GIS for welfare and poverty eradication in Malaysia

Under the Rural Development Master Plan (RDMP), Malaysia’s Rural and Regional Development Ministry updated database of the villages as it was suggested by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. The plan aims to eradicate poverty as well as look after the welfare of the rural dwellers, said Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, Rural and Regional Development Minister, Malaysia.

Mohd Shafie said that the GIS database contained information on the area such as the number of population, number of houses, roads as well as educational facilities and hospitals. Further, he added, "The master plan can address the issues which we are trying to resolve such as the duplication of functions and responsibilities because at times the distribution of food and aid was carried out by various ministries such as the Health Ministry and the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry whereas such a massive requirement was a waste."

According to Mohd Shafie, the master plan could be taken as a guide in all plans to be implemented by all ministries and agencies involved in rural development at the national and local levels.

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IIT Mumbai’s low-cost GIS software for resource management

MUMBAI, India: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here has developed a low-cost Geographic Information System (GIS) software which can be used for resource management by community development programmes, government sectors, NGOs and industries. "The software is now made commercially available so that developing countries could make optimal use of their resources," Dr Parvatham Venkatachalam of IIT said. The software will be distributed in the market by Bhugol GIS Pvt Ltd under the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship of IIT. The software is a GIS planning tool and is tailor-made for users with wide range of operations such as map database creation, query and retrieval, analysis and visualization. Giving examples of some of its uses, Venkatachalam said, "The software can help calculate the shortest route, locate the most vulnerable areas in flood prone Mumbai before every monsoon, indicate what crop a farmer can cultivate in his land so that he gets better yield or what is the optimal location for building a water harvesting structure in a village."

Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com

Bangalore sewerage board implements GIS in core area 14 May 2009

Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has implemented GIS in the core city area. This is the biggest e-governance initiative of the Board and it will take another two years to complete the entire BBMP limits. The GIS will help BWSSB to store, access, query and analyse data, which in turn will help to take quick management decisions.The BWSSB has been working on the GIS for the last seven years. So far, the board has updated all details covering the 229 sq km of the core city and is in process of dovetailing the GIS with revenue billing, employee database and other details. According to the BWSSB officials, the data related to the newly added areas of the city would be updated in the GIS by 2011. GIS performs four kinds of operations — data integration, data storage, data processing and data outputs. Data processing includes data viewing, data querying, data crossover and spatial analysis.At present, 22 layers of information are available with BWSSB. The most important among them are water supply features like water pipes, valves, reservoirs, fire hydrants, and pumping and sewage features like sewers, manholes, connections in cross roads, consumers, administrative boundaries and BWSSB offices.GIS provides solutions to implementing a sustainable and durable water supply and sewerage network management information system, and acquiring geographic description and analytical knowledge of BWSSB’s assets, both over ground and underground.

Source : http://www.expressbuzz.com

Mumbai local body to use GIS to detect underground water leakages

MUMBAI, India: The first pilot project by Brihan Mumbai Mahanagarpalika (BMC), the city’s civic body, to detect underground leakages in pipelines will begin in coming few days. GIS is going to be one of the components of the techniques being applied, along with sound sensors and ground penetration radars (GPRs).

Detection of leakages is part of BMC's plan to conduct a water audit aimed at studying the existing infrastructure for water supply and gauge the extent of wastage. The pilot project will be implemented in areas between Goregaon and Dahisar. "After we carry out GIS mapping, we will know the exact location of utilities following which the details will be available,'' said a senior civic official. 


Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Malaysia uses satellite to fight illegal logging: report

Malaysia is zooming in on forests with a satellite in order to fight illegal logging which its government says is harming the major timber exporting country, a report said. Darus Ahmad, deputy director-general with the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency, said the "eye in the sky" programme was put in place in October. "There is always criticisms that our forests are diminishing," he was quoted as saying by the New Sunday Times newspaper. Darus said that using satellite images the authorities can establish a national forest inventory of the country's total area of forest cover.

They can then check whether logging in a particular area is legal or not, he said, adding that the facility was currently available in the western peninsular part of Malaysia only.

Darus also said the system can be used to prevent air pollution by detecting forest fires and illegal land clearing. In the 1990s alone, Malaysia lost more than 13 percent of its forests, with much of the deforestation on the island of Borneo, which it shares with Indonesia and Brunei. The World Wildlife Fund at the time estimated that illegally logged trees made up about one third of Malaysia's timber exports.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last year pledged not to indiscriminately approve logging licences, amid mounting concern that clearances are threatening endangered species and tribal communities. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, who also heads the National Forestry Council, later warned that illegal logging could undermine Malaysia.

