In a first for the country, the state of Punjab has implemented a multi-departmental geospatial solution that seamlessly incorporates emerging technology like drones and Artificial Intelligence for analysis. Department of Governance Reforms and Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development Company powered by DronaMaps has implemented a unique approach to unified geospatial databases that provide a holistic overview of different administrative facets to enable data-backed decision making.
“With the implementation, we are happy to say that we have explored and successfully implemented the conceptualisation of incorporating advanced technology like repeated drone mappings, AI/ML for analysis, and created interoperability across multiple specialised systems. Within a span of one year, with DronaMaps we have worked across departments to create over a hundred web applications spanning multiple functionalities like Mandis, Road Management, Property Taxes for Urban Local bodies, Covid19 etc.”, said Parminder Pal Singh Sandhu, Director, Department of Governance Reforms and Public Grievances.
Utkarsh Singh, CEO, DronaMaps, said, “The multilayered approach leverages traditional geospatial techniques, integrating them with data coming from management information systems, drone maps, mobile applications, WhatsApp chatbots and more. In the end, a layer of intelligent AI/ML analytics is built to enable the usage of select data points for effective decision making. The integration of Management information systems brought the geospatial data alive and enabled the creation of groundbreaking eGovernance interventions. This deployment has given us an opportunity to use cutting edge emerging technology in governance across an entire state with real-world impact. The digital revolution created the data, our job is to create interoperability and cut through the noise”
The creator of COVA Punjab, Punjab’s COVID-19 Data Management Platform and citizen App Jasminder Pal Singh, Senior Consultant, SeMT (MeitY) highlights the impact of this Command and Control Center– “It enabled us to create a highly sophisticated spatial understanding of the cases, the testing facilities, and healthcare infrastructure available down to each urban locality and village. We built-in spatial data points to ensure that Rapid Response Teams and other services were actually reaching each doorstep. It improved COVID-19 healthcare delivery. Rapid response teams visited 83586 with 50% in rural areas and 58835 calls were received on the helpline with over 76.64% enquiries about vaccination. Bed management is done based on real-time updates from hospitals which are geotagged and information available on dashboards with heat maps.”
Anoop Kaur, Manager (Urban Planning) PMIDC explains “The goal of the creation of one single GIS database with integrated master plans is to ensure that the present and future of the state is captured in a standardised database that can be used as a toolkit by any Urban Local Body. This is an innovative product offering by one public entity to others, where we can onboard a new ULB in three months’ time, for instance, in the last year of being operational we onboarded three ULBs at a fraction of the cost centrally by PMIDC. The benefit to the ULBs is on cost, efficiency, transparency, and democratised access to their own data as a public version is made available to citizens as well.”
After the implementation of the GIS command and control center, there have been tremendous improvements across different applications. Geotagged images, property data, and payment history has helped in identification of tax defaulters. It highlights properties where self-declared property areas do not corroborate with the observations on the ground with geotagged images and drone-based maps. “The targeted campaigns with actively updating GIS Master geodatabase supported in tax collection, based on this stratified data, citizens were contacted through text messages and this resulted in an increase in tax payments of over 2500 properties, an increase of 10% in the first pilot in Hoshiarpur.” explains Anoop Kaur, Manager (Urban Planning) PMIDC.
