The Survey of India plans to use drones to create a high-resolution map of every inch of India. It comes with unprecedented privacy and security challenges
The Survey of India (SoI) has embarked upon an ambitious project of using drone imaging to create an ultra-high resolution spatial and topographic map of India. Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, calls it the biggest endeavour in Indian mapmaking since the Great Trigonometrical Survey in the 1800s, which produced the first high-precision maps of India. At a cost of `300 crore, the project aims to capture ultra-high resolution images of 75% of the country accurate to 10 cm by 2021. To put this in perspective, a typical service like Google Maps is usually accurate to a few metres. Drone-based mapping has already begun in the states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka.
The SoI plans to create two kinds of maps. The first will be high-precision Defence Series Maps accessible only for defence and military purposes; the second are general-purpose Open Series Maps to support civic, commercial and government projects. The increased accuracy can yield tremendous benefits. High-accuracy maps empower urban bodies and panchayats to do more accurate and reliable development planning. They facilitate digitisation of land titles, giving citizens verified land ownership. Across business sectors, there is an increasing demand for various kinds of map-based data.
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