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Geospatial Capacity Building & Student Forum
Geospatial services industry in India is assessed worth 3 billion US Dollars and it is taking giant steps toward further growth presently contributing 0.2 per cent to the country’s GDP. A number of huge geospatial projects have been launched by the national and state governments and applications of GIS for preparing all developmental plans has been made mandatory by several state governments. Serving to the changing geospatial needs of the country, maintaining current status of the industry and its further growth very much depends on the increasing availability of competent geospatial workforce. It is estimated that by 2015 India’s annual demand of skilled human resources will be about 7 to 10 thousand persons having various types and levels of geospatial competences. This offers lucrative attractions to the current professionals for enhancing their capabilities and enormous amount of opportunities to the young students to take standard education and training for making a career in geospatial sector.The situation boosts high hopes and motivates a drive toward take-off. But it also triggers serious challenges focussed on the capacity building processes which are crucial to the professionals and students for converging geospatial careers and educational practices:
- Is India well equipped to meet the human resource requirements of this sector?
- Is India utilising full capabilities of the available geospatial workforce and finds these sufficient?
- Is India well prepared to face the challenge of procuring competent human resources?
- Are education and training institutions playing effective roles in producing fit-for-job graduates?
- Are geospatial organisations, industry and academia working together for designing a competitive regional response to global challenges and opportunities?
- Offers opportunities to post-graduate students for presenting their thesis and other research work in front of a wide ranging geospatial academia and professionals;
- Highlight the challenges India faces with regards to geospatial capacity development;
- Facilitate capacity building collaboration opportunities within and outside India;
- Brings together academia, industry and organisations to a common platform for sharing the lessons learnt, discussing the best practices and framing a vision for ‘converging geospatial trade and practices’ for benefitting a larger community of GI-professionals.
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Dr. Shahnawaz Director (S & SE Asia), UNIGIS International University of Salzburg | Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS, Austria |
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Dr. Prithvish Nag Vice Chancellor MG Kashi Vidyapith University |
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P K Verma Madhya Pradesh Council of Science and Technology |
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Maj Gen R C Padhi Director, Survey Training Institute, Survey of India |
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Dr. Kaushalya Ramachandran Principal Scientist & ICAR National Fellow in Geography Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture |