Mobile app to aid Clean Ganga Mission

NEW DELHI, June 23: The Centre today launched a mobile application, where the public can upload pictures of pollution sources of the Ganga river for further action by the authorities concerned. Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti launched Bhuvan Ganga Mobile Application and web portal after signing of an MoU between the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC)- Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to effectively plan and monitor the Centre's flagship Clean Ganga Mission here today, a statement said. Bhuvan Ganga portal is an exclusive web portal deployed in ISRO Bhuvan's geoportal with all geo-spatial layers related to river Ganga. It will be used as a tool to support decision making and planning for the Clean Ganga Mission. Bhuvan Mobile App is a user-friendly android based application to enable public to collect and report information on various pollution sources that affects the water quality of river Ganga. This mobile app will provide a platform for crowd sourcing to monitor pollution in river Ganga and enable decision makers to prioritise interventions. The first version of the app is available for download in the Bhuvan Ganga web portal (http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/ganga), the statement added. The statement also said that the objective of the MoU is to utilise the geo-spatial and crowd-sourcing technologies for pollution monitoring in river Ganga. T V S N Prasad, Mission Director, NMCG and P G Diwakar, Deputy Director, Remote Sensing Applications Area, NRSC, ISRO signed the MoU. Speaking on the occasion, Bharti said ISRO's participation in the Clean Ganga Mission is need of hour. She emphasised on focusing the key issues related with the cleaning of river Ganga as per the situation demanded, the statement added. The statement also said that NMCG has identified the need of utilising the space and other cutting-edge technologies for effective planning and monitoring the activities taken up for Clean Ganga Mission. NMCG and NRSC have found it mutually rewarding to partner for utilising space technology in the Clean Ganga Mission and have agreed to have a long term partnership through this MoU, it added. Both the parties would work together in the areas of applying geo-spatial technology in the various aspects of Clean Ganga initiative. The areas of mutual interest as identified include use of geo-spatial technology for water quality monitoring, development of mobile application for enabling community participation in monitoring/up-linking of field data, customising Bhuvan geoportal for visualising, query and analysis of datasets related to Ganga basin and co-ordinate and initiate necessary linkages with other agencies, with regard to geo-spatial database and web-based applications for river water quality monitoring.