NE to have data infrastructure for NECs Vision NER-2020
By a Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, Sept 21: The Centre as taken an initiative for creation of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the north-eastern region to contribute to the Vision NER-2020 of the North Eastern Council (NEC). Making this announcement at the two-day conference and exhibition on Geo-Information Technologies, NE Geo 2006, at the Assam Administrative Staff College here today, Dr. D. Dutta of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India said that the SDI initiative had the goal to create an enviornment or a framework where all stakeholders could cooperate and interact with each other with the relevant technologies in order to meet objectives at different political and administrative levels.
The conference, first of its kind in the region, aims to explore the interface of developmental focus and priorities with Geoinformation Technologies (GIT) like GIS, GPS, Remote Sensing etc, and to bring together the technology practitioners and decision makers of the region with the theme Developing North-east Geospatially. More than 200 scientists, geologists, IIT professors, directors of different institutions of the north-eastern States participated in the conference.
Presiding over the seminar today, Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, Professor Gautam Barua, said, The north-eastern region can benefit a lot by recent advances in geo-spatial technology. It is prone to recurring floods, and attendant problems like soil erosion and lanslides. Further this is a highly seismic zone. GST can help provide information on river flows, landslides, decreasing forest cover etc.
He said that the main challenge is to ensure coordination among various stakeholders and monitoring agencies in their activities, common standards of information collection and dissemination so that their efforts could yield maximum results.
Talking about the initiatives, impact and challenges of the North Eastern Space Application Centre, Meghalaya, its Director KC Bhattacharya said, The region needs more attention and sustained efforts. Decision makers are not very aware of the potential and scope of geo-information technologies for developmental planning.
All the speakers felt the need of identification and removal of infrastructure bottlenecks, provision of basic minimum services and optimization of natural resources for developmental purposes without compromising with environmental issues.
Speaking in the seminar, Professor B S Mipun of Department of Geography of NEHU felt that modern technologies are too expensive and there is lack of availability of data like high resolution satellite imageries. He wanted an immediate attention to these factors.
Putting light on frequent landslides along the National Highway 39, M Pradipchandra Singh and Soibam Ibotombi from the Department of Earth Sciences, Manipur University said: Landslides are compounded by a number of anthropogenic factors i.e. excessive land use, rapid expansion of settlement, quarrying, improper drainage maintenance etc. They said that some geological and geotechnical investigations carried out along the road revealed that lithology, structure, slope and saturation of slope forming materials were the principal causes of slides.
From the analysis of consistency limits of soils from three different landslide vulnerable areas, it is observed that soils are of moderate to high density, low to medium porosity and highly saturated (during rainy season). While in some areas, moisture content exceeds liquid limits, causing slides, they said urging the geologists and scientists to find out an amicable solution to the problem.
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