Month: February 2017
India’s First Nationwide Digital Address System – eLoc
[eLoc by MapmyIndia is the Aadhar of Addresses A Digital Address is necessary for a Digital India!]
MapmyIndia, India’s leader in premium-quality digital maps, GPS navigation, GPS tracking, location-based apps and GIS solutions, today announced the release of MapmyIndia eLoc, India’s first Nationwide Digital Address. This powerful innovation, packaged as a simple and easy-to-use digital address, will transform historical addresses and disrupt traditional mapping and navigation services, bringing immense convenience to individuals and significant benefits to businesses and governments across India.
(Image Source : http://www.mapmyindia.com/eloc/)
eLoc will help Indian travelers and commuters search, share and navigate to destinations’ exact doorstep far more easily and quickly. It will also reduce time, money, fuel wastage and expenses for businesses in the e-commerce, transportation, logistics and field operations domains. Finally, governance at all levels, across urban and rural levels, will be empowered with much more productivity and transparency when it comes to civic amenities delivery such as electricity, water, gas as well as property tax administration and tax evasion detection.
What is eLoc?
eLoc by MapmyIndia is simply put, the Aadhaar of addresses. eLoc of any place, be it a building/flat/office/business/city/village/locality/road and so on, is a short, 6 character code (for e.g. 8GDTYX, or MMI000), which is easy to remember, share, type and provide.Behind the convenience and simplicity of eLoclies the huge power of India’s most comprehensive, accurate and precise door-step level, 3D, digital map database and turn-by-turn navigation solution built by MapmyIndia. Hence, the power of eLoc is such that when a person, business or official searches for a place by entering its eLoc, they can see the precise map location of that place, get turn-by-turn directions to the exact entrance doorstep of that place, and also see information about that place besides its location, such as reviews, photos and other information provided by the place’s owner, businesses and governments. More information on what is an eLoc, how it works, and how one can access, use and share a place’s eloc is available at http://www.mapmyindia.com/eloc
MapmyIndia has privately invested over 200 crores over the last 20+ years in advanced mapping technologies and professional field surveys to create India’s most comprehensive digital address database, as a result of which over 2 crore and counting eLocs, across all 7000+ urban towns and 6+ lakh villages in rural India, are already readily available for individual, business and government users to use instantly, for free. This nulls the need for significant future investment by public and private entities in creation of a digital map and address database. For new places that come up, or those that change or shut, or those missing in MapmyIndia’s database, users can add them by visiting http://maps.mapmyindia.com on their browser or by using the MapmyIndia mobile app across Android, iOS and Windows platforms, and MapmyIndia will continue to professionally verify and validate those contributions.
Those interested in learning more about eLoc by MapmyIndia, checking the eLoc of places they care about like their home, office, or other destinations they need to visit, as well as those interested in partnering with MapmyIndia to bring the benefits of eLoc to everyone, should visit http://www.mapmyindia.com/eloc
Braille Atlas for Visually Impaired
The Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Dr. Harsh Vardhan released the Special Edition of “Atlas for Visually Impaired (India)” in English Braille today in New Delhi. This Braille Atlas has been prepared by National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation (NATMO) under Department of Science & Technology.
(Image Source : Google)
The Minister expressed happiness at the production of these Atlases. He said these atlases will be distributed to various schools across the country for educating the students with visual challenges.
Dr. Harsh Vardhan said that all departments of Government will work to implement this. Efforts are being made to make these atlases more cost effective than the current price of Rs.600/- per atlas with 20 maps now. Silk screen printing used to prepare these atlases is unique to India, he added.
In the Braille Atlas, maps are raised and embossed with simple lines and point symbols to facilitate its users to realize the location and area coverage easily distinguishable in terms of shapes and textures. The legend and reference is placed on the map in Braille script to navigate the map. About 20 maps on different themes of physical, socio-economic and cultural aspects such as river system, natural vegetation, Metropolitan cities, Roads and Railways, Food crops and cash crops have been incorporated in the atlas with write-ups on every map as ready reference. This Atlas has been bestowed with National award for S&T intervention in empowering the physically challenged by the Prime Minister on 3rd January, 2017 in Indian Science Congress held in Tirupati.
NATMO has recently walked ahead to prepare Braille atlases for visually impaired persons. NATMO’s long effort from metallic tactile maps to silk-screen printing technology to prepare a full volume of atlas is perhaps unique in the World. NATMO’s aim is to transmit scientific information in the form of maps and atlases in a cost-effective manner, as more than 50 lakh visually challenged citizens of our country are mainly from low-income group. Till date their knowledge is constrained within books and literatures. Enriched with this experience, they will be able to understand the Indian geographical contours and will be empowered with wealth of knowledge.
National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation (NATMO) is the premier agency of applied Geo-Spatial technology and pioneer in Thematic Mapping and Atlas Cartography under Department of Science & Technology(Ministry of Science & Technology) engaged in preparing different thematic maps and atlases and other documents on national, state, district, block level and many other monograms. The contribution made by NATMO in developing the thematic maps/ data is being regularly used by the decision makers in the entire country at districts and sub-divisions levels for implementing the developmental schemes as well as by the researchers, students and common people.
BRICS Nations Agreed to share spatial data from Remote Sensing satellite
Member nations of the five-nation group BRICS have agreed to share spatial data on natural resources from their remote-sensing satellites.
The move is geared towards making optimal use of space assets. According to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials the nations will be exchanging data, including images of natural resources. Though only four of them – Brazil, Russia, India and China have remote-sensing satellites in the sun-synchronous orbit, they will give data to South Africa (SA) as it does not have a satellite of its own. Top space officials of BRICS met at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Scientific and Technical Subcommittee’s 54th session at Vienna in Austria from January 30 to February 10.
Through this particular agreement, BRICS will be able to share the resources and bring developing nations under the umbrella of space, opening possibilities of using excess capacities in the satellites. As the BRIC satellites spin around the earth in lower orbit, capturing enormous data on the planet and its resources in each country, they will share it in real time for mutual benefit.
India plans to use its Resourcesat-2A, launched on December 7 from its spaceport Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, as part of its earth observation satellite for remote sensing data services to global users.
Going forward, the space agencies of the BRICS nations plan to share similar data for tele-education, tele-medicine and a host of societal applications, utilising the excess capacity of their respective satellites for their mutual benefit.
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