Brief Summary of INCA 2008 Deliberations on Collaborative Mapping and Space Technology
1. Introduction: INCA 2008 was organised by Indian National Cartographic Association as a three-day International Congress on Collaborative Mapping and Space Technology. The event was held at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India during Nov. 4-6, 2008 and was hosted by Space Applications Centre, ISRO. While the inaugural and keynote sessions were held at Gandhinagar Town Hall, rest of the technical events were held at Cambay Spa and Resorts also at Gandhinagar. 2. Pre-Congress Events: Three parallel one-day Pre-Congress Tutorials/Workshop were held at Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-informatics, Gandhinagar on the following topics on Nov. 3, 2008: i) High Resolution Imaging for Collaborative Mapping; ii) Open Source GIS Software – Breaking the Barriers; and iii) Internet GIS. 3. General Summary: The Congress was attended by more than 300 registered participants mostly from India and a few from Australia, Germany, Singapore and Switzerland, apart from other invitees and guests for the inaugural ceremony, key-note session, special lectures, youth forum and the evening visit to the Gujarat Science City on Nov. 5, 2008. Out of the two endowment lectures, Todar Mul Memorial Lecture was organised as part of the inaugural session. The other special lecture namely the Prof. SP Chatterjee memorial lecture was delivered by Prof. AR Dasgupta from BISAG. Four Plenary sessions were held on the forenoon of Nov 5 and 6, 2008 on the following topics: a. Capacity Building for Geospatial Data Processing & Analysis - IIRS b. Open Source Software for Development of Collaborative Geospatial Solution c. Imaging Systems and Future Sensors d. High Resolution Optical Satellite Images – from Scene Orientation to GIS-Data Acquisition e. Technology Status & Forecast from Commercial Software Vendors i. Enhancing the Geospatial Data Value Chain using ERDAS Enterprise Suite ii. Recent Trends in Photogrammetry Four Special sessions including the Young Researcher Award Selection session on the following topics were held during the conference : 1. Disaster Mapping and Management 2. High Resolution IRS Data Products and Their Applications 3. Maps on Demand 4. Young Researcher Session A Youth Forum was organised in parallel on Nov 5, 2008 with about 80 student participants from schools and colleges from Gujarat. During the Congress, there were 14 technical sessions held on the following topics during Nov. 4-6, 2008: a) Collaborative Mapping Concepts b) Geo-spatial data generation methods and standards c) Image Processing d) Photogrammetry and Stereo Evaluation e) Geo-spatial data infrastructure f) Grid Computing, Data Mining and Open Source Software g) Collaborative Mapping Tools and Techniques h) Collaborative Mapping and Societal Impacts i) Collaborative Mapping for Service Industries j) Capacity Building k) Application Case Studies – Urban Mapping l) Application Case Studies – Thematic Mapping m) Application Case Studies – Topographic Mapping n) Application Case Studies – Planetary Mapping Three Poster presentation Sessions were also held on the above themes. A Social Get-together in the Evening was organised on Nov. 5, 2008 with a visit to Gujarat Science City in which a 3D-Movie show and a Musical Fountain Show were organised followed by Dinner at the same venue. Two Exhibitions were organised during the Congress. One on Space Applications organised by the host organisation SAC at Town Hall and the other by participating vendors and sponsoring agencies at Cambay Spa and Resorts. At the same venue the Poster Sessions were organised and day-time tea and lunch breaks were arranged during Nov 4-6, 2008. A Panel Discussion on the topic of “Open versus Institutional Mapping” followed by the Valedictory session were held on the afternoon of Nov 6, 2008. On this occasion prizes were given away for the selected young researchers and awards for best presentations made during the Congress in the oral and poster categories.
Summary of Inaugural Session of INCA 2008
During the inauguration, Dr. PK Srivastava, President, INCA & Dy. Director, Space Applications Centre welcomed the gathering and introduced INCA and the theme of the Congress to the audience and gave an overview of the conference events. Relevance of theme in view of overwhelming developments in Public participatory Collaborative mapping with high resolution space imagery and interactive Web 2.0 was emphasized.
