Geomatics : The spatially referenced information
The advancement of new technology in the geospatial industry is opening up new horizons for surveyors. The profession has rapidly become high-tech, which has brought many benefits and also an ever-greater need to invest in advanced data acquisition, processing, analysis, and visualization solutions.
According to the findings from the annual ‘GIM International’ survey among geospatial professionals, the demand for such solutions is set to reach new heights in 2020 and beyond. It is a case of ‘full steam ahead’ for the surveying and mapping business — which is excellent news in particular for hardware and software companies.
What is geomatics engineering?
Geomatics engineering is an information technology discipline that deals with the acquisition, modelling, analysis, and management of spatial data. In other words, Geomatics engineering is the surveying of the entire or a part of the earth with various techniques (satellite positioning, satellite images processing, etc.) and the resulting spatial data is evaluated and expressed in maps and plans in the computer environment.
Technologies & Methods in practice-
- Global positioning system/Global navigation satellite system
- Light detection and ranging
- Interferometric synthetic aperture radar
- Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment & Follow-on Mission
- Altimetry: Ice and sea level
- Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry
- Meters: borehole, tilt, creep
Prominently used software-
- ArcGIS
- QGIS
- PhotoScan
- FME
- GRASS GIS
- ENVI
Major active projects in the geomatics field
- Mining Surveillance System:- The Ministry of Mines, through Indian Bureau of Mines, has developed the Mining Surveillance System, in collaboration with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics, Gandhinagar, to use space technology for facilitating State Governments in curbing illegal mining activities in the country.
- Space Technology in Disaster Management Support:- Space technology with its three components of remote sensing, navigation and communication satellite systems combined with the data processing and analytical expertise in the respective subject domains has a significant role to play by providing near real-time spatial inputs on natural disasters and their monitoring for damage assessment in space and time at regional to local scales and disseminate the information to the policy/decision-makers and the relief departments for timely action. Space-borne remote sensing sensors have the advantage of frequent large area coverage at desired intervals of time and spatial resolution, and access to humanly impossible remote areas. Also, remote sensing provides invaluable data to generate databases on land use, water resources, annual net sown area, etc., to use along with the disaster time data for damage assessment; and provides much-needed information for generating high-resolution Digital Elevation Models and on weather parameters regularly for developing models for early warning.
- Agro farming using Geospatial Technology:- The space data is used to generate near real-time agro-met and value-added products that will help to develop a decision support system for GKMS services for better agricultural management. The availability of crop and agrometeorological parameters retrieved through space-borne remote sensing and forewarning of stresses provides an opportunity to assess real-time crop condition assessment for better farm management both in rainfed and irrigated agricultural systems. GIS is used to perform these studies-
- Web-GIS Based Pest Forewarning
- Web-GIS Based Weekly Dryness Assessment for Rainfed Farming
Major Companies/Organisations working in this sector:
- SECON
SECON is the only company in India to provide comprehensive Multidisciplinary Solutions for the entire lifecycle of an Infrastructure project from Feasibility Studies, Surveying, Investigation, Planning, Design, Land Acquisition, Tendering, Construction Management, and GIS-Based Asset Management. It is registered with Asian Development Bank and DACON (World Bank) to provide consultancy services. - Sky Group
Sky Group is a Geospatial enabled Urban and Transportation Planning consulting firm based in Bangalore that excels at complex projects and improving quality of life. Their multidisciplinary sectors include Survey, 3D-GIS, BIM/CAD, Cartography, LiDAR, Photogrammetry, Business Analytics, and Software Development. - Kadet Defence Systems
Kadet Defence Systems Limited is a privately held company engaged in the business of aerospace products focused primarily on Unmanned Systems. Over the last decade, Kadet has delivered over one hundred unmanned aerial vehicles to the Ministry of Defense in India under one of our prime production contracts and has also undertaken operations in countries outside India. Kadet designs, develops, and manufactures Aerial Targets and UAV’s and provides associated services for commercial, civil and defence applications.
Geomatics sector Innovations in the civil engineering industry
1. Applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based Remote Sensing in the North Eastern Region of India:-
The unmanned aerial vehicle is popularly known as a drone, is an airborne system or an aircraft operated remotely by a human operator or autonomously by an onboard computer. There are two broad classes of UAVs- Fixed wing and Rotary based.
2. Use of Geomatics and Remote Sensing in Dairy Sector with Special Emphasis on Fodder Assessment:-
Remote sensing technique is used for fodder crop assessment at the state level to create a baseline for developing fodder information systems for its management. A method was devised based on the spectral pattern of growth, i.e. normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) profile and Land surface wetness Index profile of a series of satellite data taken during the crop growth cycle. In this approach, two steps of classification are taken.
First step — Hierarchical decision rule-based classification where all non-agriculture pixels are culled out based on hierarchical decision rules is done.
Second step — The ISODATA clustering approach is used on the rest of the pixels left from the first step.
Spatial maps of fallow lands available in that cropping season are also generated. For macro-level planning in a state for developing fodder growing areas, availability of soil wetness factor is demonstrated from SMAP data.
An app is developed for smart mobiles where a simple proforma is to be filled by a farmer or surveyor during Ground Truth regarding the location of the farm using GPS and other details about crop health, using irrigation, etc. The App provides the necessary input to prepare a route map for the logistics and management of crops. The ground truth collected is also used for remote sensing-based fodder crop identification and validation purposes.
3. Calculator for Solar Energy Potential Using Satellite Data
Solar energy is one of the most sustainable forms of renewable energy, both environmentally as well as economically, particularly so for developing countries. Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight directly into electricity. The global horizontal insolation, combining direct as a well diffuse component of incident solar energy, is obtained from the half-hourly observations at 8 km spatial resolution in optical and thermal infrared bands from the Indian geostationary satellite KALPANA-1 Very High-Resolution Radiometer and at 4.0 km spatial resolution from INSAT 3D. The data is available on MOSDAC (www.mosdac.gov.in) web portal of ISRO. The VEDAS web-portal (https://vedas.sac.gov.in), developed by Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, provides information on monthly and yearly potential solar along with the monthly minimum and maximum temperature, annual sun path, daily solar hours and forecast for next 72 hours. The 3D city buildings models created using Cartosat1 PAN stereo-pair can be used to determine the roof area suitable for the installation of solar panels.
An android app has also been developed for the computation of solar energy potential at the mobile user’s location. Solar insolation is obtained using Indian Geostationary satellite data. It provides monthly/yearly solar potential (kWh/m2 ) and min/max temperature at any location. It also displays the location on the image and provides azimuth/elevations angles as well as day length over different periods in a year. Obstruction of sunlight due to terrain is also computed using DEM. This App can be downloaded from https://vedas.sac.gov.in.
4. Remote Sensing Applications for Sustainable Agriculture in Punjab:-
Remote Sensing and GIS technology are gaining importance as useful tools in sustainable agricultural management and development, some of the important analysis and studies which plays an important role in agriculture are as follow:-
- Cropping System Analysis
- Crop Phenology Study
- Cropping System Mapping
- Cropping System Performance Evaluation
- Ground Water Quality for Irrigation, etc.
Demand and Growth of Civil Engineering
Indian Geospatial Market is poised for growth! Governments at all levels in India need data for governance. Geospatial data and aided applications are helping departments across various sectors in India with the same. Already many government departments in India use a variety of Geospatial technologies in India like GIS, Remote Sensing, LiDAR, GNSS, Surveying & Mapping, etc. The government of India is also taking unprecedented interest and measures in connecting space and location technologies with development and governance.
Current revenue growth is exceeding the average revenue growth of the last three years. The public sector revenues may have kick-started the geospatial market growth, but the private sector has now taken over. Geomatics engineers are equally likely to be found working for offshore companies positioning oil rigs and monitoring pipelines across oceans as they are to be found mapping utilities for your local council.
Experience and expertise in remote sensing or photogrammetry may lead to rewarding jobs in environmental and national heritage organisations, or a career in the oil and minerals industry. Geomatics graduates certainly have extensive opportunities to travel, and usually with someone else paying the bills! And then, there are research and academic opportunities too, if a career in this area appeals.
Geospatial investment readiness
Who is willing to spend money on such geospatial solutions? What is the state of the geospatial investment readiness?
The top three comprises UASs, GNSS receivers and GIS software, with more than 40% of the respondents planning to invest in at least one of those three systems. Between 20% and 30% intend to acquire photogrammetry software, point cloud processing software, total stations, terrestrial laser scanners, mobile mapping systems, and/or UAV-Lidar. The latter is also covered below as one of the technologies regarded as having the most impact on the profession today, and the likely trends over the next five years.
Geomatics Engineer Salary
An entry-level geomatics engineer (1–3 years of experience) earns an average salary of ₹6,10,345. On the other end, a senior level geomatics engineer (8+ years of experience) earns an average salary of ₹10,83,186.
How 21st century GIS technologies are supporting the global fight against outbreaks and epidemics
Health professionals have long considered conventional mapping, and more recently geographic information systems, as critical tools in tracking and combating contagion. We can ingest big data from their sources and display results in interactive and near-real-time dashboards. The online dashboards have become a pivotal source of information during the COVID-19 outbreak. There is a range of practical online/mobile GIS and mapping dashboards and applications for tracking the coronavirus epidemic and associated events as they unfold around the world.
Future prospects
Geoinformatics is a promising career for youth in India. Today it is common to have GPS installed on your mobile phone as Google maps, and other navigation platforms are being used in vehicles with increasing frequency. Almost every industry or administrative organisation must deal with spatial data in some of the other forms. It visualises different kinds of data, making it easier to deal with logistically difficult engineering problems. For now, Indian colleges offer geoinformatics at the postgraduate level, either as full-time masters or a certificate course.
The geoinformatics field is in its nascent stage and expanding at a rapid pace as more and more industries are employing spatial data to manage their activities. Almost no developmental project is complete without geospatial information, and it will soon become imperative. The only limit is the acute shortage of skilled professionals. Therefore, there is tremendous scope with accelerated growth and development prospects. The pervasive use in diverse disciplines ensures a wide variety of employment opportunities.
Authors: Muskandogra, Gurleen Singh Sandhu & Nikita Agarwal
For more information refer the following ppt-
