Thinking, Doing and Sharing - Key to 4IR and Geospatial Industry

Enabling geospatial policy for a sustainable ecosystem needs the government and industry to working together in a rapidly changing and evolving technology landscape. The digital world is trying to capture everything that happens somewhere, using the data collection systems, processing, representing and disseminating the information.  These are desirable systems now fed with data which have now used sporadically with little less trust worthiness. The speed of data collection, dynamic platforms and varied user interfaces leaves little chance to verify its accuracy. The multitude of the data sources may be government or private or individuals is lagging behind in ensuring its authenticity and more used for its trust. 

The spatial content through cloud and open sources in data have led to large volumes of unprocessed or under processed information. The concept of truthing or validation needs more data repository for the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) to be able to utilize the artificial intelligence or machine learning. The logical reasoning when fed with incorrect data can lead to disastrous or faulty decision making in the automated world. The human nature to make irrational decisions and system over ride limitations of systems would lead to chaotic outcomes. 

Whether commonly enabled, free or open technology would exist due to its cost effectiveness, or lead to opening scope for startups? The future societies might need to relieve intellectual properties (IP) for the development of technologies needed for societies growth. The establishment of society-industry linkages in spatial applications is needed with user interfaces (UI) open to public access. The innovators or thinkers for future tech world would carry responsibility of leveraging on open source, open data and open access to connect all. The organizations would attempt to integrate the sustainable development goals (SDG) more with data capturing and analytical systems. 

The digital ecosystem for performing the geospatial functions in analysis particularly in content and services would lead to diverse ecosystem. The tech giants dealing with innovation functions would need support of policy, market and technology support to fulfill the 4IR goals of nations. Whether the current education system supports the shifting technology through multi-disciplinary approach? Capacity building for the young tech , science and geospatial graduates is needed to understand the integration of data science with process engineering. The problem solving approach of the social sciences needed to update the community about the issues of people, resources and economy which needs technological interventions.

The physical asset tabulations, changing natural order and long lasting impacts on the climate and environments needs significant transformation studied across the continents. The pressure of population (both increasing  or diminishing), resource exploitation and automation may enhance the vulnerability of nature and human. Startup innovation support systems or cooperation framework would be needed not only at the transnational level but also at the regional and local levels. The data should now also include not only the data but specifically spatial data for its accuracy and temporal demands. The static and dynamic data content might to lead to stagnation or intelligent systems. The stakeholders, i.e., government, industry and academia needs more collaborations than ever to overcome the speed of project implementation. 

Admissions Open for Masters in Urban Planning

Bhaikaka Centre for Human Settlement, APIED,

Sardar Patel University (V.V. Nagar) ANAND

Masters in Urban Planning

(Recognized by Institute of Town Planners India, ITPI, New Delhi)

Applications Invited from eligible candidates for the Masters in Urban Planning (MUP) full time course. Following are the details;

Course Duration : two years (Four Semister)

Eligibility: B.Arch/B.E.(Civil)/MA/MSC in Economics/Sociology/Geography or other equivalant degree specified in admission brouchure.

Tentative Admission Schedule: Application Acceptence: Last week July/Admission - 1st Week Aug.

For More information call

Shashikant Kumar

Course Coordinator (MUP)

09898353419

www.apied.edu.in

Solutions for Your Industry

What does your business need?Green Eminent is opening its vista for the Geomatics Industry in India, we have updated ties for the data creation, developing GIS business logics, analytical services and consulting. The services are now available only online via our dedicated partners and associates.
We would not trouble our clients with huge infrastructure cost recovery, instead we now aim to reduce our capital investment by focusing on distributed computing. So, for those who had been waiting to be part of virtual services in Geomatics, Mapping and analytical services are also welcomed to join our team as partners. For more details, mail us at gercbrd@gmail.com.

Geoinformatics Technologies for Fighting Corruption

When the decision making depends on the indviduals wishes, the horror of corruption emerges. In most of the public utility cases using right technology might reduce the content of corruption. The reform initiatives for the e-governance has recently slowed down in order to acheive transperancy in functioning of the government offices. The access to the information recently made online through e-tendering, online greveinces, tracking of complains status, etc becomes outreach program to fight against corruption at the system level.

Most the government contracts and payment when assigned digital tags, the citizens would get the desired knowledge about their area of interest. The use of Geoinformatics (GIS and Remote Sensing) and tracking devices most of the monitoring tasks of the government program and services can be achieved. Two departments are example for the reduction in corruption intensity these are Indian Railway and Telecommunication for the common men. Most of the e-tendering process by the governments have become easier and little hassle. But the decision making still remains with the department heads and executives in the government, these are not assisted by Information technologies. The Geoinformatics so far have penetrated in some ministries and department which is helpful in monitoring the works and progress in the sectors.

