Rapid urbanization has been associated with the alteration of landscape structure,
local ecology and environment affecting the sustenance of natural resources.
Urbanisation in India is drastically changing the land cover and often resulting in the sprawl.
The sprawl regions lack basic amenities such as treated water supply, sanitation, etc.
This necessitates regular monitoring and understanding of the rate of urban development in order
to visualize the likely sprawl pockets to provide basic amenities. The rate of change of land use
and extent of urban sprawl can effectively be visualized and modeled with the help of
geo-informatics.
However, the growth of Geoinformatics gained impetus with the recent progress in free and
open source softwares (FOSS). This has overcome the limitations in environment monitoring
associated highly priced proprietary softwares and non-availability of public geodata.
Many of such licensed softwares remain unutilized in various government offices because
they require either extensive training or easy availability on multiple locations.
All this needs to be changed by the use of Free/Opensource software tools. This is significant
since all government data and most educational institutions work in local language media.
FOSS GIS or Free/Opensource Geospatial softwares are more powerful and usable for developing
systems where more and more public participation is sought. In this regard, the proposed workshop
during 1-5th April 2015 helps to understand the potential and limitations of Open source geospatial
technologies. Resource persons of the workshop include experts from various institutions who have
contributed significantly to the development of open source geospatial technologies in India
Course Co-ordinator:
Dr. T.V. Ramachandra
Associate Faculty, CiSTUP, IISc, Bangalore.
Tel: 91-080- 22933099 / 22933503(Ext:107) / 23600985
Fax: 91-080- 23601428 [CES-TVR]
E mail:
cestvr@cistup.iisc.ac.in
Web:
http://ces.iisc.ac.in/energy,
http://ces.iisc.ac.in/biodiversity
