Objectives and strategic activities

The Centre will maintain the spatial database on important aspects such as forest cover and its changes, landscape characterization, drainage pattern, human settlement and so forth to be used as reference by different programmes. Further, the Centre will also generate various thematic maps using analysis to share with the landscape field offices with GIS capacity.

Analysis based on GIS information is important for policy advocacy and management decisions by government agencies. Temporal analysis of GIS data can also be an important monitoring tool, providing vital information on trends, for example critical corridor analysis in terms of its spatial and other land-based characteristics. Similarly, prediction analysis based on GIS data and modelling can be carried out to project changes in domains such as forest similar to REDD+ and for the expansion of urban settlements.

In the past, the Centre trained the WWF-India field staff on GIS to enable them to generate and interpret spatial data and use them in field monitoring and spot decision-making. The decentralization of capacity is essential to embed GIS at the field decision-making level.

IGCMC shall fully explore the rich information produced from scientific enquiry, monitoring, management analysis and data processing with the use of analytical models. The use and adaptation of GIS to various types of predictive and prescriptive models relevant to an integrated scientific support programme shall be a major research effort.