Geospatial information

The draft 'The Geospatial Information Regulation Bill 2016' has been made public seeking views and suggestions of the general public on its various provisions. Government permission has been made mandatory before acquiring, disseminating, publishing or distributing any geospatial information of India.

Geospatial Information means geospatial imagery or data acquired through space or aerial platforms such as satellite, aircrafts, airships, balloons, unmanned aerial vehicles including value addition; or graphical or digital data depicting natural or man-made physical features, phenomenon or boundaries of the earth or any information related thereto including surveys, charts, maps, terrestrial photos referenced to a co-ordinate system and having attributes.

The terms GIS (which most commonly is an acronym for Geographic Information Systems) and geospatial are often used interchangeably. There are differences in what the terms GIS and geospatial mean. GIS refers to a system where geographic information is stored in layers and integrated with geographic software programmes so that spatial information can be created, stored, manipulated, analysed, and visualised (mapped).

The term geospatial is a term that has only recently been gaining in popularity and is used to define the collective data and associated technology has a geographic or locational component. A search using Google’s Ngram Viewer shows that the term only entered literature during the late 1980s and has rapidly been rising in frequency ever since then, explains a post on www.gislounge.com.

Geospatial analysis, using GIS, was developed for problems in the environmental and life sciences, in particular ecology, geology and epidemiology. It has extended to almost all industries including defense, intelligence, utilities, Natural Resources (i.e. Oil and Gas, Forestry ... etc.), social sciences, medicine and Public Safety (i.e. emergency management and criminology), disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM), and climate change adaptation (CCA).

Spatial statistics typically result primarily from observation rather than experimentation. Traditionally geospatial computing has been performed primarily on personal computers (PCs) or servers. Due to the increasing capabilities of mobile devices, however, geospatial computing in mobile devices is a fast-growing trend.

The portable nature of these devices, as well as the presence of useful sensors, such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers and barometric pressure sensors, make them useful for capturing and processing geospatial information in the field. In addition to the local processing of geospatial information on mobile devices, another growing trend is cloud-based geospatial computing.