"It can jeopardise our efforts to preserve biodiversity, flora and fauna and have an impact on global warming. At the international level, illegal logging portrays a negative image of our country," he said.

"It can harm our national economy as the timber industry produces 23 billion ringgit (6.8 billion dollars) worth of wood-based products a year," he added.

The European Union market accounts for about 30 percent of Malaysia's annual timber exports.


Source : http://www.google.com

Remote Sensing-Electromagnetic Spectrum:Transmittance, Absorptance, and Reflectance

Any beam of photons from some source passing through medium 1 (usually air) that impinges upon an object or target (medium 2) will experience one or more reactions that are summarized in this diagram:

Some objects are capable of transmitting the light through their bulk without significant diminution (note how the beam bends twice at the medium 1/medium 2 interface but emerges at the same angle as entry). Other materials cause the light energy to be absorbed (and in part emitted as longer wavelength radiation). Or, the light can be reflected at the same angle as it formed on approach. Commonly the nature of the object's surface (owing to microscopic roughness) causes it to be scattered in all directions.

The primary source of energy that illuminates natural targets is the Sun. Solar irradiation (also called insolation) arrives at Earth at wavelengths which are determined by the photospheric temperature of the sun (peaking near 5600 °C). The main wavelength interval is between 200 and 3400 nm (0.2 and 3.4 µm), with the maximum power input close to 480 nm (0.48 µm), which is in the visible green region. As solar rays arrive at the Earth, the atmosphere absorbs or backscatters a fraction of them and transmits the remainder.

Upon striking the land and ocean surface (and objects thereon), and atmospheric targets, such as air, moisture, and clouds, the incoming radiation (irradiance) partitions into three modes of energy-interaction response: 

(1) Transmittance (τ) - some fraction (up to 100%) of the radiation penetrates into certain surface materials such as water and if the material is transparent and thin in one dimension, normally passes through, generally with some diminution. 

(2) Absorptance (α) - some radiation is absorbed through electron or molecular reactions within the medium ; a portion of this energy is then re-emitted, usually at longer wavelengths, and some of it remains and heats the target; 

(3) Reflectance (ρ) - some radiation (commonly 100%) reflects (moves away from the target) at specific angles and/or scatters away from the target at various angles, depending on the surface roughness and the angle of incidence of the rays. 

Because they involve ratios (to irradiance), these three parameters are dimensionless numbers (between 0 and 1), but are commonly expressed as percentages. Following the Law of Conservation of Energy: τ + α + ρ = 1. 

A fourth situation, when the emitted radiation results from internal atomic/molecular excitation, usually related to the heat state of a body, is a thermal process. The theory underlying thermal remote sensing is treated in Section 9.

When a remote sensing instrument has a line-of-sight with an object that is reflecting solar energy, then the instrument collects that reflected energy and records the observation. Most remote sensing systems are designed to collect reflected radiation

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Myanmar’s Cyclone-Damaged Rice Production Regions Monitored with GIS

Subsequent to Cyclone Nargis, a category 3 tropical storm that struck the low-lying and heavily populated coastline of Myanmar on May 2, 2008, the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began producing a series of geographic information system (GIS)-based maps of the damaged agricultural areas to accompany its commodity intelligence reports. Published on the FAS Web site, these maps are created using geospatial data and the technology found in ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop software. 

The mission of FAS is to improve foreign market access to U.S. agricultural products, build new markets, improve the competitive position of U.S. agriculture in the global marketplace, and provide food aid and technical assistance to foreign countries. FAS achieves a part of this mission by analyzing global crop production capacity with remote-sensing and GIS tools and by issuing commodity intelligence reports highlighting current international crop conditions. GIS-based maps, available in PDF format, provide a visualization of the analysis performed and often serve as each report’s basis. The commodity intelligence reports issued for the country formerly known as Burma focus on Myanmar’s major rice-producing areas, which have suffered saltwater flooding and heavy rainfall as a result of the cyclone. 

The project included satellite imagery obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite to delineate the postcyclone flooding region. This imagery was combined with rice land-cover classification data from the Landsat satellite program. FAS used ArcGIS to perform spatial analysis and create maps of the damaged rice production regions of Myanmar. These maps revealed the cyclone’s effect on cropland and livestock, the severity of flooding, and the rate of cropland recovery. The United Nations and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) are using the maps to evaluate the scope of the cyclone’s impact. The information is also been of great interest to the international agriculture industry for determining market impacts. 

