City-based NARSA develops website a la Google Earth

Hyderabad, Aug 13 :

  The Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) has launched "Bhuvan" a mapping application website like Google Earth, which promises to give betterGoogle Earthimages of India and provides India specific features.

What is significant in this aspect is that the Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), which is a part of Isro, had a lead role in designing and developing 'Bhuvan'.
"We were extremely enthusiastic and right from the word go our focus was that it should be useful to users in India," said Dr V Jayaraman, Director of the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) when TNN has contacted him in Hyderabad.

Bhuvan, which means earth in Sanskrit, allows users to see any part of the subcontinent barring sensitive locations such as military and nuclear installations. The 3D mapping tool uses images taken a year ago by Isro's seven remote sensing satellites, including Cartosat-1 and Cartosat-2. The satellites can even capture the images of objects as small as a car on a road.

Bhuvan displays satellite images of varying resolution of India's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment. The degree of resolution showcased is based on the points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered up to at least six meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters from Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWifs). Bhuvan maps up to 10 meters compared to 200 meters of Google and 50 meters of Wikipedia.

Advanced functionalities which will be provided in the future are urban design tools, contour map and terrain profile. Isro has also started preparations for a mission to Mars within the next six years. It is looking at launch opportunities between 2013 and 2015, a senior Isro official said.