Soon-to-be-indispensable

GIS mapping taps the criticality of location and then helps in accurate troubleshooting through the four stages of an infrastructure project, says Dominic McNeillis.

Recently, Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science and Technology, Human Resources Development and IT and Telecom, emphasised the growth in the geospatial sector in India saying that the idea is to provide three-dimensional information to citizens. The government believes that 75-90 per cent of all infor­mation should be made available to the public.

We all seem to int­u­i­tively understand a map when addressing the que­stion “where”. The four key infrastructure stages—plan, design, build, maintain—all happen “somewhere”. A map can provide an accurate and short­hand way of des­cribing “where” or “which one of many nearby assets”, when tal­king about inspections, repair work and citizen com­plai­nts. A map added to the plan, design and build pha­ses allows commissioning orga­nisations to electro­ni­cally pass through accurate data to the custodians of the future.

Once built, infrastructure enters the longest phase of its life, often an assumed perpetuity: roads, rail, waterways and docks are examples of what we assume will be conti­nuously maintained and updated. For this phase, infra­structure assets are inspected against an asset database that can also be the foundation of upgrade work in future decades. The accurate location of infrastructure provides a shorthand language that assists all the stakeholders.

Maintenance workers based in the “Custodian’s” offi­ce need to analyse condition and safety inspection data to organise and plan work remedial work. Field workers need to carry out different types of safety and condition inspections, which may require specialist equipment and/or be in a secluded place. Consumers and Citizens need to be able to comment and complain about infra­structure assets and services. The map pro­vides the sha­red shorthand that gives confidence to each and all that the right asset, in the right place, is being discussed. Com­pare that to a non-map situation: Deshbandhu Gupta Road, 45th lamp column from Delhi Metro sta­tion going west on the left hand side. How confident would you be? Have any been added lately? What if you arrive and the 47th is damaged?

Public money is well spent by ensuring that the loca­tion of the asset, complaint or service is associated with each action: a citizen clicks first on a map, then completes a form; an inspector receives his daily work on a device with maps; the office staff look for spatial patterns when planning work, perhaps optimising the inspector’s daily beat using a map so that costly trips to remote areas are effective.

The power of modern Geographical Information Systems (GIS) allows public sector organisations to “embed” maps into their asset management, works mana­ge­ment and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools, or to purchase Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) soft­ware with this capability. Modern GIS can also be embe­dded within field software and on web pages.

GIS is a “right-first-time” tool and has hidden value especially relevant in ambitious India. A citizen can feel confident if their online question or complaint started with an asset located on a map. Should the public sector or­ganisation be brave enough to publish online data abo­ut such reports, citizens will see transparency in action.

The India initiative: Given the ever-increasing dem­and for infrastructure in developing countries such as India, companies are looking forward with a philosophy ‘advancing GIS for infrastructure’ to develop applications that use geospatial technology extensively. GIS tech­nology has been gaining much popularity in India, with the 12th Five Year Plan citing implementation proj­e­cts in Power, Agriculture, Forestry, Mining and ICT se­ctor. There are model projects in India in rural and urban development. The Department of Agri­culture in Punjab has been actively using GIS for agricu­lture; in Karnataka, Bangalore Development Auth­o­rity has made it their mission to make Bangalore the “Best Indian City”.

The geospatial sector in India has been gro­w­ing with the entry of private and international compa­nies utilising data generated from space-based platforms like remote sensing and near-earth orbiting satellites ab­out various features of natural resources and developing GIS. Just as the common use of the pen heralded a new age of mankind, the common use of digital maps may table a renaissance for the third millennium.

The author is Solutions Marketing Manager, Public Sector, EMEA and India, Pitney Bowes Software, whose products include location intelligence.