Survey of India's plan to meet the country's need for digital geographical data

摘要

Preparation of an accurate topographical map is a painstaking and hazardous task and the technology adopted is quite different to tracing the artefacts from space imageries. Despite space imageries having the advantage of large and repetitive coverage, topographical maps still continue to be used for preparation of base maps for thematic representations, research and spatial planning on account of their accuracies, precision and contents. In fact, keeping such requirements in mind the Survey of India has started bringing out a number of public series maps to promote tourism, explorations, environmental and heritage awareness, etc. Topographical maps on all scales of about two thirds of our land mass and smaller scale maps of the remaining area are in public domain, and maps of all categories and associated digital data are being released to the Government organizations on 'need to know' basis. The policies on this issue are generally commensurate with practices in the neighbouring countries. The Survey of India cannot, of course, be blamed for objecting to copyright violations and digitization of maps without consent. The Survey of India, being the producer of topographical maps, has been in the eye of the storm over various restriction policies of the Government for some time past. However, the intensity of criticism has increased after the publication of policies regarding dissemination of digital map data to the public in November-December 1998 issue of GIS@development. With the issue being equally important to academics and scientists, a panel on 'Scientific Data of Public Interest) was formed at the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and a discussion was organized on 'Public Access to Indian Geographical Data' on 14 and 15 July 1999, This paper is a compilation of various issues discussed by the representative of Survey of India regarding the future plans of the Department to meet the country's needs for digital geographical data and the existing scenario on map data dissemination. The paper also includes some issues related to creation of a digital spatial database in public domain and various policies which will require attention of the GIS community for implementation of the plan. [References: None]