Bhuvan, , 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
launched the beta version of its web-based GIS tool, Bhuvan, on August 12, 2009. Bhuvan offers detailed imagery of Indian locations compared to other Virtual Globe 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 to get the best possible imagery of India.
Criticism
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. Users are required to register before they can use the product, and downloads of plug-ins up to 11 MB in size are needed for the application to work. Furthermore, the plugin only works on Windows, and only Internet Explorer is supported. 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 and products To overcome the Plugin restrictions and platform-dependency for 3D -visualization, Bhuvan has come with a WebGL based open-source virtual globe. It only requires WebGL enabled browsers. It renders layers unevenly and sometimes images are completely blocked. Bhuvan promises images from a perceived altitude of 10 metres, but technical analysts dispute the results. If many locations of same name exist, Bhuvan is supposed to give multiple results so that users can choose the intended location, but Bhuvan sometimes fails to return multiple results. 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.
