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Find your way

A new map of Hyderabad gets all the details of the city

HELP AT HAND The book simplifies your search

This is the age of google.earth, yahoomaps, GPS (Global Positioning System) and GIS (Geographical Information System) so who wants to see a map of Hyderabad to find where is Rethibowli or where is Petla Burj or Pirzadiguda? If you are not logged into sat-navigation (one instrument costs Rs. 45,000) but still want to find your way about town without help then the Guide Map of Greater Hyderabad can be real handy.

Whether you are one of the newly moneyed folks keen to plonk down that extra dough on some realty, or you are in a car trying to find directions to a wedding hall, open the book and you will find the way.

Maybe not all that simply, first things first: the information is packaged in 149 pages and you have to browse through them before you get there.

Then it is as easy as typing a word in an Internet search engine. This happens because of the multi-disciplinary approach to map making that has been brought into play. "We have used Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite data to map out the latest spatial details such as buildings, roads and such other features. Besides, we conducted ground surveys extensively to pick up names of all such features and integrated them in to Geographical Information System (GIS). This information/map could be used for integrating in to a navigation system such as cars, trucks, ambulances etc. with the positional accuracy being available," says Subbarao Pavaluri, the director of the firm that brought out the map: IRIMT. Put in layman's words it means that the satellite imagery is overlaid on the topographical information and social information. The results are occasionally funny: like J. Vengala Rao park is shown without the water body, or some of the names like Gulzar House (it should be Houz to indicate the fountain that still exists there). But when you consider a city that is still evolving, who would have thought the spinal road between Kukatpally and HiTec City would come up so fast cutting the distance to less than half, it is impossible to have a map guide that's really up to date.

So, if you want to travel from point A to point B go to the index where the city is carved into 148 bits. Get the big picture then open the book and go to the numbered page and you can make out your location and the destination very easily.

If there is a problem then the problem is not in the map but with the city where there are multiplicity of names.

Priced at Rs. 295, the book is available in most bookshops.

SERISH NANISETTI

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