National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC)

National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), located at Hyderabad is one of the centres of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), striving to realise the Indian Space Vision, as a key player in Earth Observation Programme and Disaster Management Support programme. NRSC is responsible for acquisition, processing, supply of aerial and satellite remote sensing data and continuously exploring the practical uses of remote sensing technology for multilevel (global to local) applications. It provides the necessary trained manpower through capacity building in remote sensing applications.

NRSC has wealth of images from Indian and foreign remote sensing satellites in its archives and also has the capability to acquire data pertaining to any part of the globe on demand. NRSC also supports, through ANTRIX, establishment of International Ground Stations and International reseller network to receive, process and market IRS data products globally.

NRSC provides end-to-end solutions for utilization of data for natural resource management, geospatial applications and information services. NRSC facilitates several remote sensing & GIS application projects for natural resources and environmental management catering to food security, water security, energy security and sustainable development. NRSC is also providing single window, disaster management support services through the Decision Support Centre. Recently NRSC has started to give its services on Land use Land cover of India under an Information portal called BHOOSAMPADA. The major objective of this portal is- Dissemination and Sharing of Geo-spatial Information Derived from IRS Data on Land use and Land cover of India.

Bhoosampada is an Information portal of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was dedicated to the nation on 28 January 2009 by Chairman ISRO at National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad. Mapping of land use/land cover (LULC) on 1:250,000 scale has been envisaged under Natural Resource Census (NRC) project of National Natural Resource Management System (NNRMS) using multi-temporal Resourcesat-1 AWiFS data on annual basis from 2004 onward. The major objective of this project was to make a rapid assessment of the national LULC with the emphasis on the cropped area in the different cropping seasons.

The purpose of this portal is to disseminate the information derived from IRS series of satellites to user organizations, scientific societies, non- government agencies in general and public at large. BHOOSAMPADA web portal provides the annual Land use/ Land Cover (LULC) assessment at national, state and district level. The seasonal water body and snow cover distributions can also be visualized. The web portal provides spatial variability of the crop, water and snow within and across the year. These information are vital for planning natural resource management, climate change, agriculture, large scale deforestation, drought and flood damage to crops.

The portal provides various online GIS utilities to its users (without having any specific GIS s/w installed at client’s machine) like map visualization up to original mapping scale, LULC statistics generation at national, state and district level (based on user defined selection), online linking of socioeconomic data, basic and user defined queries, GIS analysis, online map compositions, multi-temporal spatial visualization etc.

The Bhoosampada Services can be utilized for:

Spatial and temporal seamless database on LULC facilitates land use planning and management.

Spatial database on agriculture

Facilitates monitoring and assessment of NSA under rainfed and irrigated conditions in conjunction with climate, socioeconomics and other factors.

Provides baseline and facilitates monitoring fallows.

Identify potential agriculture lands and changes.

Rapid monitoring

Dynamic land covers like surface water, forest, waste lands etc.

Primary database

Enables planning and developmental activities, regional EIAs, global environmental issues like land use change, climate change, biodiversity, land surface atmosphere interactions, productivity and carbon sequestration, inter/intra annual seasonal water spread etc.

Bhuvan - A Geoportal of ISRO Showcasing Indian Earth Observation Capabilities through online rendering of Multi-sensor, Multi-resolution and Multi-temporal IRS imagery overlaying value added thematic information on Earth Browser, providing satellite data and products for download and consume thematic datasets as OGC web services towards online Geoprocessing, whilst serving for societal good.