Challenges to Geospatial Technology in India

Manideep Saha writing in CXOToday highlights the three big problems, some of which we’ve been through (and are still going through) in the rest of the world.

1. GIS and remote sensing application software require high end computers with high end graphics cards etc, which at the moment are comparatively expensive in India. But this problem will cease to persist gradually as prices of hardware keep going down.

2. GIS awareness and education levels are still low in India. It has yet to proliferate fully in the formal technical education space (graduate degree programs, diploma’s, etc), even though many universities and colleges have started teaching GIS in PG programs.

3. The last but the biggest constraint is the easy availability of spatial data. In India, most of the organizations that have adopted GIS are still spending a lot of money and time on building data. One of the reasons attributable to this is the disparity between the various systems from which the data has to move from one form to another before the final desired output is available. The second reason is very tight government control on spatial data acquisition and high cost of satellite and aerial data.