“Our GIS maps and flood classification data show that the areas originally inundated by the storm account for approximately 1.7 million hectares of rice, 24 percent of the national rice area, or roughly 2.5 million tons of rice production on a milled basis,” says FAS international crop assessment analyst Michael Shean. “The core region most severely damaged by the tidal wave and high winds, however, accounted for approximately 900,000 hectares of rice land, 13 percent of the national rice area, and roughly 1.35 million tons of milled rice production. In addition, field reports from inside the affected region indicate that within these rice production areas, large numbers of villages were destroyed along with much of their food stocks, livestock, and farming supplies.”

A commodity intelligence report and maps issued June 10, 2008, demonstrate that approximately 80 percent of the original inundated rice production area is still affected by some degree of flooding, though conditions in the core damage zone had improved considerably, with only 418,000 hectares, or 46 percent of the original area, still showing flood effects. FAS will continue to produce reports and maps and perform analysis of Myanmar’s rice production regions as new data becomes available. 

As a complete GIS, ArcGIS allows organizations such as USDA to author data, maps, 
globes, and models on the desktop; serve them to a GIS server; and use them through Web, desktop, and mobile clients. The ArcGIS family of products includes desktop, server, mobile, and online GIS as well as ESRI data. 

Source : http://www.esri.com/

MAP ANALYSIS

 
     ●ANALYSIS - What & Why? :
  The heart of GIS is the analytical capabilities of the system. What distinguish the GIS system from other information system are
  its spatial analysis functions. Although the data input is, in general, the most time consuming part, it is for data analysis that 
  GIS is used. The analysis functions use the spatial and non-spatial attributes in the database to answer questions about the real 
  world. Geographic analysis facilitates the study of real-world processes by developing and applying models. Such models
  illuminate the underlying trends in geographic data and thus make new information available. Results of geographic analysis can
  be communicated with the help of maps, or both. 

  The organization of database into map layers is not simply for reasons of organizational clarity, rather it is to provide rapid access
  to data elements required for geographic analysis. The objective of geographic analysis is to transform data into useful information
  to satisfy the requirements or objectives of decision-makers at all levels in terms of detail. An important use of the analysis is the 
  possibility of predicting events in another location or at another point in time. 

  ●ANALYSIS -How? 
  Before commencing geographic analysis, one needs to assess the problem and establish an objective. The analysis requires 
  step-by-step procedures to arrive at the conclusions. The range of geographical analysis procedures can be subdivided into the
  following categories.  

  o Database Query. o Overlay. o Proximity analysis.  

  o Network analysis. o Digital Terrain Model. o Statistical and Tabular Analysis. 

   ● Use of Spatial Analysis: It helps us to: 

  o Identify trends on the data.

  o Create new relationships from the data. 

  o View complex relationships between data sets. 

  o Make better decisions. 

 
  ●Geographic Analysis: 
  It is the analysis of problems with some Geographic Aspects. 

  o Alternatives are geographic locations or areas. 

  o Decisions would affect locations or areas. 

  o Geographic relationships are important in decision-making or modeling. 
read on

LIFECYCLE OF A GIS (PLANNING GIS)

 
  Successful implementation of GIS requires planning the project before its actual implementation. Planning leads to a 
  better structured and organized system.

 



   
  Phase 1-Planning
  A planning process is the first stage in the life cycle. This phase involves a systematic review of users, their data, and their 
  information needs. Decision makers are told about the costs and benefits of GIS and to include potential users in the 
  planning process so that they receive an overview of the technology. 
 
  Phase 2-System Design 
  The design phase matches user needs to GIS functionality. Design includes not only selection of hardware and software, but
  also the design of the GIS spatial and attribute database. A Relational database is generally used for the GIS. The 
  Database design will include specifications for scale, projection, and coordinate systems. Data is be tracked using a
  "Data Dictionary." During the design phase an incremental plan is often used for implementation of the technology. Incremental
  implementation means that users will build a GIS piece-by-piece. In some cases a ‘Prototype’ is developed so that refinements 
  can be made before finalizing the fully implemented system. 
 
  Phase 3-Implementation 
  During the implementation phase, attention to all user needs must be provided through training and education. Hands-on users 
  must be trained to utilize and maintain the system and the database. All types of users should be made cognizant of how the
  GIS will affect them and their data processing tasks. They must also be made aware of the changes that GIS will introduce 
  in the area of information generation and decision making.

 
  Phase 4-Maintenance 
  Finally, a GIS application must be maintained and kept current in terms of data and user support. In some cases, a GIS is 
  designed to meet the needs of a specific, finite project. In other instances, GIS is used to support an on-going mission or 
  program. In the former case, the GIS application will terminate once the project is completed and maintenance will probably 
  not be an issue. However, even if the initial GIS application is no longer being utilized, the data generated for the initial 
  project may be useful to other projects or users. In those instances, a current data dictionary will be vital for determining the 
  utility of the existing digital data for other uses. 

  In the case of an on-going GIS effort the system must be kept up-to-date in order to fulfill its design goals. Maintenance includes
  updating hardware and software, adding new data and updating existing data records, and keeping users current in terms of 
  system functionality

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THE NEED FOR GIS

Any organization, government private is in some way or another strongly linked to the geography in which it operates. A GIS that
has been designed in a proper manner has the capability of providing quick and easy access to large volumes of data of these
geographical features. The user can access & select information by area or by theme to merge one data set with another, to
analyze spatial characteristics of data, to search for particular features, to update quickly and cheaply and asses alternatives.

In simpler terms, GIS allows the user to understand geographic information in an easy manner without having to go
through large volumes of confusing data that is in tabular form. Visualizing the geography of a particular location is
no doubt easier that trying to analyze raw data.

The potential and substantial benefits of using GIS makes it a very important tool making the work of any
organization easier and more productive. Some of the potential benefits of GIS are:
♦ Opportunity to reduce sets of manual maps held and associated storage costs.
♦ Faster and more extensive access to geographic information.
♦ Improved analysis e.g.of areas, distances, patterns, etc.
♦ Better communication of information to public officers, members.
♦ Improved quality of services.
♦ Better targeting and coordination of services.
♦ Improved productivity in providing public information.
♦ Improved efficiency in updating maps.
♦ The ability to track and monitor growth and development over time.
♦Improved ability to aggregate data for specific sub areas.

Thus GIS’s have become indispensable tools for governance, commerce, and environmental and social scien

Map Analysis in GIS

ANALYSIS - What & Why? :
The heart of GIS is the analytical capabilities of the system. What distinguish the GIS system from other information system are
its spatial analysis functions. Although the data input is, in general, the most time consuming part, it is for data analysis that
GIS is used. The analysis functions use the spatial and non-spatial attributes in the database to answer questions about the real
world. Geographic analysis facilitates the study of real-world processes by developing and applying models. Such models
illuminate the underlying trends in geographic data and thus make new information available. Results of geographic analysis can
be communicated with the help of maps, or both.

The organization of database into map layers is not simply for reasons of organizational clarity, rather it is to provide rapid access
to data elements required for geographic analysis. The objective of geographic analysis is to transform data into useful information
to satisfy the requirements or objectives of decision-makers at all levels in terms of detail. An important use of the analysis is the
possibility of predicting events in another location or at another point in time.

●ANALYSIS -How?
Before commencing geographic analysis, one needs to assess the problem and establish an objective. The analysis requires
step-by-step procedures to arrive at the conclusions. The range of geographical analysis procedures can be subdivided into the
following categories.

o Database Query. o Overlay. o Proximity analysis.

o Network analysis. o Digital Terrain Model. o Statistical and Tabular Analysis.

● Use of Spatial Analysis: It helps us to:

o Identify trends on the data.

o Create new relationships from the data.

o View complex relationships between data sets.

o Make better decisions.


●Geographic Analysis:
It is the analysis of problems with some Geographic Aspects.

o Alternatives are geographic locations or areas.

o Decisions would affect locations or areas.

o Geographic relationships are important in decision-making or modeling.

Some examples of its applications:
o Nearest Neighbour.
o Network distances.
o Planar distances.

 
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What is GIS?

GIS allows us to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts.

A GIS helps you answer questions and solve problems by looking at your data in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared.

GIS technology can be integrated into any enterprise information system framework.

Three Views of a GIS

A GIS is most often associated with a map. A map, however, is only one way you can work with geographic data in a GIS, and only one type of product generated by a GIS. A GIS can provide a great deal more problem-solving capabilities than using a simple mapping program or adding data to an online mapping tool (creating a "mash-up").

A GIS can be viewed in three ways:
The Database View: A GIS is a unique kind of database of the world—a geographic database (geodatabase). It is an "Information System for Geography." Fundamentally, a GIS is based on a structured database that describes the world in geographic terms.


The Map View: A GIS is a set of intelligent maps and other views that show features and feature relationships on the earth's surface. Maps of the underlying geographic information can be constructed and used as "windows into the database" to support queries, analysis, and editing of the information. Learn more.


The Model View: A GIS is a set of information transformation tools that derive new geographic datasets from existing datasets. These geoprocessing functions take information from existing datasets, apply analytic functions, and write results into new derived datasets. Learn more.



By combining data and applying some analytic rules, you can create a model that helps answer the question you have posed. In the example below, GPS and GIS were used to accurately model the expected location and distribution of debris for the Space Shuttle Columbia, which broke up upon re-entry over eastern Texas on February 1, 2003. Learn more about this project.

Together, these three views are critical parts of an intelligent GIS and are used at varying levels in all GIS applications
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