'Maps can help monitor, manage spread of virus'

One of the big issues in managing the second wave of Covid-19 is lack of actionable data available to citizens on such critical aspects like which hospitals might have a vacant bed and adequate oxygen. Such information on digital maps can perhaps ease some of the pain that people are going through. Agendra Kumar, managing director, Esri India says, “mapping and location intelligence can also help in understanding demographic details and facilitate planning, execution and monitoring of the vaccination drive over a period of time.” Edited interview excerpts:Mapping can play a critical role in identifying hospitals that might have vacant beds for Covid patients and in efficiently deploying services. Is this happening?Healthcare sector is witnessing an exponential rise in use of geospatial tools and dashboards to deal with the pandemic. It starts with monitoring of the Covid-19 situation and in contact tracing, containment zones, disinfections, migrant support, and so on.We provide our software and services to integrate the Covid-19 related data to government organizations working to monitor and manage the spread of Covid-19. Using our system, these organizations are able to create maps and dashboards to see the state of preparedness and the spread of the pandemic. They are also able to run analytics. These efforts can help the decision makers in understanding the impact of GIS for health-related applications.Our mapping and location intelligence can also help in understanding demographic details of the population and facilitate planning, execution and monitoring of the vaccination drive over a period of time.In the digital era location is very important. For that maps are obviously very important. How do you look at the whole space?We have most of the national mapping agencies including Survey of India (SoI), Geological Survey of India and the National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation using our software.Besides, different forest departments, departments of water resources, electric utilities, most of the electric utilities in the country are using our software.How does your software help?Our software helps people in creating maps. Organizations like SoI, water departments will create maps of all the water bodies. They will do studies from satellite data, bringing those satellite imagery and run some analysis on that.Earlier it used to be just visualization, but now there are algorithms which can help them in measuring the groundwater, based on the geophysical properties and other data collected previously. AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) is being used for identifying different water bodies.And if you look at electric utilities or city gas distribution utilities or water utilities, they basically use our technology to create the map of the entire network that they have.How do you view the recent changes brought by the government in the mapping policy and how does it impact Esri?The new geospatial data policy is a step in the right direction. The policy is designed on two basic principles. One, any geospatial data that is available outside the country should also be made available to individuals, organizations, both government and private sector, NGOs, academia inside the country. And the second, if any data has been created by a government department using public money, it should be made available, free of cost or at a nominal charge, even to the private sector.The policy requires government organizations to share the data with other government departments. This was not the case earlier. It's a game changer for the geospatial industry and also for the adoption of geospatial technologies in different segments.The policy encourages local players more than foreign players. Are you partnering with some of the local players for creation of software?The policy talks about some restrictions for foreign players. However, the government has set some reasonable thresholds. Data requirements of most of the projects will be within the limits of these thresholds. Whether its roads and highways or utilities or general mapping requirements, because it helps set up the ground, accuracy of one meter, which is good and provides great flexibility, and most of the applications do not require anything finer than that.Now if anything finer is required, like for land records management or autonomous vehicles, for such applications if a foreign company wants to use data, the government has said they can partner with the Indian entity.Earlier, there were 15 policies which were announced at different times. And it was not clear which policy one should follow. But this time now, it’s one comprehensive policy and fortunately, it also states that it supersedes all other policies covering this subject.What are the challenges you see in the Indian market?Often, the vendors have to deal with complicated terms and conditions. I think we need to bring a lot more trust between buyers and the people who are delivering the solutions. And probably move away from the mentality of lowest bidder wins. If you award the project to the lowest price, then very often you end up with the lowest quality as well.Many private sector companies today focus on the foreign business, rather than Indian business. If private companies feel comfortable that they'll be able to get the sign offs and get paid, I think it will go a long way.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3sNnQR1