Geoinformatics is the umbrella expression for remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS). It is the science and the technology which develops and uses information science infrastructure to address the problems of geography, cartography, geosciences and related branches of science and engineering. Geo-information system has diverse uses viz. agriculture, archaeology, environment, geology, health, land information system, military, urban and rural development, transpiration, telecommunication, power, water resource, natural and human-made disasters, oil and natural gas, banking and insurance, business geographies, mobile mapping and much more. Typically, geospatial analytics makes obtaining insights from analytics more convenient and more spontaneous. When one can pinpoint events and trends on a map, quite literally, it is reasonable to concede critical information and plan a course of action accordingly.
To discuss the mind-blowing diversities of geoinformatics and its unthinkable uses, we hosted area experts Prof. V.B.S. Chandel and Mr. R.N. Tiwari for a day-long session. Prof. Chandel is an Assistant Professor at Centre of Advanced Study in Geography, Panjab University, keenly interested in geoenvironmental studies, his research expertise spreads across the areas of natural hazards and disaster studies, mountain landscapes and nature-human interactions. Mr. Tiwari is the head of the GIS department, NETRA Institute of Geoinformatics Management and Technologies Foundation, New Delhi. He is actively involved in teaching, research & development in Digital Photogrammetry, techniques such as Surveying Engineering and much more for over ten years now.
“It turned out to be very interesting, and we gained much knowledge about how science is evolving and supporting the conservation of our endangered biodiversity,” said Harshit Grover, first year liberal arts student at FVI. Shagun Gosain, another attendee of the seminar, quotes, “We also learnt how these GIS tools are used to plan the layout of cities which are being developed and how this technology helps and contributes in monitoring and controlling buildings, water bodies, and other geographical locations in and around the world.”
As technological progressions evolve, the world will see a convergence of geospatial technologies with artificial intelligence along with its subsets, machine learning and deep learning. Though these cutting-edge technologies are still in their infancy, industry players need to start embracing the impact of these solutions in the future. With such substantial forthcoming implications, one can say that geoinformatics would be the necessity of the future to prepare the leaders of tomorrow, today!
