Skip to main content

ISRO, MapmyIndia collaborate to imagery and earth observation data

Indian Space Research Organisation and location and navigation technology solutions provider MapmyIndia announced an initiative to partner together to offer India's best, and fully indigenous, mapping portal and geospatial services.

It combines the power of MapmyIndia's digital maps and technologies with ISRO's catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data, according to MapmyIndia's CEO and Excutive Director, Rohan Verma.

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.

"You don't need Google Maps/Earth any longer", Verma said in the headline in an article on LinkedIn.

According to ISRO, the Department of Space (DoS) -- ISRO comes under it -- has joined hands with MapmyIndia to combine their geospatial expertise and build holistic solutions by leveraging their geoportals.See the source image

DoS entered into an MoU with geospatial technology company CE Info Systems Pvt Ltd, which owns MapmyIndia, on Thursday.

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.

Bhuvan is the national geo-portal developed and hosted by ISRO comprising geospatial data, services and tools for analysis.

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.

Verma said there are many reasons why Indians are better off with an indigenous solution for maps and geospatial services.

"MapmyIndia, being a responsible, local, Indian company, ensures that its maps reflect the true sovereignty of the country, depicting Indias borders as per Government of India, and hosts its maps in India," he said.

Through the combined partnership with ISRO, MapmyIndias end user maps, apps and services will now integrate with ISROs huge catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data, a MapmyIndia statement said.

It 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, it said.

See the source image

Verma said foreign mapping solutions come with a lot of hidden costs.

For example, foreign search engines and companies claim to offer "free" maps, but in reality they make money by targeting the same users with advertising based on invading user privacy and auctioning those users private location and movement data," he claimed.

"This should be very alarming to all citizens".

"On the other hand, MapmyIndia has an ethical point of view against advertising led business models of such companies, and hence, does not have an advertising business model.By using MapmyIndia maps and applications instead of the foreign map apps, users can better protect their privacy," he said.

The "sustainable and direct, clean business model" ensures that MapmyIndias maps and apps can be kept free of cost as well as free of ads for users, according to him.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) : NavIC

IRNSS is an independent regional navigation satellite system being developed by India. It is designed to provide accurate position information service to users in India as well as the region extending up to 1500 km from its boundary, which is its primary service area. An Extended Service Area lies between primary service area and area enclosed by the rectangle from Latitude 30 deg South to 50 deg North, Longitude 30 deg East to 130 deg East. IRNSS will provide two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Service (SPS) which is provided to all the users and Restricted Service (RS), which is an encrypted service provided only to the authorised users. The IRNSS System is expected to provide a position accuracy of better than 20 m in the primary service area. Some applications of IRNSS are: Terrestrial, Aerial and Marine Navigation Disaster Management Vehicle tracking and fleet management Integration with mobile phones Precise Timing Mapping and Geodetic data capture Terrestrial nav...

Virgin Galactic's First Fully Crewed Spaceflight

 Today’s flight was the 22nd test flight of VSS Unity and the first test flight with a full crew in the cabin, including the Company’s founder, Sir Richard Branson. The crew fulfilled a number of test objectives related to the cabin and customer experience, including evaluating the commercial customer cabin, the views of Earth from space, the conditions for conducting research and the effectiveness of the five-day pre-flight training program at Spaceport America. Michael Colglazier, Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Galactic, said: “Today is a landmark achievement for the Company and a historic moment for the new commercial space industry. With each successful mission we are paving the way for the next generation of astronauts. I want to thank our talented team, including our pilots and crew, whose dedication and commitment made today possible. They are helping open the door for greater access to space – so it can be for the many and not just for the few.” VSS Unity achieved a spee...

Astronomers Discover A New 'Beast' Class Transient Object

Back in 2016, astronomers observed a cosmic explosion within a tiny galaxy 500 million light-years. In a new study, the explosion was found to be a new class of object that is one of the biggest cosmic bursts recorded yet. Senior author of the study, Raffaella Margutti from Northwestern University  says , “There is a new beast out there, and it’s able to produce the same energetic phenomenon” as the collapse of a massive star or the merger of two neutron stars. The explosion, CRTS-CSS161010J045834-081803 was found to be a fast blue optical transient object or simply, an FBOT. It is located in a dwarf galaxy near the constellation Eridanus that hosts about 10 million stars, a lot less compared to our Milky Way Galaxy. Its location is similar to other FBOT objects that have been found in dwarf galaxies as well but the newly discovered transient object was the biggest yet. AT2018COW, nicknamed ‘The Cow’, is one such rare FBOT event that is thought to have occurred during the birth of ...