A Remote Sensing and GIS Lab was inaugurated at public sector iron ore mining company NMDC’s office in the city on Wednesday.
Company chairman and managing director N. Baijendra Kumar inaugurated the facility in the presence of National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) Director Santanu Choudhury and senior officials of both the institutions as well as faculty members of Osmania University.
The laboratory has two licences each of ‘ERDAS’ and ‘ARC-GIS’ software along with high-end workstations. The NMDC would utilise the facility for exploration and go digital.
The Lab comes in the backdrop of an MoU between NMDC and ISRO’s NRSC to promote space applications in exploration and other mining activities for satellite-based geological mapping and multi-disciplinary exploration of iron, diamond and other mineral deposits.
A release from the NMDC said space technology provided real-time data for generation of digital maps. Several innovative methods were deployed by the NMDC and ISRO for targeting diamond and iron bearing areas.
Gravity and magnetic data of ElGEN6C4 (NASA) satellite was also used for identifying potential corridor for diamondiferous rocks in the Central Indian Diamond Province. Few potential iron ore blocks have also been identified in Madhya Pradesh using Cartosat-2 and Aster Data.
The NRSC and NMDC have also developed a mobile App to collect field data with location and field photo and catalogue to collect geological information and for viewing in ‘Bhuvan’ portal. This App is presently being used by the NMDC at its Sidhi-Singrauli iron ore block and Chattarpur and Damoh diamond blocks for field data collection and proved to be very useful, the release said.
