common platform for face-to-face discussions for a range of issues related to geospatial capacity building since 2003.
A Report of the National Task Force on Geospatial Education released in August 2013 estimated that India’s annual demand of geospatially competent human resources will be about 7000-10,000 persons by 2015. Geospatial services industry in India is assessed worth $3 billion and is taking giant steps toward further growth. The forum highlighted certain key issues like is India well equipped to meet the growing human resource requirements of this sector? And are geospatial organisations, industry and academia working together for designing a competitive regional response to global challenges and opportunities?
Keynote speakers and panellists at the session include: Dr. M. K. Munshi, Chair, OGC India Forum; Dr. Bharti Sinha, Executive Director, Association of Geospatial Industry, India; Dr. S.P.S. Kushwaha, Group Director PPEG, India Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun; Seema Joshi, NIIT Technologies – ESRI India and Dr. V. Balakista Reddy, Centre for Air & Space Law, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.
Student presenters include: Amila Karunathilake, Mr. M. A. P. Chamikara and Dr. Jagath Gunatilake, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; Shubhasmita Sahani, PhD Scholar, JNTU, Hyderabad; Shivam Parashari and Sneha S Deshpande, Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Pune, India; P Naga Vineet, Center for Air & Space Law, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India; Akshay Dilip Loya, Mondira Chatterjee, Sanket Butala and Ahmed Tambe, Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Pune, India; Jaya Srivastava, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India; Sagar Bhasme, Ugam Patil and Uzi Gill, Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Pune, India; Arkaprabha Ghosh, Rakshak Foundation, Guwahati, India and Venugopal TV and Prakash PS, M TECH AT Karnataka State Remote Sensing Applications Centre, Bangalore, India.
Source: Our Correspondent