The people in general is not conversant with the e-governance initiatives by the department which might have been helpful in reducing the corruption. The technology penetration is possible in all the governed departments which helps in monitoring and assigning the tasks for the development and status of works. But governments are slow in implementing the technologies citing ignorance and pitfalls ahead. Using internet has been limited to just having a site, some departments have opted to inform general public about their works and achievement. Most of the public services do not interface with citizen citing confidentiality. The legal tools under discussion might help in punishing the culprits, why not use the technologies to monitor and analyse the decision making of the key departments? T

he application areas of Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing has raised the technological possibilities for integrating the services departments to allow users to get access to functions performed by the local and state governments. Next generation reform should allow the citizens to access the service information on their mobile, PCs and Laptop using the mentioned technologies.

Off Track Development: Where is it?

In context of the roads providing ample scope of development fits well with the changes being observed along the road in most of the states. In fact people would like to associate with various class of roads in order to be seen as living in progressive regions. Its natural to see cities and town growing along the major nodes. But all may not be lucky enough. The settlements have been coming closer to the roads, whether its rural village road or national highways. But given this scenario what would be scope of development beyond the road influence areas. May be the services would be poor

and people would not like to stay there for long.

Some how we have just connected the roads but not connected the economies of the human settlements, the understanding of the settlement growth as given by the popular theories like Christaller or Losch the linkages are not comparable. The pattern across the developed and undeveloped regions varies and there is little explanation for the resource-economy based development path. The governments would be wise enough to provide the connectivity leading to exchange of economies but most of the time its one-way traffic between the settlements. The larger the settlements the greater would be dependency on the hinterland, but would there be scope for returning the benefits to the hinterland. Ideally some value added good

s and services should flow back, but restricted by the economic and social backwardness of the hinterlands.

Beyond the influence zone of the roads, the settlements suffers from the consequential backwardness and keeps on stagnating till the large urban conglomerations are formed to erase the settlements identity. Those settlements far off from the development track often stagnates or becomes uncompetitive resulting shifting of the population further aggravating the problem.

Whether the technological progress in Geomatics - GIS or remote sensing can be used for assessing or addressing these issues? Specific Growth Centers or Poles to boost the regional development calls for serious spatial analysis, which we are missing from the econo- centric planning approach to national, state and district plans. Can we start revisiting some old regional development concepts?

GREEN EMINENT: Basic and Advanced Short Term Course

GREEN EMINENT: Basic and Advanced Short Term Course

Send Your Application now...Pay on the spot or Demand Draft in favour of "Green Eminent" payable at Vadodara LAST DATE .. .10 January 2011

Basic and Advanced Short Term Course

Announcement for all those who were waiting for this course to happen..Please note following;

(a) Basic Geoinformatics Course (GIS/GPS/Image Processing)

Dated: 16th -22 Jaunary 2011 (Course Fee: Rs.5000/- and Rs. 2500 for Students)

(b) Advanced Geomatics Application Course (Transportation/Urban Planning/Forestry)

(Application course subject to minimum candidates in each application)

Dated: 27th - 3rd Febraury 2011 (Course Fee: Rs. 8000/- and Rs. 5000 for Students)

Venue: Green Eminent Vadodara

(Participants may bring their Laptops for personal Lab training)

To Apply mail your information to gercbrd@gmail.com on or before 25th December 2010.

Follow our blog.. greeneminent.blogspot.com for latest update on course.

Geospatial Industry: Bitten by Identity Bug..

A huge lot of contracts for the survey and mapping are being awarded throughout the country to the firms interested in entering into the business. The mega sales team entering the GoI offices have increased their rounds, each targetting a client to boost their sales. Similarly state government departments hanging large projects to lure the industry enterents. To all this we are yet to frame a overarching geospatial policy, when mapping was restricted to 11 entities, since then government queitly opened the policy. A large amount at stake the industrial houses entered into the business of Geospatial services. Very few became successful in completing the projects, even departments flattered after investing huge amount on spatial data creation and so call building 'GIS' capabilities.

What the industry is lacking? As a expert we can feel the lack of training and exposure of the government towards the technology and its potentials. The companies are interested in selling their product then improving the geospatial business of the clients. The solutions and hardwares are sold in bulk (from mid 1990s to 2005) to increase the sales pitch and enter into the services area (where solutions needs to be customised). As industry dealing with customization in the geospatial solutions are negligible the clients are not backing the new ideas and enterents in the field.

