South Asia's largest geospatial conference begins in Noida

Speaking at the event, Isro Chairman Kiran Kumar said any technology should become effectively usable by the larger public

The biggest geospatial conference in South Asia, GeoSmart India 2016, started on Tuesday with stalwarts in the industry deliberating upon the potential of geospatial technologies and its applications for India’s economic development.

In the opening session, B V R Mohan Reddy, chairman, National Association of Software and Services Companies, and founder and executive chairman, Cyient, applauded the initiatives by Indian Railways on bringing forth the road map for use of unmanned aerial vehicles and drones and other geospatial technologies in managing one of the biggest railway networks in the world. He further said the government's Digital India initiative would need to have geospatial technologies like geographic information systems as the backbone for planning and governance.

Geospatial Media & Communications CEO Sanjay Kumar and Reddy, along with other eminent speakers like Isro Chairman Kiran Kumar, Rolta India founder, Chairman and CEO K K Singh snd Trimble CEO Steve Berglund unveiled the “India Geospatial Report: Trends and Opportunities”.

“The report is a professional in-depth study on the behavioural aspects of the Indian geospatial industry and gives an overview of the opportunities, growth drivers, trends and challenges, of adoption in the country. It presents invaluable facts, statistics and analysis. It showcases trends and application as per market behaviour specific to various industry segments and verticals spread across the country viz infrastructure, urban development, agriculture, electricity, disaster management, water, environment, forestry and climate change etc," Kumar said.

In his opening remarks, Kumar said any technology should become effectively usable by the larger public, and geospatial had the potential to become one such technology. Mentioning the large geospatial projects of sro, including Bhuvan, Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System and GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation, he said the industry had a great opportunity to build allied technologies and solutions around these projects and enable an ecosystem conducive for Make in India.