Geo-tagging of water sources to strategize the conservation

In the lieu of water scarcity in the city, the Dakshina Kannada district administration has given orders to bring all sources of water under geo-tagging with a view to protecting them.

What is Geo-Tagging?

• Geo-tagging is the process of ascertaining the geographical location of an image.
• It is the process of adding geographical identification like latitude and longitude to various media such as a photo or video.
• Geo-tagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information from a device.
• It also provides users the location of the content of a given picture.
• To this end, the central government works in association with ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) at Hyderabad, which uses a software platform, Bhuvan that “allows users to explore a 2D/3D representation of the surface of the Earth”.

How Geo-tagging will help in water resource conservation?

• These are extremely critical for the water sector.
• Besides collecting data about assets and resources, it also enables analysis, reporting and monitoring, planning and decision making and to take informed action to tackle the issue.
• It can also help in process efficiencies, reducing time for project deployment, ensure better resource management, and it also offers an integrated platform for assimilating data from varied sources for informed decision making.

Geo-Tagging used in various Water sources related schemes

The first scheme that experimented with geo-tagging was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

• Jal Jeevan Mission: These technologies can help in mapping population density vis-a-vis water source/pipelines, mapping of piped water network, water metering etc.
• Namami Gange: GIS ready database of wetlands, flood plain with 10 km buffer on both sides of river Ganga using LiDAR, Water quality mapping using IoT sensors into GIS system, Real time river water quality, etc.
• National River Linking Project: High-Resolution Satellite Imagery datasets can be used to identify the potential routes in geospatial domain for interlinking. These images can be used for delineating drought prone areas.
• National Water Mission: Mapping of catchments and surveying land use patterns while emphasising on drainage, vegetation cover, silting, encroachment, conservation of mangrove areas, human settlements and, human activities and its impact on catchments and water bodies.
• Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABHY): High resolution images can be used for understanding terrain, soil texture, GW potential zones, rainwater infiltration capacity, site selection for water extraction, rainwater harvesting.