The Chennai Corporation’s efforts at technology-aided infrastructure development have got a fillip with the Survey of India completing the digitalised mapping of a majority of the city’s area. Survery of India has submitted 146 sq km of digitised maps of the city. The agency’s geo spatial data centre in the city is all set to complete the remaining 26 sq kms by the end of August. The digitial map, on a scale of 1:1000 is part of the GIS enabled services to help government departments to formulate schemes and plan infrastructure development. The utility mapping project of the Union Planning Commission was formulated with an objective to create large-scale digital maps with data like water, sewage, electricity, police and fire superimposed on them with the support of service agencies, like the corporation, Metrowater, Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and the police. The National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), Hyderabad had completed aerial photography of Greater Chennai in April 2007. Following clearance from the Defence, NRSA handed over the photos to the Survey of India, for digitising the map with additional attributes through physical survey. About 50 technical staff from various states like Rajasthan and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh prepared field attributes like names of streets and landmarks. Corporation properties like public convenience, ward offices, health posts, schools, community halls and street lights will be added soon. The civic agency has also floated tenders to survey the field attributes for another 50 sq km for which digitised maps are available. At present, the agency has data only on paper maps, which are inaccurate and difficult to manage.

Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com