From June 7, you will be able to locate hospitals, educational institutions, government offices, and even taxi stands, in a jiffy. The Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) will launch an online open data platform, which will offer all the information, for free, about the city.
The platform has around 130 data layers, covering demography, land use and development plans, housing, transportation, physical infrastructure, social amenities, environment, livelihood and governance. “WebGIS is part of the UDRI’s goal to make spatial data on Mumbai available online,” said Keya Kunte, director of UDRI’s Bombay Studio and Projects.
The data layers are superimposed on the map of Mumbai. For example, if someone wants to know about hospitals, he has to select the sub-layer named after them and locations of all hospitals in the city – which are currently on record with the UDRI – will be shown on the digital map.
“This is relevant at a time when data about the city lies with multiple government departments, and is not easily accessible. It is also important when highly-restrictive mapping policies such as the Geospatial Regulation Bill sit side by side with the Digital India campaign. The platform aims to bridge the data access gap for NGOs, researchers, civil society, and communities,” said Pankaj Joshi, executive director, UDRI.
The developers said they do not claim, at this moment, that all the available data is error-free. “We can make it perfect only through peoples’ participation. Once we go online, we would like NGOs, citizen groups and individuals come forward to feed us with data,” said Ms. Kunte.
It took over three years for the UDRI to pull information from various secondary sources to produce the datasets, bringing them under one platform, which is first of its kind in Mumbai. The project was supported by Ford Foundation and the Bombay City Policy Research Foundation.
The Urban Design Research Institute
will launch an
online open
data platform
