Development and dissemination of geo-scientific information

GSI has been proactive in recognizing the strategic role of IT in today’s environment and has implemented a robust information infrastructure based on an open, state of the art technology platform. This will help GSI in automating its business processes and enhanced management of a vast volume of geoscientific data gathered over last 154 years by way of a centralized digital archive and treat these as corporate resource with well-defined access protocol. The solution facilitates knowledge creation, paper less administration, information management, dissemination of information, revenue generation, e-governance, and enhance the visibility of the organization and furthermore provide a cost-effective means of sustenance and growth. The projects launched to achieve this goal include Project GSI Net, Project GSI Portal and digital archival of Maps and Unpublished Reports. The objective was to have an all India report repository in a format overriding the inherent heterogeneity lying within data sets of different Wings and Regions. Once globally accessible this metadata should generate awareness in the outside world in a meaningful and effective way so that the data holding of the organization can be utilized for scientific and commercial purposes.

GSI Net Project envisages establishment of a secure, scalable, failsafe organization-wide networking infrastructure with inbuilt Quality of Service (QOS) for information flow in the form of voice, data and video. GSI Portal is the face of networking. It is a centralized, web-based and cost effective solution, which will provide a single point of access to all the applications in the GSI Enterprise Application suite. The GSI-Portal Project aim to re-organise the business processes, induce efficiency and transparency in the system and also meet the aspirations of "Right to Information Act" which came into effect recently.

Processing of multi-thematic data in search of solution to mitigate hazards, from societal perspective is also being taken up with equal keenness. GIS techniques are being applied on multi-thematic spatial data towards demarcation of hazard prone seismic zones in Indo-Burmese convergent margins and groundwater arsenic contaminated zones in Indo Gangetic plain, WB in two separate projects.

The Marine Geosciences database has been designed and structured and integrated with the Enterprise GIS solution. The Abstract Database for Coal resources, Glaciology and Geothermal database are in various stages of development. Project Digital Archive aiming at creation of a seamless spatial database of Geology of India at scale1:50000 has been a prioritized area of activity.

Creation of theme-based geoscientific database in several other domains such as drilling, Mining & Geochemical exploration, Coal, and new domains like Quaternary Geology extension module, Geophysics, Remote Sensing, Natural Hazard, Environmental geology and Rock sample Analysis etc is continuing. The earthquake database is being continuously updated. This database resulted in the generation of several thematic maps useful to the developers and planners for mitigation of earthquake related hazards.

GSI has been actively participating in the NSDI (National Spatial Data Infrastructure) workshops and various working group meetings. Accordingly, projects commensurate with the NSDI movement have been initiated and pursued at GSI over the last few years.

Commensurate with the GSI Information Infrastructure development and NSDI movement, a holistic approach has been adopted in developing and consolidating digital data and metadata holdings. Accordingly, strong emphasis has been put to generate, update and fine tune databases and metadatabases for different thematic domains and products. Correspondingly, institutional strengthening in the fields of GIS, Remote sensing, RDBMS and allied technologies is also in progress through an ITC collaborative venture with Training Institute - Project: INDIGEO.

Development and optimum utilization of organizational Information Infrastructure is a continuous and evolving process. It needs regular maintenance and upgradation with respect to both out-of-the box and customized components. The principal endeavour during the next five-year plan period therefore would be to maintain this 24X7 communication highway and the Portal. With growing use of this infrastructure, increase in volume of data flow and consequent demands of increasing server performance, augmentation of various hardware / software resources will become a prime necessity. All database and metadatabase structures are being fine tuned and normalized during the current plan period.