Bhuvan, (lit: Earth), is an Indian web based utility which allows users to explore a set of map based content prepared by Indian Space Research Organisation. The content which the utility serves is mostly restricted to Indian boundaries and is offered in 4 regional languages. The content includes thematic maps related to disasters, agriculture, water resources, land cover and also processed satellite data of ISRO. Bhuvan is known for its association with various sections of Government of India to enable the use of Geospatial technology. Bhuvan has since its inception enabled Indian government to host public geospatial data as Information layers for visualisation and public consumption. Examples of the types of geospatial layers include Toll Information System for National Highways Authority of India , Islands information System for MHA, Cultural heritage sites for Ministry of culture etc. The information for the platform is obtained from the government of India sources or through Crowdsourcing.

Overview

ISRO launched the

beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

of its web-based GIS tool, Bhuvan, on August 12, 2009. Bhuvan offers detailed imagery of Indian locations compared to other

Virtual Globe A virtual globe is a three-dimensional (3D) software model or representation of Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the viewing angle and posit ...

Software, with spatial resolutions ranging up to 1 metre. At present 177 cities High resolution datasets are available, while the other part of the country is covered by 2.5m resolution imagery. The images available do not include any military installations in India, due to security concerns. The National Remote Sensing Agency played an important role in the development of this product. ISRO has used data provided by satellites including Resourcesat-1, Cartosat-1 and

Cartosat-2 Cartosat-2 is an Earth observation satellite in a Sun-synchronous orbit and the second of the Cartosat series of satellites. The satellite was built, launched and maintained by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Weighing around 680&n ...

to get the best possible imagery of India.

Improvement

Since the launch of Bhuvan, users have experienced various difficulties. One problem is that the Bhuvan site has, at various times, been either inaccessible or very slow (due to less band width and servers). But now with new website Bhuvan portal is fast and responsive. also NSRC create
BhuvanLite
for faster expirence and also launc
Bhuvan Wiki
Bhuvan wiki is a web application designed for publishing information and engaging Bhuvan users for sharing and contributing their knowledge to other users. It is useful to all Bhuvan users in finding topics of their interest to explore. It provides information on users interest and helps to better connect with the users. However now Bhuvan is improving and does not require Login to visualize the maps. Users need to register only when they wish to download satellite data (up to 25m resolution LISS-III data) and products (like

NDVI The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a simple graphical indicator that can be used to analyze remote sensing measurements, often from a space platform, assessing whether or not the target being observed contains live green vege ...

, OHC datasets,

Cartosat The Cartosat is a series of Indian optical earth observation satellites built and operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The Cartosat series is a part of the Indian Remote Sensing Program. They are used for Earth's resource ...

Digital Elevation Model A digital elevation model (DEM) or digital surface model (DSM) is a 3D computer graphics representation of elevation data to represent terrain or overlaying objects, commonly of a planet, moon, or asteroid. A "global DEM" refers to a discrete g ...

etc.) To overcome the Plugin restrictions and platform-dependency for 3D -visualization, Bhuvan has come with a

WebGL WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelera ...

based open-source

virtual globe A virtual globe is a three-dimensional (3D) software model or representation of Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the viewing angle and posit ...

. It only requires

enabled browsers. Since the initial, buggy beta release, a more stable version has been released, with which users have reported fewer problems. A discussion forum has also been started for users experiencing difficulties.

Overview

Improvement

See also

References

External links