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. 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, 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 govt offices because they require extensive training. This can be changed by the use of Free/Opensource geotools. 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
• Promoting Localized GIS interfaces
• Act as a bridge between various groups like Developers, Geologists, NGOs, Govt 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

POCs:

• free/opensource based GIS demos
• localized GIS (interface and maps)

Regional Events:

• Workshops and Training sessions for

 * comp science students/teachers
 * geology/geography/civil students/teachers
 * others

• Special Lectures
• Demonstrations

Communication:

• Networking Local Communities related to geo-issues
• Mailing Lists
• Wiki

Initial Membership

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