ISRO shows the way for urban waste management

A couple of years ago, ISRO's help was sought to seek out forest brigand Veerappan when the special task force was hunting for him during the game of hide-and-seek that the brigand was playing.

The high-resolution satellite imageries provided by ISRO was later found to be helpful in finding the sandalwood smuggler.

This is just one example of how the expertise of the space research agency, if exploited properly, can come handy in solving problems in other fields.

ISRO is now coming to the rescue of cities in solving their biggest challenge "� waste disposal. ISRO's expertise in remote sensing is being used in 'urban waste management'.

"We are already using remote sensing and communication satellites like Cartosat-1, Resourcesat-1 and the IRS series of satellites to obtain a wide variety of high resolution images and data in spatial resolutions. These are used in a range of applications in the fields of agriculture, forestry, ground and surface water, drought assessment, flood mapping as well as solid waste management," said P G Diwakar, head, regional remote sensing service centre, ISRO.

He said that space application gives them very high resolution images. "The 2.5m high resolution data obtained from Cartosat can be used in locating the drainage map and the exact area for the disposal of waste. The data is also useful to locate for urbanisation, soil texture, infrastructure, ground water prospects, road network and land use," he added.

For earmarking garbage dumps, ISRO has prepared a three-dimensional model and this is used to find garbage dumps so that the wastes do not flow into the waterbodies in the low-lying areas. Application of remote sensing and GIS can be used to facilitate site selection for solid waste disposal.

The regional remote sensing service centre (RRSSC) of ISRO at Jodhpur has developed a customised geographical information system (GIS) package called 'Package for Optimum Routing, Interactive Resource Allocation and facility Management' (Parikrama).

This helps in network-related applications and can be customised for efficient management of solid waste disposal.

"ISRO is working with many other departments in implementing the solid waste management system. The model which ISRO has developed can be applied to smaller cities like Bangalore in managing the solid urban waste," said K Kasturirangan, former chairman of ISRO and Rajya Sabha MP.

The Ranchi municipality in Jharkhand, which has 37 wards with an area of 177.19 sq km, is using customised solutions of ISRO in tracing suitable landfill sites, the areas that generate the highest amount of waste and the shortest possible route to transport them to the landfill sites.

"They have initially implemented our suggestions for the smaller areas and are in the process of implementing this in the larger areas," said Diwakar.

He said that the classification of remote sensing imageries will become more accurate if the auxiliary data contained in the maps were combined with the image data.

"To promote the integration of remote sensing and geographical data, GIS need to be established in which both the image and graphic data are stored in digital form, retrieved conditionally, overlaid on each other and evaluated with the use of a model," noted Diwakar.

The per capita solid waste generated in India ranges from 200 gm in small cities to 500 gm in metro.

Among the urban municipal bodies, Mumbai Municipal Corporation spends the highest of about Rs 1,200 crore per annum towards disposal of the waste.

Bangalore, the fifth largest urban conglomeration spends about Rs 200 crore per year for the disposal of about 3,000 tonnes of organic waste material it produces every year.