The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Use satellite technology for water management

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 04, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Use satellite technology for water management

Special Correspondent

ISRO director says scientific water harvesting will be the best solution to water shortage in State

SCIENTIFIC VISION: G. Madhavan Nair, chairman, ISRO, delivering the eighth Dr. S. Srinivasan Memorial Lecture in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair has called for the application of satellite technology for better water management in the State.

Delivering the 8th Dr. S. Srinivasan Memorial Lecture on ‘Indian Space Programme, addressing the development needs’ under the aegis of the Thiruvananthapuram Chapter of the Aeronautical Society of India here on Tuesday, he said that the rich rainfall received in Kerala was spread over a short duration of three months and most of the water went unutilised.

He felt that scientific water harvesting would be the best solution for the water shortage in the State.

He said that Karnataka had set a good example in this area. The community-driven Sujala Watershed Development programme implemented by the Government of Karnataka with World Bank assistance, implemented in five drought-prone districts covering an area of around 0.5 Mha., was benefiting over 4,00,000 households.

Satellite remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) were operationally used in the project from the early stages of watershed prioritisation, database and query system development to project action plan generation.

The unique feature of the project was the way remote sensing, GIS and Management Information System (MIS) were dynamically linked with impact assessment, both in terms of development of natural resources as well as socio-economic indicators.

He recalled the painstaking experiences and the able leadership of Dr. Srinivasan, who guided several programmes to success.

He mentioned the various space application initiatives in the country, which were reaping rich benefits for ordinary people. The skill development programme through Village Resource Centres (VRC) was a good model, which could be emulated by other States.

Artisans trained under this programme were earning a decent livelihood. Non-governmental agencies could use this network for the benefit of ordinary people.

So far, more than 260 VRCs had been set up linked through INSAT in 13 States/ Union Territories and another 121 VRCs were in the process of being set up. ISRO’s telemedicine network enabled many poor rural villagers hitherto denied quality medical services to get the best medical services available in the country.

The ISRO telemedicine network was expanding to various regions in the country and now 230 hospitals, 190 of them in rural areas, were networked to 40 super-specialty hospitals and it had become one of the most visible and talked-about sociological applications in the world today.

EDUSAT was exclusively meant for providing connectivity to school, college and higher levels of education and also support non-formal education and developmental communications.

There were at present 44 networks with13,827 receive-only classrooms. There was ample space for many more educational institutions to be connected. A concerted effort from the user agencies could reap better reward from these dedicated satellites.

In the technical session that followed, B.N. Suresh, Director, VSSC, and T.K. Alex, Director, LEOS, delivered lectures on space transportation systems and advances in aerospace sensor technologies.

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