There are plenty of pilot projects abadoned in order to avoid the challenges of implementation and responsibility towards the technology developers. The huge tracking and services market is being ballooned out in last two years with solutions not approaching clients as per their requirements or neither the clients allowing any changes in existing protocols. Thus creating a deadlock on the technology penetration and development. Large corporates though have capacity to play a key role in industry finds lagging behind in development of human resources.

Our universities and institutions of higer learning have failed to educate professionals on this technology, ever since a lot of universities have started Masters programme of Geoinformatics/GIS/RS the trainers are hard to find. The teaching material itself is highly underdeveloped and not available in the right format. The dependence on the government run application centre for the research on RS/GIS is paying bad divindings in country like India. The research outputs and learning were never seriously documented and presented to the community outside. Lets see how we deal with this new identity bug

Green Eminent Joins the Map Window Team

Map Window has accepted the participation of Mr. Shashikant Kumar, Director, Green Eminent as member of the user and development team. We would be supporting and getting support from the Map Window global development team for the customized solutions for the Geographical Information System software in regional languages of India. There is an emerging need to develop and propogate the desktop applications concerning the mapping community.

We would be happy to get your opinion on the Open Source community and do visit the web site
http://www.mapwindow.org/team.php to know more about the Map Window Community.

Green Eminent : Working on Open Source GIS Team

We at Green Eminent with our Geomatics Consulting group have desired to work on the FOSS and Open Source Teams for the develoment of GIS and Image Processing Tools, specifically for the low end client groups. Often the proprietory software developed by the companies still available at prohibitive cost and rigid in its structure. Softwares like Open Geo, Map Window, GRASS++, etc are devloping and contributing well for the progress of geo sciences.

Our experience with the Indian Geomatics developers have very positive about the access and availability of the tools required by the low end users specifically researchers, institutions and NGOs. They cannot afford to bear the high cost of proprietary softwares, claiming the project life cycles meant for the civil society.

We would appreciate fellow Geoinformatics -Geosciences professionals to team up here to support good efforts globally and have some collective benefits (non commercial) in development.

GIS Workshop Confirm Paricipants: Please NOTE

This for all those who have confirmed the participation in the workshop. Please mail us your email ID and details. We would be dispatching the schedule to all the listed participants. For the people you have yet not finalise or confirm the participation. Please do the same. We have not yet closed the registration. Call us or mail at gercbrd@gmail.com or 91-0265-3015418

Green Eminent

Advance GIS Traning Schedule

For those who are interested in partcipating in the training program should inform us in advance as per the earlier notice. Following is the details time frame
16th -17th January : Basic of GIS, Image Processing, and Three Dimensional Database
Attribute data management, Data Structure

18th -20th January: Advanced training on the FOSS and Proprietory tools for mentioned topics
21th -22nd January: Hands On Lab / Special Presentations
Location/Situation analysis
Transportation Analysis
Water Resources Analysis
Urban Infrastructure Analysis

Users would be given training on the data types, attribute data managment, and Analytical techniques using the standard demo projects. The participants would be required to attend all the lectures and practicals during the course of training.

A move towards new analysis

At Green Eminents we are experiementing analysis with new digital data. Great to see the SRTM data outputs.

Copyright@ Green Eminent, Vadodara (INDIA)

Conference Alert - GIS and RS Worskhop 16th-22nd August 2009

Green Eminent is pleased to announce GIS/RS workshop for professionals

Date: 16th - 22nd August 2009
Venue: Green Eminent, Vadodara
Fees: Rs.8000/- (Eight Thousand Only) or Rs. 1800/day (for selected days only)

Students: More than 5 would be accomodated in workshop provided their application should reach us through the institution. Students fees (Rs. 800/- per day for three days only)

The applicants are requested to send following information with application

Name, Occupation, Professional Address, Qualification, Email, Tel.No.

Send in Word Document to: gercbrd@gmail.com

Please Note: We may arrange for accommodation only on payment basis. Those who have applied earlier need not apply.

Location Based Services - Gain the Edge

Location Based Service or LBS, is the ability to find the geographical location of the mobile device and provide services based on this location information. For an example a person at shopping mall calls for the nearest restaurant with economy budget, he needs only names and addresses of those restaurants which are within his reach, say within one sq.km., out of the database of say 2000 restaurants in the city spread over 1600 sq.km.

