Geo-tagging of assets created under RKVY

.    What is geo tagging?

• Geotagging– It is the process of adding geographical identification like latitude and longitude to various media such as a photo or video.
• Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information from a device. It provides users the location of the content of a given picture.
• Geomapping-a visual representation of the geographical location of geotagged assets  layered on top of map or satellite imagery

2. Why is Geotagging important?

• Several assets are created in the states under various schemes of the Ministry of Agriculture.
• Under RKVY also, states have been utilising substantial amount of funds for creation of infrastructure/assets in agriculture and allied sectors such as soil testing labs, pesticide testing labs, bio fertiliser setting units
• Monitoring of such wide spread activities is of paramount importance to states and Government of India to understand flow of funds, inventorising the assets, bringing in transparency, planning of assets for future, and finally informing the farmers about the facilities available.
• PM on several occasions emphasised on use of technology for reporting of assets created through geo-tagging.
• Finance Minister also highlighted monitoring of MGNREGA assets through Geotagging in his budget speech.
• Geotagging for monitoring of assets is already started in Ministry of Rural Development for MGNREGA and Department of Land Resources for monitoring of watershed activities in the states.
• Postal department has also geotagged the post offices using NRSC Bhuvan Platform.

3. Who does it?

• National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), ISRO at  Hyderabad : This  centre of ISRO has a software platform, Bhuvan that allows users to explore a 2D/3D representation of the surface of the Earth.
• It also acts as a platform for hosting government data. BhuvanApplication Services that are diversified and relevant for many ministries were released.
• NRSC is involved in mapping of resources (Postal, GAIL, Forest etc) as well as monitoring of assets created under various schemes of Ministry of water Resources, Ministry of rural development etc.
• The assets created under RKVY could be monitored by Geotagging them using BHUVAN, a geoplatfornof National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of ISRO, Hyderabad.
• In future, the location of the infrastructure created and distances from each other could also be utilised for arriving at distribution of assets and optimum number of that particular asset required in a district or state.

The process involves development of a mobile app for mapping the assets through photographs and Geo-tagging (providing geo co-ordinates) before hosting on to DAC –RKVY platform that would be specially created for RKVY monitoring.