Slashgeo

All Points Blog links to a short Deccan Herald article about GIS-trained manpower woefully short in India. From the article: "“Though the GIS technology was evolved over 40 years ago, its presence in India is still in a nascent stage,” Mr Gowda said during the inauguration of a two-day State level seminar on ‘GIS and its applications’ at Government Arts College here recently." Meanwhile, Very Spatial links to a The Times of India article about the use of GIS and GPS for police operations in India.

dct writes "GeoPlace points to an Indian Newspaper story about the planning of land use based on extensive mapping of land. This project seems different than most of the local development initiative in that the mapping covers a very large portion of land and will be used for integrated developement. From the article: "“We will conduct a physical verification on the basis of findings from the satellite images and then prepare the final map. In the final version, specific locations will be identified saying what kind of industry would suit them. Similarly, it can also be found out which plots are suitable for building townships without disturbing agricultural land,’ Sircar said.""

A few weeks ago GIS Monitor published an interesting article about the state of GRASS GIS, including comments from Markus Neteler, who is one of the directors of the new Open Source Geospatial Foundation and major GRASS developer. From the article: "The new built-in GRASS GUI, developed within the past six months, is expanding the software's user base. Many more users than in the past, Neteler told me, are saying "I am new to GIS and I want to use GRASS." However, he acknowledges that it will take "many months" for the new GUI to become well known in the larger GIS community. [...] What is the single biggest current development in GRASS? It is porting it to Windows as a native application, says Neteler. Many users, he points out, are not interested in switching to Linux. "We expect to release the first official Windows version by the start of next year," he told me."

I'd like your opinion on the different open source GIS projects. I'm looking for a GIS for our 50+ non-GIS-savvy scientists here. We use mainly use Debian. I quickly looked at GRASS, Quantum GIS, uDig, OSSIM and others. Some look great, but I can't decide which one to adopt! Here are our requirements: (a) easy enough to use for non-geospatial scientists, (b) able to read, convert and save most GIS/RS file formats, (c) allow basic data processing (e.g. reprojections, interpolations, data cropping, merging, cookie cutter, etc). For my personnal needs, I'd like the chosen GIS powerful and have a bright future. So far, I believe QGIS is my front runner. Am I doing a good choice?

Three articles regarding India and geospatial technologies. GeoPlace linked to a OWSA article named India's Knowledge Commission recommend setting up web portals, GIS mapping for e-governance. All Points Blog links to an Hindustan article on the consolidation and closure of the MP Geo-spatial Data Center and to a CNN-IBN article on a possible Indian Google Earth to curb crime. From this last article: "The project promises to open up new avenues for the prosecution in criminal cases. Cameras mounted on cars will soon be keeping a close watch on arson and riot-like situations and all the photographs recorded this way will later be used as evidence against the miscreants."

All Points Blog links to a The Hindu article on the Indian president on cartography and law in India. From the related press release: "President A P J Abdul Kalam today suggested enactment of a law to govern the use of outer space and regulate the use of data acquired from remote sensing satellites, particularly of sensitive installations. [...] He said stereo satellite images, which are available for 90 per cent of the country, could also be used for better urban planning, cadastral level information of land and water resources. Suggesting six missions for cartographers, Kalam said a network of organisations and persons working in the field of mapping should provide inputs for the development of modern cartographic products required by national mission."