The foundation stone of Location Based Services was laid by the Federal Communications Commission of US (www.fcc.gov) ruling which required the network operators to provide emergency services by locating the user of the mobile device within 125 metres. It required wireless network operators to supply public emergency services with the caller’s location and callback phone number. This lastened the emergence of new and dynamic field called LBS, where the service was based on the geographical location of the calling device. Further, the developments in the field of Positioning Systems, Communications and GIS, fueled the imagination of the industry people with regards to the LBS. This ability to provide the user a customised service depending upon his geographical location could be used by telecommunication companies to restaurant owners.

In the days to come, the LBS will be benefiting both the consumers and network operators. While the consumers will have greater personal safety, more personalised features and increased communication convenience, the network operators will address discrete market segments based on the different service portfolios.

The Prospects of LBS
According to a poll by Integrated Data Communications, Inc. (IDC), two-thirds of Americans want wireless location-based services, with safety and security issues (emergency call, roadside assistance, and driving directions) as the primary reasons for wanting location-based services. Respondents to the survey on LBS are said to be even willing to pay a premium to have location capabilities in their handsets or receive advertising on their handsets to reduce or eliminate telematics service charges.

The size of LBS was $3.9 billion by 2004 in the United States now in 2009 its grown upto $15.0 billion in US and 150 billion through out world including the fast growing economies of India and China.

Allied Business Intelligence Inc (ABI) report, “Location Based Services: A Strategic Analysis of Wireless Technologies, Markets and Trends” report indicates that world LBS revenues will grow from approximately $1 billion in 2000 to over $40 billion in 2006. This growth will represent a compound annual average growth rate of 81%.

For the Asia-Pacific market, Strategis Groups says the wireless Internet users will reach 216.3 million by 2007, representing a ten-fold increase from the 20 million users in year 2000.

LBS Technology

With standing the growing market requirements, the LBS technology has moved from the specific systems to portal based services to clients,- specifically in the logistics managements. The companies like google, microsoft and GPS equipments manufacturers across the globe has caught the scope of industry making the LBS accessible to all through innovative mobile technologies and services available with nominal fees.

Dates Changed GIS/RS Workshops - 16th-22 August 2009. Apply Now!!

We are going to discuss following topics in the workshops starting from 16th August - 22 August 2009. We have received request for extending the time limit for application from the candidates since most of the them would be available on these days. For those who have not applied should apply before 5th August 2009 for the workshop.

Module 1 : Introduction to GIS

Module 2: Data Model

Module 3: Geographical Analysis

Module 4: Spatial Analysis

Module 5: Introduction to Remote sensing

Module 6: Sensors and Data Products

Module 7: Introduction to Image Processing

Module 8: Image Enhancement Techniques and Spatial Filtering

Module 9: Digital Image Classification

Module 10: GIS Application and Project Management

We would confirm the dates only when we receive confirmed applications from candidates. So be there..

GIS Career Resources : GIS Lounge - Geographic Information Systems

GIS Career Resources : GIS Lounge - Geographic Information Systems

What you can do with GIS and Remote Sensing

I am here to share my knowledge about the GIS/RS field in general though there are plenty of information on net I think professionals are required as under

(a) Data Creators-Digitizers – level of diploma/degree holders who can operate software and create digital information.

(b) Supervisor-Digitization- who can organise, georeference and meet the data standards

(c) QC- Spatial Data- required to check the data accuracy, standards and clients requirements.

(d) GIS Analyst- Required to assess, evaluate, propose, program, manage and implements the GIS project.

(e) RS Analyst- Require to procure, interpretate, analyse imageries for the vector data creation, map generation

(f) Subject-Domain Expert- who understands the basics of sector like water resources, forestry, urban planning, infrastructure, disaster, health management, logestics etc has training in GIS or RS in some cases if helpful in project implementation.

(f) Programmers- industry requires programmers with C/C++, Java, C#, .NET or Linux platforms to implements various customized or complex GIS projects. There can be different levels of programmers depending on the tasks and team size required.

(g) Managers- Both at the technical or business development level is required to interface with the clients and service providers – persons with technical as well as managerial skills can come to this field.

(h) Sr. Management -COO, CTO, GMs with technical background, project management skills, implementation and execution experience can handle the tasks at any level.

However these are the placements in the fields whereas there are some companies who have made the recruitments strictly for the ME, Mtech, or other MCA or BCA have not fully understood the technology. The segments requires multi disciplinary team. Any one with proper training can be placed in mentioned positions with appropriate project planning and execution.

I hope students have understood what I mean to say. Guys there are opportunities we need to seek it. Pray you remain in India. we need solutions too !!

GIS and Remote Sensing Workshop at Vadodara

You are requested contact us for more details. contact now at gercbrd@gmail.com