Google Earth is passe, go globe-trotting with Bhuvan

National Remote Sensing Centre plans India's answer to Google's online satellite image service Google Earth

National Remote Sensing Centre plans India's answer to Google's online satellite image service

Former President APJ Abdul Kalam had his reservations about it. Most recently, the Maharashtra government demanded a ban on it. But Google Earth survived and is set to be re-born in a desi avatar.

Bird's-eye view: A Google Earth map showing Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi

The National Remote Sensing Centre (IRSC) is coming up with an Indian version of the online mapping service, christened Bhuvanu00a0Sanskrit for Earth. NRSC is a unit of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which specialises in satellite image processing and distribution. The launch date has not been announced as yet but V Jayaraman, NRSC director, said content generation would take time. The launch date was fixed for March 2009, but a revised date is yet to be announced.

Jayaraman said that the service is aimed at helping scientists, town planners and administrators and those working in areas of disaster management as well.

It is expected to be better than Google Earth, helping viewers gauge the soil type and ground water potential across the mainland with high resolution images and data from satellites.

Bhuvan will have the capacity to zoom upto 20 m of a location while Google Earth currently zooms up to 200 m and Wikimapia up to 50 m. But unlike the other two, Bhuvan will focus only on the Indian subcontinent.

Bhuvan, which uses high-resolution images, will comply with India's remote sensing data policy, which does not allow online mapping services to show sensitive locations such as military and nuclear installations. The Indian space agency will use images taken at least a year ago by its seven remote-sensing satellites in orbit around the Earth, including Cartosat-1 and Cartosat-2.

Google buys high-resolution imagery from service providers such as GeoEye Inc for Google Earth, an application a user needs to download. But unlike Google Earth, the Bhuvan application will not be downloadable and will not allow users to host content in the near future.

The Indian space agency recently achieved another milestone,u00a0 successfully launching India's first unmanned moon mission, Chandrayaan.

Controversial mapping

'u00a0Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. Like a video game and a search engine rolled into one, Earth is basically a 3D model of the entire planet that lets you grab, spin and zoom into any place on Earth. 'u00a0Google Earth, Google Map and all such Internet services are a nightmare for the intelligence agencies as they provide the satellite images of places that can be misused by terrorists. It is, however, the other way round in Kashmir where Google Earth is serving as an important tool for counter-terrorism agencies in locating and neutralising militants. 'u00a0Security agencies have called for the wealth of data available on Google Earth to be limited for several years amid fears that the freely available application may prove invaluable for militants planning terrorist attacks. 'u00a0In 2005, the operators of Australia's nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights called on the Internet giant to censor images of the plant, warning that the images could be used by terrorists. 'u00a0Earlier, the satellite photographs of the installation would have been available only to a handful of government agencies and NASA, they said. n In the same year, it was reported that Google omitted to blur the roof of the White House in Washington when it updated the images available on Google Earthu00a0something it had done previously. 'u00a0South Korea and Thailand also complained after the layout of their air bases was revealed. 'u00a0The Mumbai terrorists concentrated their attacks in south Mumbai, a popular tourist location. However, the plea filed with the Bombay High Court claims that Google Earth includes "absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access" to details of sensitive locations nearby, such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.