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Source: PIB
What is the news?
- The Director-General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga has recently released a report titled ‘Potential of Geospatial Technologies for the Water Sector in India’.
- Geospatial technology is a term used to describe the range of modern tools contributing to the geographic mapping and analysis of the Earth.
- The report has been prepared by the Association of Geospatial Industries – a geospatial technology industry body.
About the report:
- The report outlines key water sector programs and projects in the country.
- It provides an overview of how each of these programs is currently using geospatial technologies, and how to improve technology adoption in the future.
- For instance, technologies are used in the Namami Gange Mission for mapping different attributes of the Ganga basin.
- Various other missions such as Jal Jeevan Mission, Atal BhujalYojna, also have set up projects using these technologies
- As per the report, a plethora of Geospatial and Digital technologies can be effectively used to combat the water crisis. This includes:
- Geospatial – Satellite-based Remote Sensing, Surveying and Mapping, GPS based equipment and sensors, GIS and Spatial Analytics,
- Digital – Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things, 5G, Robotics and Digital Twin.
- The report has also listed several case studies highlighting the use of geospatial technologies in different contexts related to water problems.
- It also provides a list of openly available geospatial and digital tools that are widely used by the global, national, and sub-national level agencies.
Why should the government adopt Geospatial Technology in the water sector?
- Given the population density and requirement of water for agriculture, India is heavily dependent on groundwater.
- Further, it is one of the worst-hit countries as far as the water crisis is concerned.
- The use of the latest and best digital and spatial technologies will help in taking data-based informed decisions.
- It will ensure better measurement, management, and maintenance of assets.
- It will improve monitoring of resources and even provide predictive and prescriptive analysis for forecasting and planned interventions.
Hence, a focus on Geospatial technology is desired to combat this pervasive challenge and to ensure better water management in the country.
