India’s geospatial technology industry was expected to cross ₹63,100 crore by 2025 at a growth rate of 12.8%, Union Science Minister Jitendra Singh said at briefing on Sunday to announce the second United Nations World Geospatial Information Congress (UNWGIC) scheduled in Hyderabad from October 10-14.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address one of the sessions during the meeting.
The conference is expected to be attended by over 2,000 delegates, including over 700 international delegates and participants from about 120 countries. It will also have participants from the Survey of India, a 255-year-old organisation, and senior officials, non-governmental organisations and academia.
Mr. Singh said that the Rural Development Ministry had mapped over 45 lakh kilometres of rural roads by using 21 data layers of a digital map of India, to create digitised information regarding water bodies, green areas, plots, and other structures essential for administrative purposes. He said nearly 2.6 lakh gram panchayat had been covered by the Ministry under the mapping and digitisation scheme.
The Guidelines for Geospatial Data, the Drone Rules 2021, and the Draft Policies (Geospatial, Remote Sensing, and Satellite Navigation) would “...liberalise, democratise, and commercialise the use of geospatial data and information for planning and monitoring requirements within the country,” he underlined.
Last year, India announced plans to prepare digital maps of all its 6,00,000 villages, and pan-India 3D maps will be prepared for 100 cities. An ongoing scheme, piloted by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, called SVAMITVA (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas), was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2020 to digitise land records.
