Diamond city to have digital map, pilot project finalised

Source:Melvyn Thomas, TNN, Apr 20, 2010, 10.23pm IST

SURAT: The city of diamonds and textile is soon going to join other metropolitan cities in having a digital map. The Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has finalised a pilot project for digital map using the Geographic Information System (GIS) for Rander zone in order to keep a tab on the illegal construction and encroachments.

Official sources said the SMC's standing committee has approved the GIS mapping of Rander zone at the cost of Rs 11 lakh. The work has been given to Gandhinagar-based Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Application Geo-Informatics (BISAG).

The project will start with the identification of landmarks and then a geographical survey to cover various aspects including property and land details, drainage system, and roads. The digitised map would assist the civic planners to keep a tab on the illegal construction and encroachments.

Sources said the pilot project would be launched for Rander zone. Soon the entire city and each of the seven municipal zones would be covered.

"It would be a multi-utility digital map based on the vital data of a particular area like roads, trees, slum settlements, canals and houses. It will have information on households in each of the census blocks," said Mukesh Dalal, chairman, SMC's standing committee.

The main objective of digital mapping is to divide the section into Enumeration Area (EA) containing on an average 130 to 150 households, developing a database of geographic boundaries in digitised form with real coordinates, to reduce under coverage and over counts in census operation, to ensure the optimum use of database for digital maps which will helpful in conducting future census and sample surveys and to facilitate in dissemination of census and survey results in a thematic form.