Giving a further fillip to the smart city image of Visakhapanam, digital mapping of the entire GVMC area, including Bheemunipatnam and Visakhapatnam, has been taken up.
As a part of the project using GIS, base maps of the area will be created through aerial photography.
The base maps will have 59 thematic layers like buildings, roads, vacant lands, pipelines, sewer lines, drainage and lampposts, it is learnt.
The base maps will be provided to the Command and Communication Centre of GVMC being set up as a part of the Smart City Project of Visakhapatnam and can be used by any department of the corporation.
For around five lakh properties geo-tagging and fixing of geo-coordinates will be done as a part of the project, taken up by the Centre for Studies on Bay of Bengal of Andhra University as a research and development project.
The centre, with P. Rama Rao as its director and P. Rajendra Prasad as chief consultant, has been selected for the project after calling for expression of interest in which ASCI, Osmania University and IIIT, Hyderabad, participated.
GVMC will pay ₹1.97 crore to the project from its own funds.
Aerial photography has been chosen after considering the advantages over satellite images and using drones.
An aeroplane takes the photographs with high resolution cameras flying about 1500 meters of height. Using about 100 ground control points decided by GVMC, geo-references, 3 D images will be created.
“The images will have a resolution where even a 9 cm object can be seen,” say sources.
After obtaining the permission of the Ministry of Defence, a trial run has been completed about three weeks ago.
However, clouds obstructed the view and the photographs are not clear. “They are just waiting for sunny weather to go for aerial photography and it will take three to four days to complete the task,” say official sources.
Pilot project
Along with digital imaging, as a part of the project and on the request of GVMC a pilot project on geo-coding of assessments is being taken up in Zone II that has predominantly commercial properties.
While in cities like Bengaluru, geo-coding of properties has been done, GVMC has asked for geo-coding of assessments on a pilot basis.
The field staff will go and verify the properties physically with tabs and they will be coordinated with the geo-tagging.
“This, we hope has the potential to increase the revenue,” says an official.
A team of about 150 persons, including those on field study, are working on the project. It is expected to be completed in two to three months.
