[Talk-in] Master Planning and Remote Sensing

[sumandro]

the national urban information system (NUIS) was started by the ministry 
of urban development (MoUD) in 2006. it came out of the tenth five year 
plan (2002-07) period deliberations to build a national spatial and 
social database to support decision making in urban planning and 
development tasks. the plan then was to undertake this scheme in 137 
towns/cities.

nuis is divided in two parts: (1) urban spatial information system 
(USIS), a repository of GIS maps and satellite imagery for the selected 
urban areas (to be developed and dlivered by the national mapping agency 
(NMA), survey of india); and (2) national urban databank and indicators, 
a repository of social datasets gathered through a network of local 
urban observatories (LUO) under the national urban observatory 
programme. while NMA has delivered maps of some of the cities, the 
network of LUOs are yet to start functioning.

USIS is to consist GIS maps at three scales: (1) 1:10,000 scale maps for 
preparing urban-regional development/master plans, (2) 1:2,000 scale 
maps for preparing detailed town planning schemes, and (3) 1:1,000 scale 
maps (created using ground profiling/penetrating radar) for utility 
planning.

the data bureaucratic framework is like this: NMA and local urban 
authority produces complimentary parts (in terms of scale and technology 
used) of the spatial database; attribute data is compiled by local urban 
authority is shared with state level nodal agencies where such data is 
merged into GIS database developed by NMA, the state level nodal agency 
will then ensure periodical revision of data (coming from both NMA and 
local urban authorities) and sharing the same datasets with the national 
level nodal agency (MoUD) so as create the national urban information 
system.

the objective of the scheme is to significantly raise the quality and 
quantity of data government planners can access while creating urban and 
regional master plans and other detailed plans. nowhere in the scheme, 
however, are the questions of participatory planning, messiness of land 
records, arbitrariness of governmental cartography addressed.

the present excitement about NUIS (and hence nate berg's essay), i 
think, is due to the fact that the next five year plan period is about 
to begin from this year (12th five year plan, 2012-17). all ministries 
are now busy attracting and allocating money into their projects. and 
NUIS is one of the flagship projects of MoUD.


mikel's suggestion about openstreetmap as a platform for public/private 
mapping of the cities and use of the same data in understanding the 
juxtaposed claims and hence in resolving them through urban planning is 
very exciting. but in the context of NUIS, it is a rather closed and 
opaque system where the government utilises various far-from-the-ground 
technologies to create 'accurate' and 'authoritative' maps of indian 
cities. which then inform planning of indian cities. and all this 
happens without a word about the need for participatory mapping. to me 
all this sounds rather scary.

i guess NUIS suffers from two assumptions: (1) indian cities cannot be 
planned due to lack of good quality data, and (2) master plans cannot be 
implemented due to them not being grounded in good quality data. 
unfortunately it fails to see urban politics as the realm which 
influences development of master plans and their implementation. not 
sure how better quality data (at least technically so) sitting with the 
MoUD can resolve and neutralise the political negotiations on the ground.


-------------

sumandro
ajantriks.net

On Friday 10 August 2012 04:30 PM, talk-in-request at openstreetmap.org wrote:
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>     1. Master Planning and Remote Sensing (Mikel Maron)
>     2. Re: Master Planning and Remote Sensing (Shajeer M)
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> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 12:42:39 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mikel Maron <mikel_maron at yahoo.com>
> To: "talk-in at openstreetmap.org" <talk-in at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: [Talk-in] Master Planning and Remote Sensing
> Message-ID:
> 	<1344541359.81481.YahooMailNeo at web161603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/08/master-planning-7935-indian-cities-and-towns/2835/
>
>
> Anyone heard of this, know anything about it? Any chance the imagery could be made more widely available?
>
> In my view, remote sensing and GIS in master urban plans is just one step. Digital/Offline participatory planning, starting with engagement in OpenStreetMap, could produce truly workable plans for the growth of India's cities.
>
> -Mikel
> ?
> * Mikel Maron *?+14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron
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> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 06:51:40 +0530
> From: Shajeer M <shajeer at hotmail.com>
> To: "Mikel Maron" <mikel_maron at yahoo.com>,	<talk-in at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: Re: [Talk-in] Master Planning and Remote Sensing
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>
> There are some details in here - http://urbanindia.nic.in/programme/lsg/nuis.htm
>
> From: Mikel Maron
> Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 1:12 AM
> To: talk-in at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: [Talk-in] Master Planning and Remote Sensing
>
> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/08/master-planning-7935-indian-cities-and-towns/2835/
>
>
> Anyone heard of this, know anything about it? Any chance the imagery could be made more widely available?
>
> In my view, remote sensing and GIS in master urban plans is just one step. Digital/Offline participatory planning, starting with engagement in OpenStreetMap, could produce truly workable plans for the growth of India's cities.
>
> -Mikel
>
> * Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron
>
>
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