Cyclone Hudhud, which ravaged Visakhapatnam and other coastal areas recently, lent a big boost to the Indian Space Research Organisation’s crowd sourcing project. In a span of three days, Bhuvan, a geoportal of the ISRO, received more than 25,000 images uploaded by the people of the region.
The images as well as the descriptive updates were uploaded via the Bhuvan website and the mobile application from the time the cyclone made landfall.
Bhuvan features a host of services covering viualisation, free data download, thematic map display, crowd sourcing and GIS applications. Bhuvan’s unique assistance during Hudhud was explained at one of the sessions at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Hyderabad on Saturday during their technical fest ‘NVision’.
ISRO staff who were present during the session told the student gathering that Cyclone Hudhud was Bhuvan’s biggest crowd sourcing project during a disaster. How this data was passed on to the government and local NGOs, and the importance of the engagement was also highlighted during the session.
The students were encouraged to volunteer for various services like development as well validate content uploaded by various users. The space agency’s staff also informed that they plan to set up various local centres in each State for better segregation of data.
The ‘NVision’ fest, which began on Saturday, will have more than 35 technical events, paper presentations, contests as well as cultural events as part of their two-day event.
Among the many stalls, the one by DRDL (Defence Research and Development Laboratory) stole the show. A collection of miniature models of the missiles developed by the DRDL like Akash, Nag, Brahmos and Astra were on display for the students.
