India

India Chapter of OSGeo

About India OSGeo Chapter
Geographical Information Systems were seen as very special and very complex domain in India. There is a lot of hype attached with it and with that obviously high cost. So far such systems were seen as something to be used for high level planning and complex scientific operations by large corporates and Govt research agencies or departments only. Also the older mapping policy of India prevented virtually anybody except governments to possess any map data. The picture is however changing fast.

With recent developments in the areas of right-to-information and National Map Policy (http://dst.gov.in/whats_new/press_releases05/cabinet-approves.htm), there is a sudden increased awareness towards GIS based information systems. National Urban Renewal Mission (http://pmindia.nic.in/lspeech.asp?id=235), a well funded initiative has made use of GIS in urban local bodies mandatory. A large portion of geodata will now be freely available.All goverement departments are now trying to find easier ways to manage, update and publish information for the public. There are also large number of NGOs and citizen organisation which are working in areas like ubran poverty, town planning, solid waste management,rural development, school education,environmental issues etc. and they have started understanding and appreciating the importance of community GIS systems.

However growth of GIS is hindered by highly priced proprietory softwares and unavailability of public geodata. Many of such licenced softwares remain unutilized in various government offices because they require either extensive training or easy availability on multiple locations. All this can be changed by the use of Free/Opensource software tools. There is hardly any proprietory GIS software that can show text in Unicode standard in maps. This is significant since all governmet data and most educational institutions work in local language media. FOSS GIS has already shown this solution. Thus, Free/Opensource Geospatial softwares which are much more powerful and usable can be used for developing systems where more and more public participation is sought.

The India OSGeo Chapter is formed to fulfill the mission and objectives described in this document. India OSGeo Chapter will earnestly follow the Local Chapter Guidelines stipulated by OSGeo and cooperate closely with OSGeo Board in promoting the use and development of OSGeo projects in India. The India OSGeo Chapter will strive to serve anyone interested in Open Source Geospatial Solutions and related issues, and to cover all the activities associated with the application, development and promotion of Open Source Geospatial solutions in India.

Mission

 * Promoting Free/Opensource GIS tools and publicly available Geodata
 * Advocacy of and promoting Localized GIS
 * Act as a bridge between various groups like Developers, Application Users, NGOs, Government departments
 * mentor various FOSS GIS miniprojects by providing resources such as technical guidence, webspace etc.

Objectives
Development:
 * follow up on indian language support in various free/opensource GIS tools like GRASS, MapServer etc.
 * initiative for standardisation of publicly available geodata
 * setting up WMS/WFS based geodata servers using publicly available geodata
 * toolkit for localised GIS including with special focus on schools, governments, public causes such as child malnutririon, mass education.

POCs (Proof Of Concept demos):
 * free/opensource based GIS demos
 * localized GIS (interface and maps)
 * Collaborative platforms for participatory governance

Regional Events:
 * Workshops and Training sessions for
 * comp science students/teachers
 * geology/geography/civil engineering students and teachers
 * others
 * Special Lectures
 * Demonstrations

Communication:
 * Networking Local Communities related to geo-issues
 * Mailing Lists
 * Wiki

Legal status
(to be added)

India OSGeo Chapter Officers
India OSGeo Representative Dr P.S.Roy Deputy Director (RS&GIS-AA) National Remote Sensing Agency (Deptartment of Space, Government of India) Balanagar, Hyderabad-500 037 Telephone :+91-40-23884255 Fax: +91-40-23875932 E-Mail: psr at nrsa dot gov dot in

India OSGeo Chapter Coordinator Dr. Yashodhan Joshi CEO Relatioware Pune, India yyj at relationware dot in

OSGeo Software Development Committee Chairpersons (Prototyping, Localization, Proof of Concepts etc.) Dr. Jitendra Shah VJTI Mumbai, India jituviju at gmail dot com

Dr. T.V. Ramachandra Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India cestvr at ces dot iisc dot ernet dot in

Regional Events Committee Chairpersons Mr. V. Ravi Kumar* Director Geodata Division, Southern Region Geological Survey of India Bandalaguda, Hyderabad 500068 India ravivundavalli at yahoo dot com (*Ravi is involved in India OSGEO Chapter in a purely personal capacity)

Mr. Neeraj Dixit Product Manager Autodesk India Pvt. Ltd. Infrastructure Solutions Division (ISD) Neeraj dot Dixit at autodesk dot com

Education and Training Committee Chairpersons Dr. N.J. Pawar Department of Geology, Pune University Ganeshkhind Road Pune 411007, India njpawar at unipune dot ernet dot in

Dr. S.N. Prasad Sàlim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) Deccan Regional Station, Secunderabad - 500 017, India wetlands at sancharnet dot in

Advisors

Dr. S.S. Thigale (spathigale at rediffmail dot com) Dr. Rajendra Jagdale (rajendra dot jagdale at gmail dot com) Dr. Vishwas S.Kale (vskale at unipune dot ernet dot in) Mr. Ashok Saraf (saraf dot ashok at gmail dot com) Dr. Venkatesh Raghavan (venkat at osgeo dot org) Dr. K S Rajan (rajan at iiit dot ac dot in) Mr. Kiran Chandra (kiranfsf at gmail dot com) ..Add more Advisors here

