Web-based geospatial technologies to support decision-making

Abstract

The Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST), Bangalore has been providing geospatial data, information and services to support the process of local-level planning under a joint project of NRDMS of Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and the Government of Karnataka since 1992. Each district database contains spatial and attribute datasets useful in local-level planning processes in the sectors of natural resources, demography, agro-economy, socio-economy and infrastructure facilities. Respective Zilla panchayats and line departments have been depending upon these databases for meeting their data requirements. KSCST has institutionalized the geospatial technologies for informed decision-making by establishing district NRDMS centres in all the 30 districts of Karnataka. With increasing dependence of users, a need has been felt to speed up the process of discovery of and access to up-to-date spatial datasets. The council with the support of Central and State Departments of Science and Technology developed a geoportal to discover/access and query on spatial datasets useful in the local-level planning process through Karnataka State Spatial Data Infrastructure (KSSDI) Project in the year 2009. The portal has a centralized geospatial database on variety of spatial layers available to users for query and analysis. Recently, watershed portal has added to Karnataka Geoportal to support monitoring of watershed projects.