The Indian government on Wednesday asked software giant Microsoft Corp. to put its vast collection of satellite images, remote sensing data and other information about the country's terrain in digital form.
The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding for research collaboration. The first project under the memorandum will be a geographic information system to make high technology information available to the public in an easily understandable form
This is the first collaborative project between the Indian government and Microsoft Research. It will be a geographic information system (GIS) project that will bring a variety of satellite imagery, remote sensing and other geographic data together in a geographically indexed database.
Microsoft Research India will make use of the government's non-sensitive geographic data available online to the public in a format that is easy to browse and comprehend, with intuitive visualization of data, according to Kentaro Toyama, the assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India.
Microsoft Research India will draw on the expertise of Microsoft's TerraServer project, conducted in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, and address new issues such as what is the optimum way to visualize different layers of geographic data, as well as the best way to present the data, particularly for users who do not have high-bandwidth connectivity
Via ITworld.com, TechReview