GIS

Tirupati, India Smart City Project

NEC Corporation India has launched the latest Smart City project in Tirupati, India.

It is implementing ICT solutions throughout the city and setting up a City Operations Centre (COC) in Tirupati. The ICT solutions, including integrated services and a Unified Command and Control Centre, will facilitate real-time data collection & analysis and two-way communications, which will help to provide more efficient responses to issues related to safety, security, healthcare, the environment, and more. Furthermore, a City Network Infrastructure and On Premises Data Centre will help to implement a more data-backed decision-making mechanism for the operations of the city. www.nec.com

Flood Hazard Web GIS Application in Japan

Higashihiroshima City, in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, recently hosts a flood hazard and disaster prevention related web GIS application developed with the TatukGIS Developer Kernel (DK) for ASP.NET edition that focuses on flood risks posed by hundreds of agricultural irrigation reservoirs. The application enables anyone in the vicinity of a reservoir to understand in advance the flooding impact if the reservoir fails – such as due to an earthquake or heavy rainfall during a typhoon. Citizens can easily understand if their home or business is at risk, how much time following a reservoir collapse before flood water reaches their location (i.e., time available to evacuate), projected depth of the inundation (represented using color gradients), and optimal evacuation path to higher ground and emergency shelter.

The territory of Higashihiroshima City contains 1,821 priority-level agricultural reservoirs, more than any other city in the Hiroshima Prefecture, and approximately 2,200 smaller irrigation ponds. According to the Higashihiroshima Agriculture and Forestry Division, 48 agricultural reservoirs in Hiroshima Prefecture collapsed in 2018, sometimes resulting in deaths. It is hoped this application will help citizens become more aware in advance of the risk posed by nearby reservoirs and be better prepared. www.tatukgis.com

SAP and Google Cloud enhance open data cloud

SAP and Google Cloud announced an expanded partnership at Google Cloud Next, to help enterprises harness the power of data and generative AI. The companies will combine their integrated open data cloud using the SAP Datasphere solution with Vertex AI to launch new generative AI-powered industry solutions starting with automotive and introduce new capabilities to help customers improve sustainability performance. By integrating generative AI into SAP software and Google Cloud’s open data cloud, customers can deploy powerful new solutions that use information from SAP Datasphere and from virtually any other data source to significantly improve business insights, analysis, and decision-making. https://news.sap.com

UNDP India partnership with NABARD

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to co-create data-driven innovations in agriculture and food systems to support smallholder farmers. Both organizations will work to improve the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers by sharing open-source data for product development, transfer of technology and supporting the framing of agrarian policies.

Under the MoU, UNDP will leverage its expertise in open innovations, data collaboratives, data science approaches and global know-how for supporting NABARD’s agenda of embedding data-driven decisionmaking in agriculture investments The partnership includes enhancing and disseminating collaborative digital public goods like DiCRA (Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture). DiCRA is a collaborative digital public good which provides open access to key geospatial datasets pertinent to climate resilient agriculture. DiCRA, which is curated by UNDP and partner organizations to inform public investments in agriculture, already provides intelligence on climate resilience for 50 million hectares of farmland across India. By partnering for enhancing and scaling its use, NABARD will host and maintain the DiCRA platform and use its key geospatial datasets for policy making, research and development activities, with UNDP’s technical support. www.undp.org

OGC release the IGIF-(M) SDI maturity roadmap

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has released the first iteration of the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap and supporting materials for community consideration and engagement across not only the marine domain, but any geospatial domain connected to the oceans.

Developed as part of OGC’s ongoing Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (FMSDI) Initiative, the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework – (Marine) Spatial Data Infrastructure (IGIF-(M)SDI) Maturity Roadmap is a quick-start guide for nations and marine organizations that seeks to advance and simplify efforts in Marine SDI and ensure their alignment with the UN-IGIF principles.

One of the key messages of the document is that an (M)SDI is a continual journey and not an “end state” of expensive technological solutions. The document asserts that nations are sovereign in what manner of (M)SDI they genuinely need for their national requirements, and not governed by an externally imposed or presumed level of technological sophistication. www.ogc.org