Todar Mul Memorial Lecture was delivered by Dr. G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO & Secretary, Department of Space on Benefits of Space to the Society. In his lecture, Dr. Nair emphasised on the following points: 1. Dwindling average per-capita land holding per individual in the country (0.16 ha currently) and land parcels becoming smaller and heterogeneous; and the need to use and conserve natural resources in a sustainable manner; 2. The green revolution, white revolution, pink revolution and the equally impressive advances made in IT, bio, nuclear and space technologies in the country over recent years; 3. With the INSAT, IRS and thematic series of earth observation, communication and meteorological satellites and the PSLV & GSLV launch vehicles, India becoming one among the leading space-faring nations; 4. Recent achievements of ISRO namely in launching the Chandrayaan-1 moon mission, and India to become the fourth nation to leave its flag on the moon surface, successful space recovery capsule experiment along with the launch of 1-m resolution capability Cartosat-2 , launching 10 satellites using a single PSLV launch including the launch of first Indian
	mini-satellite IMS and Cartosat-2A; and the satellite based Indian navigation system, planetary exploration missions Chandrayaan-2 and human space flight missions in various stages of planning and realization; and equally impressive variety of space applications developed and implemented over the years for societal benefits for agriculture, water resources, forest and environment, infrastructure development, disaster management, meteorology and weather apart from growing tele-education, tele-medicine, disaster management support and village resource centre applications.
5. Highlights of the above-mentioned application areas and particularly the wasteland mapping and reclamation of 8 Mha wasteland for productive use during the years 1998-2005 out of the total 54 Mha wasteland mapped in the country and the potential to reclaim further 35 Mha land in the near future; the success of Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development; limited but potential satellitebased mapping for rural road connectivity; Gujarat being the unique state that has utilized the maximum potential of space technology utilizing the potential to address state-wide class-rooms from a single source; merging entire land records with satellite data being the notable among these applications; 6. Natural resources information repository being developed by SAC and NRSC and the issue of integrating ground truth, state-owned revenue and statistical records and the possible collaborative mapping solutions that INCA 2008 might offer for faster realization and prescribe guidelines for liberalising the map policies to make them more accessible; and 7. Announcement of Bhuvan, an ISRO equivalent solution for the commercial Google Earth, which will be more precise containing latest local information on natural resources in the country within the next 6 months.
Honourable Chief Minister of Gujarat Shri Narendra Modi, in his inaugural address highlighted the following points: 1. India’s rich heritage in contributing to exploration of universe; particularly the role of ancient rishis and their scientific contributions, Bhaskaracharya, Aryabhatta, Vraha Mihir, to name a few and the role of ancient Indian universities in Dakshashila and Nalanda during 700 BC teaching astronomy among other subjects.
	2. Contribution by Raja Todar Mul to revenue mapping which served as a model for even Britishers to adopt. 3. The effectiveness of space-borne remote sensing to map the resources of the land in quick succession thus greatly reducing the time delays involved in mapping through traditional means; and Gujarat being the pioneering state in adopting this technology with ample support from ISRO. 4. Evolution of BISAG as a national hub for satellite based applications and its impressive contributions to make Gujarat as
a model state for other states to follow, particularly in the fields of tele-education and geo-informatics aiding the governance actions for the welfare of common man. 5. Particular highlights are: mapping the watershed areas and locating over 3 lakh check dams, water bodies, salt pans, road network, and tourist places using high resolution satellite images; web-deployed cadastral information; an effective grievance redressal system; municipal level GIS applications with more than 50 layers of information content; vulnerability maps for natural disasters; 3D maps for road and canal alignments; etc. 6. Foreseeing future applications on mineral exploration using hyper-spectral and micro-wave sensors; meteorological mapping for predicting climate and weather changes and a call to young students to specialize in space applications. 7. Societal applications such as fish catch prediction and dissemination; informed site selection for a new school in the state, rain water harvesting by way of locating new check-dams; great reduction in time in map making using satellite images; ability to address 1.5 crore students across the state and interact with them; online grievance redressal system for land disputes; etc were particularly highlighted.
