The ISRO has a very cool portal called running, Bhuvan. I just got to find out. It was a digression from an urgent forest fire situation at hand, that I ended up at the Uttarakhand Forests Dept website, thereby led onto a Forest Fire Info page, which had a banner, saying "View Forest Fire Alert for Uttarakhand State on Bhuvan - collaborative effort between ITGC and NRSC").
The Uttarakhand forest portal homepage [on Bhvan] describes it as
While my original purpose of reporting a LIVE fire incident didn't find an end, I got busy checking out the portal, which is a lotta map data through a easy, working, live-loading form (forms are the horror of Indian govt portals, but this worked).
Though the implementation and the utility of the tool is great, live data part is lacking. I found no forest fire incidents around Nainital in the month (so far). It was the increasing incidents of these fires that got me there, to find that none go reported. I figured they do have a satellite system to monitor the forest cover and report any developing fires, but that doesn't seem likely. No such data exists. The data says, "all clean". It also reminded of other incidents of forged data, as part of some institutional laxity, and a creeping fear that we'll have an under-powered tool in the future is taking shape.
The Uttarakhand forest portal homepage [on Bhvan] describes it as
Bhuvan Uttarakhnad Forest portal provides a platform for hosting of all GIS database of Uttarakhnad Forest. It is a satellite based technology to watch over the State's forests boundaries, gives detailed location and satellite images of any area or project under various forestry schemes in the State.
It can keep an eye over activities like; Plantation, Forest Fire, Protected Areas, Asset Management, Eco-tourism, Forest rest Houses location, land Use cover, Wastelands, Map downloading facility etc. can be visualised. User can add layer over the map and take print out for planning purposes.
While my original purpose of reporting a LIVE fire incident didn't find an end, I got busy checking out the portal, which is a lotta map data through a easy, working, live-loading form (forms are the horror of Indian govt portals, but this worked).
Though the implementation and the utility of the tool is great, live data part is lacking. I found no forest fire incidents around Nainital in the month (so far). It was the increasing incidents of these fires that got me there, to find that none go reported. I figured they do have a satellite system to monitor the forest cover and report any developing fires, but that doesn't seem likely. No such data exists. The data says, "all clean". It also reminded of other incidents of forged data, as part of some institutional laxity, and a creeping fear that we'll have an under-powered tool in the future is taking shape.
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