Geospatial technology indispensable for building a sustainable world

The applying of geospatial applied sciences for sustainable improvement is rising quick. (Picture: NITI Aayog)

By Pushpendra Johari

All of us are conscious of the earth’s consistently altering panorama. People are selfishly shifting forward to develop themselves at the price of nature, inflicting overpopulation, deforestation, speedy urbanisation, and industrialization. These actions have been exhausting our pure sources and altering local weather by pushing pollution into the setting. Sadly, local weather change is occurring sooner than we will even think about. It’s making the earth extra susceptible to disasters and affecting our very existence. It’s time we take into consideration constructing a sustainable world to cater to those altering geological dynamics.

Constructing a sustainable world entails efficient planning that each human motion ought to confirm its impression on the setting earlier than any implementation. Insurance policies ought to drive this considering. Provided that we deal with our planet, the planet will deal with us.

Environmental points are spatial in nature that drive “what” would possibly occur, “the place”, “when”, and “how a lot”. So, we have to align our considering to those standards and do our planning contemplating them. That is the place applied sciences like ‘’geospatial’’ come to our rescue. Geospatial applied sciences present us instruments to seize details about any location on the earth’s floor, whether or not historic, real-time, geological, or climate-related.

The applying of geospatial applied sciences for sustainable improvement is rising quick. It’s serving to us in getting options to the problems revolving round local weather change, pure calamities, meals safety, and human habitation.

Tracing “the place” ingredient for meals safety and addressing local weather induced adjustments

Local weather change is impacting the whole meals system by affecting its availability, accessibility, high quality, and utilization. It’s influencing the climate patterns and altering the suitability of the crops which can be at present grown in sure areas, impacting the crop yields due to hydro-meteorological occasions, and inflicting soil erosion.

So, how can we deal with such points? Right here, the “the place” ingredient is of excessive significance. GIS allows complete evaluation and monitoring of environmental situations associated to sustainable agriculture improvement and meals safety.

GIS helps reply a number of the hardest agri-related questions reminiscent of creating good agri techniques for crop diversification/shifting, improvement of an utility for climate-resilient seeds, irrigation planning, groundwater storage, fertilizers and pesticides based mostly on weather conditions, yield forecasting, crop acreage, mapping crop vulnerability, and so on.,

Availability of water has a robust bearing on meals safety. Local weather projections reveal that water goes to be scarce sooner or later. So, it’s turning into vital to grasp water availability to handle meals safety points. As an illustration, to grasp the crop shifts, GIS-based water availability modelling is utilized to guage the present scenario of a crop and the place it may be grown sooner or later.

GIS has a task in every single place, whether or not it’s an understanding change in crop patterns, assessing water availability, or implementing local weather fashions. It’s required to determine all the things on the floor of the earth.

Assessing pure disasters

Because of local weather change, the rainfall patterns have modified from longer spans of milder rains to very quick span of high-intensity rainfall, rising temperature on land and ocean, and melting glaciers. All that is driving the severity of floods, cyclones, droughts, and potential of sea-level rise. The severity and frequency of flood and cyclone occasions in India have elevated in recent times. As an illustration, the recurring flood like situations in Mumbai yearly, Hyderabad floods (October 2020), Assam Floods (July 2020), Cyclone Amphan (Could 2020), Cyclone Fani (Could 2019), Chennai Floods (December 2015), and J&Ok Flood (March 2015).

Because the rainfall sample has modified, mechanisms must be developed to retailer extreme water successfully for future. Utilizing GIS, we will establish areas to reap the extreme rain/flood water and create ponds, lakes, and reservoirs.

Geospatial know-how helps create flood forecasting fashions and early warning techniques. A flood forecasting system is an automatic software program that displays real-time rainfall and water ranges and combines it with forecasted rainfall to generate flood extents and depths to establish potential threat areas.

Moreover, cyclone is one other hazard skilled by our nation. GIS based mostly scientific cyclone fashions can estimate cyclone occasions associated parameters reminiscent of from the place they originated, velocity of the wind, surge top, probably landfall factors and areas in danger. Thus, serving to improve the Authorities’s preparedness, restoration and response to the occasions, safeguarding human life and infrastructure.

Constructing resilient infrastructure

Estimates reveal that by 2050, 7 out of 10 folks throughout the globe will likely be dwelling in city areas. To handle rising urbanization, it’s important to design and implement packages based mostly on understanding the frequency and magnitude of local weather occasions and the way they’re prone to change sooner or later. As an illustration, the extraordinarily extreme cyclonic storm ‘FANI’ in 2019 precipitated huge infrastructural injury in Odisha. It took almost 40 days to revive energy.

Catastrophe mitigation, prevention, preparedness, and emergency response might be deliberate with a previous threat evaluation. However how can we assess these dangers? The first info is to know the place our infrastructure components are and relate their key traits to the potential hazard intensities. GIS assist us to construct detailed repository of all infrastructure components together with key attributes. Understanding of the hazard intensities developed utilizing GIS based mostly methods when utilized to the infrastructure attributes helps to grasp their threat higher and plan for actions that may scale back these dangers.

Mapping renewable power

As human civilisation is rising, our power wants are additionally rising at an exceptional tempo. With extreme power consumption, it’s time we swap to renewable power and use what’s naturally obtainable to us within the type of daylight, wind, rain, tides, waves, biomass, and thermal power. However the place do we discover these sources in abundance? How can we harness that useful resource in a selected space? GIS know-how helps in making this choice faster and less complicated. It aids policymakers and decision-makers in figuring out the proper location for renewable power based mostly energy era.

As an illustration, to determine a renewable power plant in any space, GIS methods can derive insights on the wind and photo voltaic potential, distance from cities, and socio-economic impression. This evaluation shares a transparent image of which location can be superb for implementing a renewable power energy plant. For resilient consumption, GIS performs an efficient position by figuring out the place to focus and the best way to handle these sources. Geospatial know-how showcases the potential for sustainable power sources.

Deregulating use of geospatial knowledge – What the longer term holds

With so many technological interventions in retailer for constructing a greater and sustainable future, the current coverage on deregulation of geospatial knowledge has unlocked socio-economic alternatives mandatory for sustainable improvement. The brand new coverage won’t solely spur innovation however open a number of avenues for sustainable developmental initiatives. The adjustments within the deregulation will assist in era of high-resolution knowledge units like digital terrain fashions, bathymetry, soil maps, road view maps and so on. that may play a really essential position in taking this sustainable improvement constitution ahead.

A extremely correct digital knowledge infrastructure will present a much-needed thrust when it comes to availability and enhancement of high-resolution location knowledge for the nation, enabling a number of Indian firms to create world-class maps and mapping applied sciences.

As well as, the high-quality location knowledge will assist enhance the accuracy of real-time measures to safeguard the general public from disasters and local weather change disaster. That is prone to speed up scientific analysis and revolutionary practices to plan higher catastrophe evaluation and mitigation methods.

This open entry to geospatial knowledge will guarantee knowledgeable decision-making and assist accomplish Sustainable Improvement Targets by boosting setting knowledgeable improvement of resilient infrastructure, public sector companies, and meals safety within the nation.

(The creator is Senior VP – Sustainability at RMSI. Views expressed are private.)