Cabinet approves setting up National Spatial Data Infrastructure

New Delhi, Jun 2 (UNI) The Union Cabinet today gave approval for the creation of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and for creating ten posts to start the working of NSDI.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi told reporters here that the creation of NSDI will lead to leveraging of the existing data assets of various organisations to add value and create massive entrepreneurial opportunities in the growing knowledge industry.

It will have a favourable impact on a wide range of activities like disaster preparedness planning, disaster management, natural resources management, land use planning and management, watershed management, land security, agricultural planning, rural development, infrastructure development and urban planning etc, he said.

A spatial data infrastrucutre is a collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements to facilitate availability of and access to spatial data (acquired and held by different agencies/ organisations) to a vast, diverse and ever growing community of users.

In India, availability of abundant and rich data assets noinithstanding the, multiple factors like technological limitations, institutional constraints, informational inadequacies tend to impede making full use of these assets and add value to them.

NSDI is envisoned to remove these difficulties. It is a kind of soft infrastructure to be built at the national level for coordinating acquisition, processing, storage, distribution and improved utilisation of spatial data.

UNI AJ MA RK2036