National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) is one of the important centres of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with the responsibility of providing satellite-based Earth Observation data, aerial services, applications of space technology for natural resources management, disaster management support and varieties of geospatial solutions.

User Interaction Meet (UIM2016) was organised at National Remote Sensing Centre during 3-4 February 2016 followed by an exclusive session with Academia & Researchers on 5th Febraury 2016. The objective of the meet was to create an open forum for scientific exchanges, technology trends and to showcase the various new applications developed by NRSC amongst geospatial user community.This opportunity was also used to inform the effective use of space technology in the country, potential for the near-future and release of new products & services, including policies.The specical session with "Academia & Researchers"enthused the student community, faculty and researchers to work more closely with NRSC on various application programs.A total of 370 users from various central, state, private and academic organisations participated during these 3 days.More than 150 participants were from various colleges and universities, pursuing research and Postgraduate studies in the field of geospatial technology.

The inaugural session was graced Shri. Ravi Shankar Srivastava, IAS, Principal Secretary, DST, Govt. of Rajasthan, Shri S. M. Upase, Secretary (WRM & CAD), Water Resources Department, Government of Maharashtra, Dr. B.P. Awasthi, ED Tk(P), Railway Board, and Dr. S. Arunan, Director, Earth Observation System, ISRO HQ,. Technical sessions on ISRO’s future EO missions and applications, updates on current services, multi-spectral data utilisation, high resolution data and DEM utilization, microwave data usage, space-based disaster management, science data usage, image processing, and geo-spatial services were conducted as part of the meet. Many parallel sessions and technical discourses were held on the occasion including a specialy technical session in Hindi, software demonstrations (Bhuvan and User-Order-Processing-System). An exclusive exhibition, digital displays and demonstrations attracted the attention of many. Another special feature of the meet was a special one-day parallel session with State Remote Sensing Application Centres (SRSACs) to enable improved use of space technology by various State Governments in the country. 22 SRSACs participated and highlighted the current use of technology in their respective States and it was noted that most of these centres are actively pursuing the use of space technology in close coordination with NRSC.

Inaugural Session of UIM 2016

Shri. A.S. Kiran Kumar, Chairman, ISRO and Secretary, DOS delivered the keynote address and emphasised on the effective propogation anduse of space technology for diversified applications in the country. Dr V.K. Dadhwal, Director, NRSC announced/ released new products and services for the geospatial communityand also highlighted on the revised price list for the ISRO’s satellite data products in the country.Important highlights of the new releases are:

a)Earth observation (EO) products from Indian Missions:RISAT-1 Level-2A product, Oceansat Scatterometer 2-day time composite global sigma naught product (25 km), CartoDEM V3.0(data with 10 m spacing,covering India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and part of Saudi Arabia) and from foreign missions:Suomi NPP and Metop-B AVHRR(NDVI product).

CartoDEM for India & Surrounding Countries OSCAT Two-Day Time Composite Global Sigma-Naught Product

b)New geospatial products like AWiFS (Rabi & Zaid - 767 tiles), LISS III (Rabi - 6500 tiles) datasets for 2013, CartoDEM 30 m V3.0(India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and part of Saudi Arabia) and various land, ocean and atmosphere products under National Information system for Climate and Environment StudiesNICES.These are useful for climate and environmental studies, made available for free download through NRSC Open Data Archive under Bhuvan geospatial platform.

c)Bhuvan geospatial services are enhanced with new content, thematic services, functionalities and applications in support of state and central governance. Bhuvan visualisation is already enriched with 1 m color satellite data for more than 400 cities, covering an area of 4.5 lakh sqkm and more than 8 million Points Of Interest (POI) data (click for view). Bhuvan thematic services is further enriched with Water Body Information System (WBIS), harmonised & improved Land use/ Land cover (LULC)data at 1:2,50,000 scale V2.0, hot spots generated from 2-time LULC data at 1:50,000 scale and urban fraction for sprawl (based on 4 dates images during 1992-2014 for 150 cities).

d)Many new functionalities like route navigation, proximity analysis, enhanced 3D with local terrain and terrain profile (click to view), photosphere in 2D (crowd sourcing), and 3D Panoramic view(including Salarjung Museum) are also provided.

e)Bhuvan support for g-governance (http://bhuvan-noeda.nrsc.gov.in/ministry/sitemap/) is provided for central government organisations/programmes like Bhuvan-PRAGATI, Department of Posts, Bhuvan Farmer Portal (for visualising mandi, cold storage locations in map view), basic geospatial data for Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), Deltas of India, Island Information System, Archaeological monuments and ENVIS (Environmental Information System).Further, Bhuvan support is also extended to Uttarakhand Forest, Water Resources Management Support for Maharashtra (Bhuvan-MERI), Telangana State Panchayat Raj and Engineering Department (click to view), Flood Hazard Zonation for Assam State(click to view) and Flood inundation viewer for Bihar (click to view).

f)In order to meet the ever increasing demand for Bhuvan geospatial services andg-governance support, Distributed Bhuvan nodes are being established across the nation. New Bhuvan nodes are established in NorthEastern Space Application Centre, Shillong, Regional Remote Sensing Centres at Nagpur, Bengaluru, Jodhpur and Kolkata, Indian Railways, Delhi.More centres are coming up in the States of Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. Other States will follow shortly.

360° Virtual Tours Satellite locator & coverage viewer

Bhuvan –Geotagged Indian Post Offices and Services

g) Software utilities for Natural Colour Composite (NCC) image generation and sigma naught product generation for RISAT-1 were released during the meet. Enhanced services under User Order Processing System (UOPS), namely, ordering of 10m CartoDEM, satellite locator & coverage viewer(click toview) were also released.

h) Moble Apps usage has added a new dimension to the integrated use of space & information technology. NRSC has developed many mobile apps that are being used by various users including the citizens. Keeping this in view, 11 unique Mobile Apps facilitating geo-tagging and geo-information services for various user Ministries/ Departments were also released.(i) BhuvanGAGANPOI(GAGAN based geotagging App. using Indian SBAS technology that ensures location accuracy of better than 2 m), (ii) BhuvanPost (Geotagging of all Post offices& their services in India), (iii) BhuvanIPU(Estimation of irrigation potential utilization), (iv) BhuvanFL (Data collection for forest loss information system), (v) BhuvanAnganwadi (Geo-tagging of all Anganwadis), (vi) BhuvanNYKS(Geotagging of all Youth Clubs in India), (vii) BhuvanDrugs (Geotagging of all medical stores, blood banks, blood storage centres etc.), (viii) BhuvanVaidya (Geotagging of all hospitals under NTR vaidya Seva), (ix) BhuvanRUSA(Monitoring centrally funded infrastructure development projects of MHRDfor higher education institutions), (x) BhuvanHailstorm (data collection on damages due to hailstorm) and (xi) BhuvanIFM (Monitoring irrigation infrastructure projects).

Mobile Smartphone Apps have provided more than 8 million POIs on Bhuvan

Mobile Apps-based geotagged data with field photos currently on Bhuvan platform

i) The participants were also informed about the research opportunities available with NRSC on Cal/Val Site, Intensive Study Site and on-demand EO services from Bhuvan.