Initial Membership
Temporary mailing list - http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/mailman/listinfo/osgeo_discuss
 * Achuthan Mohan
 * Amol A. Sale
 * Anand Akmanchi
 * Ankur Mehrotra
 * Gangavane
 * Indrajit Patil
 * Jayant Kirtane
 * Kanhaiya Kale
 * Mahalakshmi Narayanan
 * Mahesh Jeevane
 * Maneesh Prasad
 * Mohan Patil
 * N.R. Karmarkar
 * Rahul Kaura
 * Sajith
 * Saroj Akiojam
 * Shekhar Krishnan
 * Swapnil K. Hajare
 * Uttam Kumar
 * B.N. Umrikar
 * Vrishali Deosthali
 * A.V.Satya Kumar
 * Praveen Kumar Sinha
 * Santosh Gaikwad
 * C. Pattanaik
 * Hardeep Singh Rai
 * M.Surendranath
 * N.Rajendran
 * Srinivasan K
 * Nageswaran B

Meetings of India Chapter
Venue: NRSA, Hyderabad Duration: 11:00AM to 01:30 PM Participation:20 members (12 from NRSA) A tentative agenda was put up by Dr Rajan, OSGEO Advisor. The meeting was initiated with Ravi Kumar explaining the philosophy of OSGEO, and FOSS GIS, by running info on the projector. There was an open discussion on what the Chapter would like to work on in the months and years ahead. Here is a Summary of the discussions - We would like to get the feedback/suggestion/ideas from the members of the community to build on these initial thoughts. Thanks.
 * 4th Oct 2006, Hyderabad
 * 1) Request to all those present to join the mailing list and become members of the OSGeo India Chapter and actively contribute in its activities.
 * 2) Can the chapter become a platform to promote sharing of the data between different Geodata users. One suggestion was to digitize widely available datasets like tourist maps etc and make it more widely available
 * 3) Better documentation of not just on the software usage but also its algorithms, to the extent possible. This will primarily help those who want to link up different components of the Open source towards building a operational system. This will help carry these tools from the developers domain to the users domain.
 * 4) There should be an emphasis on the Development of Tutorials or Training Kits for three different kinds of audiences/users -
 * 5) Basic installation, setup and fundamentals
 * 6) Education and Training purposes
 * 7) for linking with other tools of domain expertise or thematic models
 * 8) Some amount of standardization of formats and conversion tools
 * 9) In the Indian context, how can we make it more participatory GIS, so that a wealth of data can be generated from users and supplemented to the current base layers. Can some filters/tools be developed for such efforts
 * 10) Metadata listing through a kind of a survey of the members in India to draw up a matrix/table of FOSS4G tools/softwares (GRASS, Q-GIS, POSTGIS, GEOtools, etc etc) and the main areas of application - this will be kind of a starting point for anyone to lookup when he starts out or needs help with a certain procedure or thematic application.
 * 11) Efforts at development of tools that are more suited to the Indian conditions and needs. In the discussions about coding for possible customisation was touched upon by Dr Pandian. He also expressed the problems of different platforms, Ex: Java and other.
 * 12) Demonstrate in our own ways how OpenSource can help build grassroot level GIS applications and interfaces - this will help increase the interest of other stakeholders.
 * 13) Free Software Foundation of Andhra Pradesh has agreed to provide support at the developmental level and are now involved in making GRASS available in Telugu
 * 14) Funding - both direct and indirect (voluntary) sources need to be explored and encouraged, with the primary philosophy being that the development or application will be based on FOSS.
 * 15) Mapworld Forum - we set up a team of about 4/5 volunteers to coordinate the efforts to this, planning both the logistics and the content for the Booth + Workshop. Some ideas on what can be demonstrated was discussed, both in terms of various FOSS4G tools and its sample applications. NRSA has also agreed to provide some sample datasets for this activity.                                         One suggestion was, if we can ask Sanjay@GISDevelopment for a Keynote Speaker on OSGeo, then can it be possible for having an Indian Speaker to give an overview of the efforts begin here. Neeraj said that since Autodesk is a GoldSponsor of MapWorld, GaryLang will be coming and he might be speaking on OSGeo - not confirmed as yet. Reg. funding from Autodesk India for the booth, there was no commitment as such - we plan to write a letter asking Autodesk and other organisations in India to support us.                                                                                          The consensus was on asking for a 24sq.m booth area, and have about 6systems to demonstrate the activities, including a LCD projector - the costs are being worked out.
 * 16) Setting up an India based server for the Chapter - Dr.Rajan and Dr.Roy will explore the possibilities at their respective institutions and will report by next meeting.
 * 17) Next meeting is planned in first half of November. The meeting may be preceded with a few hours of work on setting up demonstrable systems and checking the knowledge levels.

Links

 * India OSGeo Chapter - https://india.osgeo.org/
 * National Remote Sensing Agency - http://www.nrsa.gov.in/
 * Mumbai Free Map - http://mumbai.freemap.in/ | http://www.crit.org.in/projects/gis
 * Bangalore Free Map - http://bangalore.freemap.in/
 * Vasai Virar Subregion Freemap - http://vvsr.freemap.in/
 * Tamil Nadu Maps Online - http://tnmaps.tn.nic.in/?info1.htm
 * Tamil Nadu Census 2001 - http://www.census.tn.nic.in/
 * Tamil Nadu Animal Disease Infformation - http://www.animaldiseaseinfo.tn.nic.in
 * GRASS GIS mirror India - http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/grass/index.php
 * GRDSS (GRASS GUI) - http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/grdss/index.php
 * Free GIS India - http://freegis.gnu.org.in/
 * ENVIS Wetland Ecosystems India - http://www.wetlandsofindia.org:8080/sacon/aboutus.jsp/
 * GIS & Language Technology related Applications - http://indictrans.in/demos/GIS_Presentation_20061004.pdf