Open-Source VRGeo - Mapping Geospatial Information in India

The International Institute of Information Technology, IIIT-H, released VRGeo, an open-source collaborative technology for mapping geospatial information in India, at Garuda NKN (National Knowledge Networks) Partners Meet, C-DAC, Bengaluru, on July 20, 2012.

The VRGeo (spelled out as we-are-geo) has been conceived and developed by IIIT-H’s premier research laboratory Lab for Spatial Informatics (LSI).

VRGeo will not only be of good use to the common man (in terms of locating with ease facilities like ATMs, bus stops, post offices, police stations, government offices, etc.), but also to a vast category of users (ranging from policy makers, bureaucrats, and researchers studying environmental and community based resource management issues to business intelligence, and e-governance to disaster management, etc.).

The crowd-sourced model of data collection combined with the technical and scientific understanding will go on to provide an effective methodology for transformation of the collected data to valuable information as well as advance disciplinary knowledge in areas related to spatial and temporal processes.

A mobile application of VRGeo, currently under development, will be released in a few months from now.

Following LSI's partnership with CDAC's GARUDA team, VRGeo has been hosted on CDAC's Megha cloud computing infrastructure. The technical and research partnership is expected to not only improve functional and performance features of VRGeo, but also provide an impetus to adoption of geospatial technologies in a range of fields.

For more details of VRGeo and its social impact in India, please read through the brochure, or visit www.vrgeo.in.

If you still have any questions, contact Prof. KS Rajan, Head, LSI, and Principal Architect, VRGeo on +91 98 66 11 70 70 (mobile), or rajan@iiit.ac.in (email).

Media contact:
Jayadev GAG, IIIT-H Communication Office, IIIT-H, on +91 98 666 90 917 (mobile) or Jayadev@iiit.ac.in (email).