Ahmedabad to be digitally mapped by March

Ahmedabad's congested traffic lanes, lack of recreational public spaces and other deficiencies in city planning might be a thing of the past when the state government gets every inch of the city digitally mapped under the National Informatics Centre (NIC)'s plan to get major cities of the country mapped though 3D photogrammetery technology.

NIC's contract to map Ahmedabad has been bagged by Hyderabad-based IT services provider Infotech Enterprises, which has begun working on the project at a dedicated facility at Survey of India's Hyderabad campus.

Under the project, which is set to be completed by March 2008, photographs of the city will be taken with the help of cameras installed on the underbelly of fixed wing aircraft.

The company will then employ softcopy photogrammetery technology to extract features in 3D. In soft-copy photogrammetery, measurements are made not on hard-copy images such as film photos or prints, but on digital or digitised images.

What this means is that crucial and accurate data about the city like dwelling units, roads, power, infrastructure, telecommunications, water distribution, sewage disposal, educational institutes, public health units, tourism centres, religious places, transport junctions etc will now be available to the government at any given time.

"Through digital mapping, which consists of collection of data and its interaction with a map, various government departments like Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), Ahmedabad Urban Development Association (AUDA), health departments, communications, eggery and other stakeholders will be able to analyse data relating to the city and take informed decisions regarding planning, taxation, emergency preparedness and response, security, health and civic amenities," said Chandrasekhar Nori, who heads Infotech Geospatial, a subsidiary of Infotech Enterprises.