Urban Studies

AMRUT Cities (Click to see the Image )

Govt of India launched ‘Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation’ (AMRUT) in 2015 with the aim of providing basic services (e.g. water supply, sewerage, urban transport) to households and build amenities for 500 cities through a set of eleven reforms with Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) as the Nodal Ministry and Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) as the focal department.

GIS based Master Plan formulation is one of the important reforms under AMRUT Mission, in which NRSC, ISRO has played a major role. Urban Studies team at NRSC has contributed to the preparation of AMRUT Design & Standards which are published on MoHUA website and are adopted as a national guideline for preparation of large-scale urban GIS database using Very High-Resolution satellite (VHRS) data.

In addition to this, NRSC is carrying out a major activity under the Mission ‘Large scale (1:4,000 scale) Urban GIS database creation of 238 AMRUT cities from 20 states / Union Territories using VHRS data’, which are to be used by respective Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) for formulation of GIS based Master Plans.

This project involves GIS Base map preparation by NRSC (completed for all 238 AMRUT cities) and handed over the data to Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) for ground verification and attribute data collection; field verification of the GIS base maps by ULBs; and Incorporation of the field information and geospatial database finalization by NRSC. So far, NRSC has finalized and delivered final GIS databases of 181 cities to ULBs for formulation of GIS based Master Plans. Illustration shows the process sequence of GIS database creation adopted for the project.

Major takeaways from this project are –hand-holding and capacity building among State Town Planning departments and ULBs through National Workshops; partnering the ULBs in the process of GIS database creation so as to make them owners of the data and responsible for its content; creation of state-of-the-art (Cloud technology based) facility at NRSC for geospatial database preparation, data storage, retrieval & dissemination; partnering and empowering private geospatial industry in GIS database creation; and development of value added products using this data for various societal applications.

The project is due for completion by March 2023.