Sree's Tech Blog: Bhuvan - An Indian competition to Google earth?

Bhuvan

- A Geoportal of Indian Space Research Organisation showcasing Indian

Imaging Capabilities in Multi-sensor, Multi-platform and Multi-temporal

domain. The portal gives a gateway to explore and discover virtual

earth in 3D space with specific emphasis on Indian region.

About BHUVAN - Bhuvan gives you an easy way to experience, explore and visualize IRS images over Indian region

ISRO is well known amongst space faring nations for its world-leading

reputation in developing new, indigenous and innovative service

oriented applications using remote sensing technology. Over the past 2

decades, ISRO has mastered the art of developing these unique

applications using various spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions

offered by the versatile IRS satellites and these have been

successfully institutionalized in many important areas of policy

making, natural resources management, disaster support, and enhancing

the quality of life across all sections of the society.

Bhuvan is an initiative to showcase this distinctiveness of Indian

imaging capabilities including the thematic information derived from

such imagery which could be of vital importance to common man with a

focus on Indian region. Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO

to take Indian images and thematic information in multiple spatial

resolutions to people through a web portal through easy access to

information on basic natural resources in the geospatial domain.

Bhuvan showcases Indian images by the

superimposition of these IRS satellite imageries on 3D globe.

It displays satellite images of varying resolution of India’s

surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and

important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an

oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D

viewing environment. The degree of resolution showcased is based on the

points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is

covered upto at least 5.8 meters of resolution with the least spatial

resolution being 55 meters from AWifs Sensor. With such rich content,

Bhuvan opens the door to graphic visualisation of digital geospatial

India allowing individuals to experience the fully interactive terrain

viewing capabilities.

Multi-resolution images from multi-sensor IRS satellites of India is

seamlessly depicted through the Bhuvan web portal by enabling a common

man to zoom into specific area of interest at high resolution. Bhuvan

brings a whole lot of uniqueness in understanding our own natural

resources whilst presenting beautiful images and thematic vectors

generated from varieties of geospatial information. Bhuvan will also

attempt to bring out the importance of multi-temporal data and to

highlight the changes taking place to our natural resources, which will

serve as a general awareness on our changing planet. There

are lot more special value added services which will be enabled onto

the web portal in due course of time and each one of those services are

going to be unique to preserving and conserving our precious natural

resources through public participation. We are sure the

common man will get rich benefits from these Indian geospatial data

services in days to come.

Bhuvan FAQ

What is Bhuvan?

Bhuvan is a geoportal that provides medium to high resolution satellite

imagery of virtually the entire India over the internet. You can "fly"

around using mouse and keyboard on a simple desktop computer with

virtual globe in front draped with IRS images over Indian region. Many

other features are built in, including 3D terrain and information on

many thematic data.

What can Bhuvan do for me?

Bhuvan is a free web based image portal. Most Image visualization

programs are very expensive and complex. Bhuvan provides a fast and

friendly way to look at IRS satellite data and thematic information in

geographic context, which is invaluable for management, planning and

visualization. Additionally, Bhuvan makes it easy to share digital data

between people and computers anytime, anywhere. Over a period

of time a lot more unique functionalities will be added into this tool

to address common man’s problems, particularly in the rural

setup of India and addressing natural resources management issues.

What do I require to run Bhuvan on my Machine?

You require the Bhuvan Plug-in which can be downloaded from the Bhuvan

website after registration and you will also need DirectX9 or higher

version (www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/) for installing the

plug-in. Please note that the Bhuvan Plug-in can be installed with

administrative privileges only.

How do I use Bhuvan?

When you first open Bhuvan website, You will land on the index page

which gives you information on Bhuvan and this page also allows you to

register for using the Bhuvan. Once you successfully register, you will

land on the Bhuvan 3D client page. Here, there are three primary areas

of the program that you'll be using. The main window shows a globe, and

you can navigate around with your mouse or use the Heads-Up Display

(HUD) option available on the right top corner. Double right click to

zoom in, and double left click to zoom out (or use your mousewheel).

Right click, hold, and drag to pan. The second area is at the upper

right of the main window. When you move your mouse over the navigation

compass, it give you more movement options such as rotate and tilt

(which you can also do with your mouse). The third area is to the left

of the main window. This frame includes a fly to location and fly to

important places option. On the top of the globe are the menu options

for layers, 2D and 3D drawing, measurement tools, snapshot tools etc.

When you select any of these options, you see the context options on

the left plane where you can make appropriate choices that you can turn

on to make visible in the main windows such as roads, 3D terrain, and

more.

Can I use Bhuvan if I don't have a fast internet connection?

Yes. Bhuvan is designed to be as bandwidth-friendly as possible.

However, it is dependent on continuously downloading a large amount of

imagery. Consequently, the faster your connection, the better the

program will perform. If you have a slow connection, Bhuvan will

download imagery correspondingly slowly, but it will (eventually)

download everything at the maximum available resolution.

Depending on the number of concurrent users on over servers and the

kind of bandwidth at client end the ultimate speed of visualisation

will be decided. This is a beta release, however with more

learnings we will be able to make things more comfortable for all types

of users.

Can I use Bhuvan if I'm not connected to the internet?

No. You will have to be connected to Internet for using Bhuvan.

How current is the imagery in Bhuvan?

Bhuvan portal does NOT display data in real-time. The images you see

are a combination of satellite imagery from various IRS sensors taken

(generally) sometime within the last three years during different

seasons. Bhuvan, on release, contains IRS satellite images from OCM,

AWifs, LISS 3, and LISS 4 sensor images and will be added with more

data from time to time. Bhuvan is constantly updating its database to

use more recent and higher resolution images. You can explore the

metadata content to determine when exactly a specific area was imaged,

but you may be able to use landmarks to generalize a date range if you

are familiar with the area.

How do I bookmark a place in Bhuvan?

Zoom to the location that you'd like to bookmark (placemark, more

accurately), use the draw tool to place an icon. After you

save the placemark, it will stay in the frame to the left of the main

window, and double clicking on it will zoom you to that position.

Can I add my own data into Bhuvan?

No. In the current version, you will not be able to add your own data

Do I have to register to use Bhuvan?

Yes. It is mandatory to register to use Bhuvan.

How much does Bhuvan cost?

The basic version of Bhuvan is free. Once you register and you login,

you will be asked to download the Bhuvan plug-in. Accept the

installation of the plug-in and you are ready to use the full features

of Bhuvan.

Can I run Bhuvan on Mac OS and Linux?

No at the moment Bhuvan can run only on windows system and is optimised for IE 6. or higher

What type of data can I see in Bhuvan?

You will be able to see the following data on Bhuvan

* Satellite imagery (LISS III , LISS IV

along with metadata and Multi- temporal Data from OCM

& AWiFS)

* Value added information (NADAMS

– National Agricultural Drought Monitoring System), Output of

flood studies for certain areas,

* Thematic information (Wastelands, Soils, watershed,water resources related maps)

* Base layers ( administrative boundaries, transport layers, water bodies, etc)

* Census information

* Metadata

What do I do when I get the ‘’DD_ERR Video Ram Memory’’ error?

Close all other applications and relaunch Bhuvan.

System Requirements for Using Bhuvan

Requirements for Windows

* Operating System: Windows XP/Vista

* CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+

* System Memory (RAM): 512MB

* Hard Disk: 2GB free space

* Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec

* Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM

* Screen: 1280x1024, "32-bit True Color"

DirectX 9.0 or higher version

MS .NET framework 2.0 or above

Please note that the Bhuvan Plug-in can be installed with administrative privileges only.

Bhuvan Plug-in can be downloaded from this link, after registration.