New Delhi: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Friday has joined hands with MapmyIndia, the navigation solutions provider, to offer an indigenous mapping solution to take on Google Maps. Also Read – Uttarakhand Floods: ISRO Releases First Images of Damage at Raini, Tapovan
Giving further details, MapmyIndia CEO and Executive Director, Rohan Verma said that both the organisations would come with an India made mapping portal and geospatial services on Friday. He also stated that the collaboration will boost Aatmanirbhar Bharat, which will mean that users in India in future can rely on a country made solution and not a service designed outside India. Also Read – Space Tech-startup to Send India’s First Homegrown Earth-imaging Satellite on ISRO Rocket
Part of the agreement, ISRO and MapmyIndia would develop solutions by leveraging their geoportals and work on enhancing geospatial expertise. Also Read – Attack Was Work Of Sophisticated Espionage Agency, Not of Street Thug: ISRO’s Tapan Misra
Rohan Verma further added that the collaboration will combine the power of MapmyIndia’s digital maps and technologies with ISRO’s catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data.
He termed it a path-breaking milestone in India’s journey towards ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’, wherein Indian users would not be dependent on foreign organisations for maps, navigation and geospatial services, and leverage made-in-India solutions instead.
Under the partnership, the combined geospatial expertise of the DoS and CE Info Systems would be leveraged through their respective Geoportals, according to Bengaluru-headquartered ISRO.
The collaboration will enable them to jointly identify and build holistic geospatial solutions utilising the earth observation datasets, ‘NavIC’, Web Services and APIs (application programming interface) available in MapmyIndia, ‘Bhuvan’, ‘VEDAS’ and ‘MOSDAC’ geoportals, the space agency said in a statement.
Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) called NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation, is India’s own navigation system, developed by ISRO.
VEDAS (VisualisationofEarthobservationDataandArchivalSystem) is an online geoprocessing platform using optical, microwave, thermal and hyperspectral EO data covering applications particularly meant for academia, research and problem solving, according to ISRO.
MOSDAC (Meteorological and Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Centre)is a data repository for all the meteorological missions of ISRO and deals with weather related information, oceanography and tropical water cycles.
Through the combined partnership with ISRO, MapmyIndia’s end user maps, apps and services would be a much better, more detailed and comprehensive, as well as privacy-centric, hyper local and indigenous mapping solution for Indians, compared to foreign map apps and solutions.
Moreover, the users will also benefit hugely from the various map-based analytics and insights about weather, pollution, agricultural output, land use changes, flood and landslide disasters, among others.
