Fastest Growing City:Dhaka

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

Global Post reports that Dhaka is fastest growing urban centre of the world.

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Posted in Countries, Urban Studies | 1 Comment

And Now a Plane as a Satellite

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

The U.S. military wants a drone plane that can stay aloft for five years.Boeing, which is building a prototype, intends to test fly its solar-electric drone called Solar Eagle in 2013.The plane could serve as a pseudo-satellite for communications, reconnaissance and Earth-monitoring.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is paying The Boeing Co., $89 million to build a huge, solar-powered, robotic aircraft that can carry 1,000 pounds of sensors and other payloads for five years at a stretch.

Solar Eagle is intended to soar 65,000 feet above the planet or higher — about twice the altitude of commercial jet aircraft. From that vantage point, it can serve as a platform for remote sensing, reconnaissance and communications, as well as stage scientific experiments.

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Posted in Alternative Energy, News, Remote Sensing 101, Satellites | Leave a comment

Future Indian City Lavasa brought to You by GIS

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

Lavasa, a hill city currently under development near Pune, is setting up the benchmark for future Indian cities. The core idea of Lavasa master plan is to create a hill city to Live – Learn – Work – Play. Lavasa is pioneering in providing excellent quality of life to its residents. A well designed public realm is the hallmark of Lavasa. GIS has enabled Lavasa to sensitively incorporate the natural features in the master plan, paving the way to a sustainable and livable town. Planners in Lavasa have realised that the potential of GIS is limited not only to master planning and overall development strategy but it is also essential for the next level of detailing of public realm. Thus urban design benefits significantly from GIS which allows design innovation to not only achieve the desired effect regarding public realm but also analyse scientifically pre- and post-design situations.

Lavasa is located in the Western Ghats, on the banks of the Baji Pasalkar Reservoir behind the Varasgaon Dam (Varasgaon Dam & Reservoir) near Pune and Mumbai. The city is coming up on eight large hillocks that surround the elongated Varasgaon Dam Reservoir. Varasgaon is one of the primary sources of water for Pune city. The project covers approximately 25,000 acres (100 km2) of land. Lavasa is located within 80 minutes from Pune (approximately 50 km) and 3 hours from Mumbai (approx 180 km). There are five access routes to Lavasa, one of which is enhanced and developed

Links/Sources:

Geospatial World

Website of City

Wikipedia

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Urban Infrastructure: The time for change

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

Growth in human population and economic development strain the world’s finite resources such as land, water, materials, food and energy. To maintain and in some cases, improve our quality of life, we need to develop sustainably – such that our development meets our needs for natural resources, industrial products, energy, food, transportation, shelter, and waste management; conserves environmental quality (indoor and outdoor) and reduces growing social and economic inequities. With urbanisation estimated to grow from around 53% as of this writing to 64% by 2020 and 70% by 2050 and close to 6.3 billion people inhabiting our urban settings in the near future – how do we do it? Intrinsic to sustainable urban infrastructure design is the planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance and disposal of a city’s infrastructure.

How do we address urbanisation, existing infrastructure and new infrastructure in a synergistic manner? The question that will continually be asked is – Can we fix it, can we change it to match our future needs or is it more cost effective to raze and start over? Which option gives us the best long term ROI? And finding those answers will be an exercise in 3-dimensional (3D) geospatial decision- making.
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