It is true that India is a vast country with different geo-environmental and demographical pattern which makes implementation of micro-level planning very tough. The present day technologies offer a lot of scope to help in micro-level planning and provide information for local area development planning. Large scale mapping of the topographical features of any area plays a crucial role in its development. The important challenges which we normally face are: acceptance of technologies by planners and availability of skilled manpower to use the technology. Awareness and capacity building at grass roots level are required to filter down the technologies.

Initially, NRDMS was evolved to develop spatial data management technologies for integrated rural development planning and demonstrate it in the local level decision making. To achieve this, five pilot district database centers were set up in Visakhapatnam, Gurgaon, Kheda, Koraput and Chandel during 1988. Subsequently, five more such centres were set up in Pauri, Sultanpur, Alwar, Mungher and Imphal during 1990. Over the years, considering the trends in the development of spatial data technologies, NRDMS has reset its focus on the following:
• Spatial data management and analysis technologies
• Advanced technology applications in large scale spatial data gathering
• Land and water management
• Disaster mitigation – landslide hazard
• Technology transfer and capacity building
From 1996 to 2001, with the help of the UNDP, NRDMS upgraded its scientific and technical inputs. This led to development of methodologies for land use planning, infrastructure development, energy budgeting and water resource management. The development of low-cost indigenous GIS software i.e. Gram ++ was one of our prominent achievements. This was distributed to a number of universities and academic institutions for creating awareness about GIS technology among researchers.