Geospatial tech is the key to building a water-secure India: Shubo Biswas, founder, GreenGood Labs | Technology News

An engineering graduate from the Nationwide Institute of Know-how, Durgarpur, Shubo additionally has an MS in Industrial and Manufacturing Methods Engineering from the College of Windsor.

Shubo spoke to indianexpress.com on new traits in geospatial analytics, the impression that it has had, and the way superior water analytics utilizing geospatial tech is vital for constructing a water-secure India. Edited excerpts:

Venkatesh Kannaiah: What are the areas/themes the place geospatial analytics tech has been used for producing substantial social impression?

Shubo Biswas: First is with managing agriculture, in monitoring areas just like the unfold of greenery, the density of crops, the yield of the crops, biomass and vegetation, and different facets associated to the well being of the agriculture sector. It may well additionally observe themes like carbon sequestration. Secondly, it’s with regard to climate predictions. We are able to observe cloud motion patterns, wind patterns, rainfall, temperature, floor temperature, and make selections based mostly on the identical. That is additionally an space the place the India Meteorological Division has been a pioneer in utilizing tech options, and it’s fairly a mature sector.

GreenGood Labs focuses on water analytics, the place one can observe water availability, circulation, and siltation of various sorts of water belongings, from lakes, rivers, and ponds. We’ve developed a set of instruments that enable us to trace and handle water belongings throughout the floor of the planet. So it’s not simply water our bodies that we analyse per se, however the water our bodies and streams that connect with the water our bodies, the entire watershed, and the water ecosystem.

The ultimate use case is the usage of geospatial tech in monitoring local weather change and disasters, whether or not it’s monitoring floods, droughts, or earthquakes. We’ve numerous circumstances the place this tech has even predicted droughts a lot earlier than they happen. These are based mostly on water flows and water basin well being.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: What are the brand new traits/improvements in geospatial analytics?

Shubo Biswas: Earlier, we used to gather giant quantities of knowledge, and the main target was on images or photos. Now, knowledge assortment has moved from the seen spectrum into the invisible spectrum and to the information within the infrared and ultraviolet spectra.

Some vital adjustments are occurring on this trade. We’ve extra satellites accumulating extra knowledge. Secondly, they’re accumulating higher-resolution knowledge, serving to researchers interpret extra from every photograph. Thirdly, the spectrum has moved from the seen spectrum to the invisible spectrum to what we now name hyperspectral imaging.

And at last, we’re utilizing machine studying and AI to analyse the information in depth and give you beneficial insights, and that too on a close to real-time foundation.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: You discuss concerning the rising position of analytics and geospatial tech in managing water sources. Are you able to clarify?

Shubo Biswas: In India alone, there are 3.2 million water our bodies, each massive and small, and solely 10 per cent of them are being tracked. Till final 12 months, the nation didn’t have a exact variety of water our bodies. GreenGood Labs got here up with the statistic. It isn’t that the scenario is healthier within the developed economies. Even in america, the determine of waterbodies being tracked remains to be round 10 per cent. Regardless of the monitoring mechanisms that we now have, the guide monitoring mechanism, or the gauges, are a bit crude however sensible and dependable. Go away alone that it will observe just a few parameters in comparison with what we might do with geospatial tech, it’s fairly costly to put in and keep them. To put in such gauges throughout all our water our bodies, it may cost round Rs 1.3 lakh crore, and we have to keep them 12 months on 12 months. Geospatial tech can do it a lot better and observe extra parameters with a fraction of the associated fee. The efficiencies and value advantages are very compelling.

What Indian policymakers require is real-time knowledge of water our bodies and the water ecosystem, in order that data-driven selections might be taken. That is what source-security and empowerment of decentralised native water administration committees as a part of the Jal Jeevan Mission is about. We have to research our water our bodies in depth. We have to research underwater topography and silt formation for higher selections. For instance, there are round 40,000 water our bodies in Maharashtra, and the federal government has plans to desilt the water our bodies usually. How will they determine what water our bodies to desilt first or what to keep away from? There isn’t any knowledge from these guide gauges. It’s only with geospatial tech that we might attain such selections.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Are you able to inform us briefly about what GreenGood Labs does?

Shubo Biswas: We’ve a philosophy that our merchandise or apps ought to be so easy to make use of that we don’t produce person manuals. We would like them to be intuitive to make use of.

We’ve a Water Belongings Distant Administration app (WARM) which helps customers monitor the water belongings that they’ve, whether or not it’s rivers, lakes, ponds, or tanks, and use geospatial tech to observe them and glean insights from this knowledge. This knowledge is close to real-time, and the analytics platform we now have constructed on the information helps nationwide and state governments, native our bodies, communities, and even lively residents to observe and perceive water flows and a number of different points. A few of this knowledge has been collected for the previous 10-20 years, so we will use our instrument to return in time to see how the water physique has developed over time.

