India seems to be no longer away to be a fully digital nation with the continuous development in various fields. Latest development includes satellites, Submarines and other research works. India is heading rapidly towards development.
Bhuvan is a major step taken in terms of development over the Internet by India. Bhuvan a Sanskrit word which literally means Earth in english is a geoportal which provides virtual images of entire India over the internet. Yes, currently Bhuvan is able to show images only from India and gradually ISRO is planning to cover the entire earth. It is a project started by government of India and is much similar to Google maps ,Wikimapia etc.
Just like other applications, Bhuvan lets your discover India through images by the means of which you can discover the real India and its regional information. It provides various modes to access, from societal images to interactive 3D environment. Its main aim is to provide a feel of inside India. You can fly around India with the help of Bhuvan and explore the various parts of India and its culture, society through Societal applications.
To experience Bhuvan, you will have to register first. After getting registered and login, you will have to download the Bhuvan plugin which makes it possible to use Bhuvan in your browser. The download link might probably be hard to find due to same color of the text and links, so click here to download bhuvan plugin. You need to have DirectX and .Net framework installed in your system, which should be by default in your system.
The images provided by Bhuvan are not real time, they are images combined with virtual mapping. These images are the ones taken in the last 3 years. Currently you are not allowed to add your location information to its database instead you can just browse the different locations in India. It only supports Windows platform and hence Linux, Mac users will have to wait for sometime, until they launch something more generic which supports all platforms or is platform independent.
You will be able to see the following data on Bhuvan
- Satellite imagery (LISS III , LISS IV along with metadata and Multi- temporal Data from OCM & AWiFS)
- Value added information (NADAMS – National Agricultural Drought Monitoring System), Output of flood studies for certain areas,
- Thematic information (Wastelands, Soils, watershed,water resources related maps)
- Base layers ( administrative boundaries, transport layers, water bodies, etc)
- Census information
- Metadata
In my opinion, this project should have been made open source and they could have asked people to contribute. That way the development goes faster, the bugs get filed and fixed more fast. But its matter of choice that they are keeping it close ended, but it will be good if the development doesn’t cease in the middle of something and they can complete what they have quoted. Good luck to ISRO and its team.
Happy Independence Day.
Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla
