India

India Chapter of OSGeo (draft)

About India OSGeo
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.

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

Initial Membership

 * Achuthan Mohan
 * Amol A. Sale
 * Anand Akmanchi
 * Ankur Mehrotra
 * Ashok Saraf
 * Gangavane
 * Indrajit Patil
 * Jayant Kirtane
 * Jitendra Shah
 * K.K. Surendran
 * Kanhaiya Kale
 * Mahalakshmi Narayanan
 * Mahesh Jeevane
 * Maneesh Prasad
 * Mohan Patil
 * Neeraj Dixit
 * N.J.Pawar
 * N.R. Karmarkar
 * P.S. Roy
 * Rahul Kaura
 * Rajendra Jagdale
 * S.Narendra Prasad
 * S.S.Thigale
 * Sajith
 * Saroj Akiojam
 * Shekhar Krishnan
 * Swapnil K. Hajare
 * T.V. Ramachandra
 * Uttam Kumar
 * B.N. Umrikar
 * V. Ravi Kumar
 * Venkatesh Raghavan
 * Vishwas S. Kale
 * Vrishali Deosthali
 * Yashodhan Joshi

Links

 * Some Free/Opensource GIS tools based demos - http://203.193.164.85/demo/
 * Mumbai Free Map - http://www.mumbai.freemap.in/
 * Vasai Virar Subregion Freemap - http://www.vvsr.freemap.in/
 * Tamil Nadu Maps Online - http://tnmaps.tn.nic.in/?info1.htm
 * GRASS GIS mirror India - http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/grass/index.php