Bhuvan: India's answer to Google Earth

[alibhai]

Bangalore: The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has launched Bhuvan, a mapping application website like Google Earth, which promises to give better 3D satellite images of India and provides India specific features. The scientific community of the country also remembered the father of the Indian space program, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai on his birth anniversary.



Bhuvan, which means earth in Sanskrit, allows users to see any part of the subcontinent barring sensitive locations such as military and nuclear installations. The 3D mapping tool uses images taken a year ago by ISRO's seven remote sensing satellites, including Cartosat-1 and Cartosat-2. The satellites can even capture the images of objects as small as a car on a road.

Bhuvan displays satellite images of varying resolution of India's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment. The degree of resolution showcased is based on the points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered up to at least six meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters from Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWifs). Bhuvan maps up to 10 meters compared to 200 meters of Google and 50 meters of Wikipedia.

Hyderabad based National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), which is a part of ISRO, had a lead role in designing and developing 'Bhuvan'.

"We were extremely enthusiastic and right from the word go our focus was that it should be useful to users in India," said V Jayaraman, Director, NRSA.

The features include: Access, explore and visualize 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on Soil, wasteland, water resources, superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required, visualization of AWS ( Automatic Weather Stations) data/information in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice, Heads-Up Display ( HUD) naviation controls ( Tilt slider, north indicator, opacity, compass ring, zoom slider), navigation using the 3D view pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point), drawing 2D objects (Text labels, polylines, polygons, rectangles, 2D arrows, circles, ellipse), drawing 3D Objects (placing of expressive 3D models, 3D polygons, boxes), snapshot creation (copies the 3D view to a floating window and allows to save to a external file)

Advanced functionalities which will be provided in the future are urban design tools, contour map and terrain profile.

Madhavan Nair, ISRO Chairman informed that the space agency had started the preparations for a mission to Mars within the next six years. It was looking at launch opportunities between 2013 and 2015.

[VelMurugan]

6 disappointments in Desi Google Earth

India recently got its own version of Google Earth, courtesy Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Called Bhuvan, the Desi version of Google Earth goes a step ahead. The mapping application allows users to zoom far closer than the aerial view from a chopper.

Though dubbed as a Google Earth killer by many analysts, the application does have a few disappointments. Here's looking into all that is missing in Bhuvan.

Works within browser

While Google Earth works on a downloadable client, Bhuvan works within the browser (only supports Windows and IE 6 and above). Unlike Google Earth which is a desktop app, Bhuvan runs using a browser plug-in.

Users need to create an account and download a plug-in.

Stability issues

The site was inaccessible for the better part of the last weekend (it was launched on 13th August) and even now, it gives up or hangs the browser every once in a while. When a layer (state, district, taluk, etc.) is turned on, it renders unevenly and sometimes fails to render at all. The navigation panel failed to load routinely and it felt like a rare sighting when we could actually use the panel.

No high resolution images

But these are relatively minor quibbles compared with the biggest disappointment. The promise of high resolution images has not been kept. While the service promises zoom upto 10 metres from the ground level (this is contrasted with apparently 200 metres for Google Earth), we didn't encounter a single image with nearly as much detailing.

In fact, comparative results for a marquee location such as New Delhi's Connaught Place, shows why we won't be uninstalling out Google Earth software anytime soon.

Search not working

The navigation tools are similar to Google Earth. The search doesn't work if a query returns multiple results. A pop up window is supposed to give the multiple results from which the user is supposed to be able to choose. During two days of sporadic testing, we found the result only once. The rest of the time, the window would pop up, but nothing would be displayed. When the search is accurate, the software 'flies in' to the exact location, the same way as Google Earth.

Basic info

Bhuvan packs a lot of data on weather, waterbodies and population details of various administrative units. We were unable to access weather data. On clicking the icon of administrative units, one could see basic information such as the population. For specialist users, Bhuvan might hold some attraction.

For instance, there is a drought map which can be used to compare drought situation across years and there is a flood map that shows Bihar during the Kosi flood and after. With Isro backing, Bhuvan would be able to provide such relevant data from time to time, but the application needs major improvements in terms of usability before it will be of interest to the ordinary user.

Cannot edit, tag locations

Users can also not edit any data or tag locations. We hope Bhuvan is able to fix the bugs soon. But even then, to be a credible alternative to existing mapping services, and even to get new users to try it, it must provide much higher resolution images. User interest will be piqued only when they can see their house or school or local street in high resolution. With ISRO data, this is easily doable.

source : indiatimes