Highlights from key-note Session of INCA 2008
3D-Mapping by Prof. Dr. Armin Gruen from Switzerland: 1. Geo-referencing satellite images using a few control points to realise sub-pixel accuracies in planimetry and height is a solved problem. 2. DTM generation using stereo images results in nice RMS errors, but includes a lot of blunders; which have to be got rid off using manual editing. Efforts are on to reduce this manual effort. 3. Automatic object extraction from images for buildings and linear features is far from solution. 4. 3D-mapping is not fully understood; particular problem areas include: texture mapping, image quality for interpretation, contradicting base-to-height ratio requirements for precise geometric computation and automatic image matching; 5. Topographic landscape models to replace maps; 6. Need for Collaborative Mapping solutions, which are time-wise much more effective, especially in hyper-growth areas; need for 10 times better reference data sets for DTM evaluation and the lack of them; 7. Need to realise height errors better than 1 m for space images to be effective in realizing 3D-mapping solutions. 8. GSD alone is not representative enough but we need to consider the realized image quality as well, for considering a sensor for 3D-mapping solutions.
Dr. Lalitesh Kathragadda from Google India on Billion people : One Canvas
1. While precise geo-referencing part of mapping problem has been solved the other dimension of obtaining the labels and vector information is still unsolved. 2. Efficiently organising information for searching chronologically or for easy human remembrance or for geographically representing them has to be addressed considering the compelling facts that 80% of the business information has a geo-centre; 90% of our lives are spent locally; 80% of mankind travel not more than 20 miles from his place of living; and 80% of money (excluding real-estate) is spent locally.
3. We have come a very long way from the famous and tedious Indian Great Arc Survey lasting more than 50 years and consuming many lives in the process. 4. Even in US, for more than 40% of areas, maps are missing; best databases contain only one-tenth of all the roads; maps get outdated within a year in hyper-growth areas; Collaborative Mapping or user-created geo-web is thus a necessity for making high quality maps to reach billions of people across the word. 5. Even a minor delay in displaying user updated information is enough to put off the people from participating in collaborative mapping. 6. Google is collaborating with NGOs, local bodies and governments for making the Google map maker more effective. Currently the software is operational in more than 127 countries. 7. Top three difficulties are (i) data formats; (ii) geo-web not being 3-D; and (iii) lack of geographical search mechanisms. Another challenge is to reach those billion people who do not have internet access and live in rural areas.
Summary of Prof. SP Chatterjee Memorial Lecture
	Prof. S.P. Chatterjee Memorial Lecture was delivered by Prof. Arup R. Dasgupta, Distinguished Professor, Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo- Informatics (BISAG), Gandhinagar on the opic of Ubiquitous Mapping. He stressed on the following points:
1. An Ubiquitous Service is essentially ever and everywhere present, available, transparent, seamless, context/situation aware and trust-worthy. He quoted David Fairbairn, Ota and Morita for a formal definition of Ubiquitous Mapping. 2. He gave several examples of Ubiquitous Mapping starting from placement of Route- Markers; Maps which are generated need-based, just-in-time, context-aware, covering both animate and inanimate objects and providing a 3D real world perspective in “real scale”; increasing role of imagery as part of maps; Google Mashup, which combines, traditional map information (annotated vector maps) with high resolution remote sensing imagery and ground-level information including photographs; hand-held computing devices showing maps with user’s location, either approximately through the knowledge of mobile communication tower positions or more precisely through attached GPS receivers; real-time tracking of mobile assets; online or offline car-navigation; autonomous guided missiles with built-in spatial image database and onboard sensors such as radar or CCD cameras. 3. He informed about DARPA’s Grand Urban Challenge initiated in 2005 for building autonomous “all-terrain” war machines, which could move about 60 miles in 6 hours with speeds reaching up to 30 mph, and its partial success stories realized in 2007 and the possibility of mass production of cars without a driver in the year 2020. 4. He went on to provide further examples of social networking internet sites such as Plazes or DodgeBall providing facilities to communicate the current location of its users through SMS; GPS enabled cameras which annotate the images acquired with date, time and location; and the neighbourhood/ participatory mapping initiative undertaken in India by name Gram Chitra. He also highlighted the Open Street Maps initiative. 5. Enabling technologies include Remote Sensing, GPS & GIS for geospatial data collection, archival and analysis, mobile communication and wire-less communication technologies such as 2G, 3G, WiFi and WiMax and network computing technologies such as internet computing, grid computing or cloud computing. 6. The challenge lies in providing innovative ways of providing distilled context aware map information to both static and mobile users. He also indicated certain issues concerning breach of privacy in such efforts and the remedies like artificially removing objects such as cars from the high resolution images showing only the empty roads as part of the map that is presented. 7. He concluded by telling that it is mostly innovation in enabling community participation, geospatial data analysis, design and display as part of providing Ubiquitous Mapping services.
