After Technical Commission VII, ISPRS is organising this symposium in India after four years. Can you tell us the context and significance of this symposium?

There are two issues here. When we take a commission, one of the prime responsibilities is to organise a mid-term symposium. Last time, we had a symposium of Commission VII, which essentially dealt with resources and environment and remote sensing base. Similarly for Commission IV, which essentially deals with geodatabases and digital mapping, we are supposed to organise a symposium

To explain you better, I will tell you the organisation and functioning of ISPRS in detail. ISPRS’ main goal is to have a congress every four years. There are three main themes in the ISPRS – first relates to remote sensing, second to photogrammetry and third to GIS. For each of these themes, there are two commissions – one relating to science and the other to applications. That makes it six commissions. And then there are two other commissions – one on education and training and the other on acquisition, of satellite data and aerial platforms. This makes a total of eight commissions. The entire work of ISPRS is among these eight commissions. ISPRS defines the work for four years and this is distributed among the eight permanent commissions.

When a person opts for a commission, he has to give his scientific programme. Accordingly, he attracts votes and gets elected. Now, to carry out that scientific programme in the commission, we again break it up into smaller groups, called working groups. Each working group has certain set of terms of reference as to the tasks they have to accomplish. All this work ultimately should be completed before the congress. Midway to the congress, ie., after two years, the commission organises a symposium to check the progress. And every year, working groups organise their meetings to review their work. So, the first year, a working group meeting would be held, second year, a symposium of the commission, third year again a working group meeting and fourth year a congress. So, the basic significance is that at the congress, we would in a way review the work which was planned for four years.

How important are geospatial databases for sustainable development?

Let us look into sustainability at different levels – national, local and global. The database requirement at each of these levels is different. At local level, say concerning a city, the issues would be drainage, waste disposal, providing electricity etc. At national level, issues like resources and inventory are important while issues like climate and environment take precedence at global level. In that sense, not only sustainable development per se, but any development, or any issue today requires spatial information. Even in ancient times, there are maps, though they were more of artistic nature. Today, map making is quite complex - right from acquisition to representation. So, the issues have become much wider and for sustainable development, you ought to have spatial information at the level which you are looking at. That is the basic ingredient.

The need for timely and accurate geospatial information is steadily increasing due to changing requirements of the society world over. How fast is the technology catching up to acquire, store and use this information.

I believe technology is catching up fast. Probably we can say technology is little ahead and we are not optimally utilising the available technology. Consider acquisition technology. Today, we have advanced technology to produce high resolution data – 1m and even 0.6 m data. But for automatic extraction of information, technology is lagging behind. Today, you have data but you cannot automatically get information out and put it into a database. Different technologies are at different levels of evolution. If you see the technology of communication, it is well advanced. Probably we are not using it to the extent of its development. If you want maps on cell phone, technologically there is no major issue but your databases are not tuned to provide this information on your mobile in India while it is feasibility in some European countries. So, while availability of technology is one important aspect, the use of technology depends on other things too. For example, take the case of grid computing technology. To use it effectively, we need internet facility. By and large, in the last five years, we have moved pretty fast with advances in database, computer technology, communications and acquisition technology. There is advancement every where and sooner or later, it will catch up in other segments too. In my opinion, automation has still not reached that level – either for updation or for taking information from the images.