STATE TIMES NEWS
HYDERABAD: India’s geospatial economy is expected to cross Rs 63,000 crore by 2025 at a growth rate of 12.8% and provide employment to more than 10 lakh people, mainly through Geospatial StartUps.
This was stated here on Tuesday by Union Minister for Science and Technology and Ministry of Earth Sciences, Dr Jitendra Singh while addressing the Second United Nations World Geospatial Information Congress (UN-WGIC) 2022.
The 5-day conference is being attended by over 2,000 delegates including 700 plus international delegates & participants from about 150 countries. Moreover, National Mapping Agencies (NMAs) like the Survey of India, which has a glorious history of 255 years, senior officials, non-governmental organizations, academia, and industry, user, & private sector from across the globe are taking part in the Geospatial Congress.
Dr Jitendra said, in the current boom of technology-led start-ups, there are around 250 Geospatial StartUps in India and to give further boost to this sector, the Minister unveiled a Geospatial Incubator today.
Dr Jitendra emphasised that Geospatial technology and Geographic Information System (GIS) is going to make a significant impact in the way India has been adopting this technology and moving ahead. He said, the world is looking at India as to how it is using technology to tackle some of the major humanitarian and sustainability problems.
The Minister added that even though geospatial technologies have been produced, used, and managed in the country for over five decades now, the Government of India’s revolutionary steps towards geospatial democratization, advocacy, and integration over the last few years gave a new momentum to this sector.
Addressing the Members of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN-GGIM Secretariat, International Delegates, and esteemed participants at Geospatial Congress, Dr Jitendra pointed out that the Government of India released the new geospatial data guidelines in 2021, where it acknowledged the benefits of availability of comprehensive, highly accurate, granular and constantly updated representation of Geospatial Data in diverse sectors of the economy with the belief that it will significantly boost innovation in the country and greatly enhance the preparedness of the country for emergency response.
Dr Singh, however, pointed out that a modernized and evolved national geospatial ecosystem cannot be developed based on the innovations and advancements in technology only, but has to be based on the individual priorities of the stakeholders (including nations) and how it can impact the lives as well as livelihoods of the common citizens. He said, to meet the growing needs of skilled geospatial manpower, several universities introduced Geospatial Science and Technology based courses to build human resource capacity and many research projects were taken up, to develop the availability of trained Geospatial manpower. He said, these measures have opened up the untapped opportunity to develop an international GIS services market for the Indian geospatial industry.
Dr Jitendra concluded by saying that the future national geospatial ecosystem requires a holistic transformation, in order to keep up with the innovations in the digital economy to ‘break and connect the silos’ and adapt and work in coordination with these technology innovations to simplify spatial data use across all ecosystems. The Minister wished the Second UNWGIC to be that watershed Global event, where the evolution of the Global Geospatial Information management will be towards that Technology-led humanity development.