We even have the visible watershed planning instrument, which analyses the entire watershed and gives insights utilizing geospatial knowledge. It displays the climate, soil, and water. We use this for holistic watershed design.

Throughout cyclone Amphan, which hit West Bengal, Odisha and Assam round 5 years in the past, we have been the primary ones to publish the flood maps that confirmed how the catastrophe aid forces might reply. We might establish all of the communities that have been impacted, for the catastrophe aid could possibly be directed in an acceptable manner.

We work in two methods. On one hand, there are a bigger variety of satellites which might be already accumulating some quantity of knowledge and that are unfold throughout a number of databases and in varied codecs. We construct an analytical lens and a platform to analyse the information for the governments and the farming group. Then there are these customers or stakeholders who come to us for terribly granular knowledge on waterbodies, after which we work with varied satellite tv for pc corporations to discover their proprietary datasets or gather recent knowledge and give you options for our customers.

I’m a techniques engineer, and I used to construct airplanes in my earlier avatar. I wish to deliver the precision and accuracy that we use in aerospace manufacturing to rural improvement and water administration.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: The place are your merchandise getting used, and what have been your learnings in utilizing them?

Shubo Biswas: We’re working with the businesses in Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Assam on utilizing tech to grasp the watershed techniques which might be essentially the most degraded, and put time and sources on that entrance. In Maharashtra, we now have been working with nonprofits on the desilting of water our bodies. You will need to perceive that our options are distinctive within the sense that they supply info on siltation of water our bodies, whether or not it’s dams or reservoirs. The conventional manner to try this could be to take a guesstimate or wait until the water dries as much as get an correct image. Now, geospatial tech has superior a lot that we will analyse siltation ranges pretty precisely, and this helps the federal government to determine the place and when to do de-siltation actions. In any other case, it’s merely taking pictures in the dead of night. Some huge cash will get wasted. Our instruments do a 3D modelling of water our bodies, in order that we will discover the place and the way siltation is occurring and battle it.

In Tamil Nadu, we’re engaged on the restoration of water tanks and reservoirs, and in Rajasthan, we’re engaged on the place to find farm ponds, to be of use to farmers. We’re additionally collaborating nationally with the Jal Jeevan Mission in India on varied tasks.

We’re lively globally too, doing water evaluation tasks in Uganda, Spain, Guyana, Thailand, and america.

We had used our tech to foretell the drought within the Latur district of Maharashtra final 12 months. This was based mostly on an evaluation of the water availability, water flows, well being of the water ecosystem within the district and different elements.

Throughout final 12 months’s water shortage in Bengaluru, we had our WARM app working, which might present info on the supply of water in close by waterbodies. This helped residents and communities plan their water necessities in a wise method and lowered a way of panic amongst residents, and such info availability helped cut back overcharging by water tanker operators.

Other than grassroots farmer organisations and governments on the nationwide, state, and native ranges, there may be varied potential finish customers of our merchandise. They could possibly be from the finance and insurance coverage sectors or companies tied to water. For instance, even improvement banks that are giving agricultural loans would wish entry to water analytics. Crop insurance coverage, house insurance coverage – all of them would wish to analyse previous catastrophe knowledge.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: As a former world CTO of Deshpande Basis, inform us about your tech for good interventions?

Shubo Biswas: The Deshpande Basis, working in Karnataka, Telangana, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, was working to construct farm ponds for farmers to tide them over the water disaster within the areas. The goal was to construct round 3000-4000 farm ponds yearly. My work was to offer tech backend, analysing the watershed for optimum location of interventions, monitoring logistics, employees, autos, funds, and such. It was a really fulfilling expertise, and it gave me lots of perception into the issues of the farming group and the way tech could possibly be of assist to them.

We additionally helped arrange the Rural Transformation Know-how Middle at Hubli in Karnataka. This was a one-of-a-kind command and management centre, with the most recent geospatial applied sciences to establish, plan, implement, and monitor large-scale rural improvement tasks.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: How do geospatial analytics and AI work collectively?

Shubo Biswas: With machine studying and AI, one might get analytics accomplished at velocity and scale in an unimaginable manner. It needn’t be like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s rather more doable, and the insights with huge quantities of knowledge are manner higher.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Which areas do geospatial startups usually work on?

Shubo Biswas: We discover that lots of geospatial startups are working within the subject of agriculture, monitoring cropping patterns, and resulting in the monitoring of agri produce. There are some within the subject of water analytics like us, however not many who work with grassroots organisations making an attempt to offer real-time info for each governments and communities to make use of such knowledge in a greater method.