Highlights of the Panel Discussion on Open versus Institutional Mapping of INCA 2008
1. Maj. Gen. Tanwar from SOI, Dr. PK Srivastava, President, INCA from ISRO, Prof. Dr. Armin Gruen from Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, Prof. AR Dasgupta from BISAG and Dr. Ashok Kaushal from PCI Geomatics representing Industry were the Panelists. Dr. B Kartikeyan from SAC moderated the discussions. There were two rounds of individual remarks and rejoinders followed by questions from audience targeted to individual panelists, which are summarised below:
2. Prof. Gruen told that there is always a need for quality map outputs. One gets what one pays for. Google can not replace high-quality maps or models produced by mapping institutions and commented on the availability, openness and completeness aspects of mapping and Google addressing mainly the first two aspects and it lacks in quality of its0 contents in terms of unavailable systematic attribute information. High-end and low-end use categories should be istinguished; while the former should remain institutional the latter could remain open. Rate of updating high-end products is poor, and mixing open and institutional mapping methods will not work out.
3. Dr. PK Srivastava said map layers of standard quality information are required; he emphasised the need for adopting compatible open standard data formats addressing software interface aspects among the several commercially available spatial data sets and software providers. Towards a comment on open data availability from mapping institutions, he cited the example of Ordnance Survey opening up its archives for public use. He suggested the use of a common NSDI like portal for dissemination of map data layers in the country. He summarised the need to increase the quality of maps, whether it is open or closed, in terms of higher scales involving ground surveys and built-in quality checks. He also mentioned that while the extents are not clear but public participation is a concluded point. 4. Maj. Gen. Tanwar expressed the mushrooming of geospatial industries and the need for a regulatory mechanism to be set up. He commented on the non-availability of highly priced geo-spatial industry survey information brought out by industry. He stressed that SOI stands for quality and contrasted the quality map contents available from institutions with unqualified openly available data. He commented on the need to perform a user requirements survey possibly by joining hands with ISRO and industry. 5. Prof. AR Dasgupta told the topic of the discussions should be Open and Institutional Mapping rather than Open versus Institutional Mapping. He told the reason for the success of Google Earth could be that it is providing a solution for the latent need of the people in answering the five key questions, what, when, where, how and why, where being the least answered aspect in general. To a comment on commercialization of public data sets, he expressed that the mapping industries such as Tele-atlas and MapMyIndia generated their own maps by sending people to the field with mobile GPS instruments. 6. Dr. Kaushal said the distinction between data, software and services is dwindling. Web 2.0 is revolutionising the open mapping applications. 7. Remarks from Audience: Prof. JL Jain commented that industry is using the data basically owned by government institutions and commercialising the same for profit. Shri YP Rana remarked that people and industry will not tolerate the delays in government institutions providing solutions to people’s problems, and that they will find their own solutions from else where and cited the example of mobile communication industry. Maj. Gen. Kaul expressed that SOI has already released its open series maps in 1:50,000 scale and he was aware of its release in MP recently. Dr. R. Nandakumar commented on the need to have involvement of local government bodies in the map making and dissemination process and the need for a common software being used across the several institutional outlets and the need to involve people through collaborative mapping web portal for faster updates. Dr. Muralikrishnan mentioned the user needs for maps in scales larger than 1:10,000. A representative from NHO mentioned that high quality hydrographic maps produced by NHO are open and available to any one who needs them. 8. Conclusion: It was felt by majority of panelists and the audience that both open and institutional mapping are there to stay as there is a need for both “Nano” as well as “Mercedes Benz” kind of maps. More and more maps will be made with public participation in collaborative mode. Fruits from space technology and developments in Internet GIS together have made this a reality. Mapping institutions should support open mapping by providing standard map layers and standards and should concentrate on making new kinds of high quality 3D GIS models/maps.