Bhuvan: India�s Mapping Application

India has now its own version of Google Earth. Recently, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched a mapping application service called Bhuvan   Earth in Sanskrit. Bhuvan has similar features as that of Google Earth and allows the Indian user to know more about the ‘layout’ of his/her own country.

This service is much better than Google Earth in many respects. It offers multilayer 10 metre resolution imagery as compared to 200 metre single layer imagery by Google Earth. Bhuvan has better viewing options and more importantly its update frequency is one year in comparison with four years of the Google Earth. The lone limitation is that its coverage is restricted to the Indian continent.

The Google Earth programme was initially designed and developed by a company called Keyhole, Inc. in 2004. The company was acquired by Google and it made the programme available to public in June 2005. This package offers information in regard to geographic location, maps, imagery among many other features. The programme allows users to know more about cities, roads, bridges and houses. The most popular perception about this software is that it is entirely based on satellite imagery. However, that may not be true in all cases. At places, long-distance laser scanning technology and digital photography has also been used for providing the geographical information.

Bhuvan has been designed keeping the Indian user in mind. The development of this dynamic package has been carried out by ISRO’s Hyderabad based organ, the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA). Along with geospatial information, Bhuvan also focuses on rural and thematic applications like wasteland mapping and terrain profile. Weather information and administrative boundaries of all states and districts within country are also available. Various tools are available for measuring horizontal, vertical and aerial distances. System designers claim that this system is much bandwidth-friendly and it is even possible to run it on slow internet connections (URL: bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in)

Bhuvan uses data from seven satellites which include the recently launched Resourcesat-1 and other cartographic satellites. System developers have taken care to ensure that sensitive information such as information on military and nuclear installations is not available. Also, it is expected that ‘masking’ must have been incorporated in regard to few important locations.

Earlier India had made a big issue about Google Earth’s (high-resolution pictures of sensitive locations in India) potential for misuse but now it has launched its own service on similar lines. At the backdrop of the fresh memories of Mumbai terror attacks (26/11) where the terrorists had used Google Earth, this step should be considered as a bold decision. However, it also needs to be noted that Google had degraded few images of important places in India in reaction to India’s objections.
ISRO’s willingness to create Bhuvan clearly indicates that we are fast learning to tackle a complex society where anti-national elements will try to make use of every possible way to harm a nation’s interest. Yet, now, we are not deterred by such elements from endorsing new technology advancements. In the present day world almost every technology may be considered as dual use technology and we need to move on by taking adequate precautions for technology misuse.

Launch of Bhuvan should be considered as a first step towards offering a user’s friendly earth mapping application system to the Indian population. Users of this technology could vary from town planners   infrastructure development   to environment scientists and meteorologists to other public utility services for floods or famine management to a common man. This service could also come handy for the armed forces. They could obtain various relevant inputs during the planning stage for conduct of routine exercises and probably also decide on their deployment of forces both during peace and wartime.

The Indian Army and India’s border security organisations such as the BSF need to incorporate Bhuvan as one of the additional tools offering latest inputs in regard to contour maps (the software displays a colorised terrain map and contour lines) and terrain profile (displays the terrain elevation profile along a path). Also, Indian army could approach ISRO to provide them with very high resolution images of terrain across India’s border since now collation of such information appears to be complete. Bhuvan could be put in use over Naxal infected areas too. However, military and para-military forces need to apply their mind to find out how best they could benefit from this service. Even organisations like NSG should make themselves conversant with this software because it could offer them valuable information about Indian cities.

ISRO could upgrade their software further by taking inputs from various local players. Oral history of various places at times offers extremely useful information which usually goes unattended. Some of the sources who can be approached for inputs are farmers, fishermen, village elders to be introduced appropriately in the software. Also, ISRO needs to continuously monitor the performance of this software and give adequate importance to the suggestions received from the users because usually many glitches gets noticed only when users start using the product. More importantly a provision need to be made for quick up-gradation so that if any major events occur leading to certain change of the appearance of the landscape over a particular region then updating of the system is done immediately. In the past Google Earth had failed in this regard when they failed to update the information of the places like New Orleans following hurricane Katrina.

Bhuvan offers an opportunity for India to project its borders clearly. Otherwise many software packages are normally found depicting India’s borders particularly Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh region wrongly. Recently, Google Earth had wrongly shown some areas in Arunachal Pradesh as part of Chinese territory. Bhuvan makes India’s own footprint available in the cyberspace. This could also be viewed as Indian’s assertion of its proficiency in ICT (information and communication technology) and space technologies.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).