vIndianz.com (Aug. 15, 2009) — Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) unveiled its beta version of Bhuvan, a web-based tool like Google Earth.
While Google Earth shares only single layer information, its Indian counterpart would share multi-layer information using the images exclusively from indigenous satellites. The images would be visible to the user both in two and three dimensions using the navigation tools provided.
Unlike Google earth, Bhuvan will provide multi-layered images and the images would be updated every year, where as Google earth updates only in four years.
Bhuvan has best resolutions over the Indian sub-continent. The resolutions currently on offer are good enough to view a vehicle moving on a road quite clearly.
Bhuvan allows users to fly from space to street level, grab, spin and zoom down to any place. Viewers can zoom into Bhuvan maps up to 10 metres compared to Google Earth’s 200 metres and Wikemapia’s 50 metres.
Bhuvan has a many India-specific features like weather information, administrative boundaries of all states and districts, etc. It also provides tools for measuring, drawing, saving, printing and visualizing thematic information.
An additional feature provided by Bhuvan would be allowing the user to scroll through the newspapers of selective cities across the country. The user can zoom on to the city of their choice to go through the local news.
Several local problems like floods, famines, infrastructure development, education and administration would be addressed in a better way through this new mapping system.
Bhuvan currently only offers images taken between one and three years ago even over India. It combines satellite imagery from various sensors onboard IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) satellites and transposes them on a 3-D globe.
Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), a part of ISRO, developed the content using data provided by Indian satellites like Resourcesat-1.
The launch ceremony was organized by Astronautical Society of India in New Delhi. The day marks the 90th birth anniversary of the father of Indian space programme Vikram Sarabhai.
The application can be downloaded from http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/
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