Jointly organised by:

Centre for Spatial Database Management and Solutions

National Consortium on Remote Sensing in Transportation

Getting from one place to the other was never a simple task for mankind. Great expeditions undertaken by Columbus and many such other explorers were feat of great achievement. Navigating the face of the earth just by looking at the star was no child’s play. Today off course, the world is a much smaller place. Connected to almost every nook and corner through extensive road, rail, air and water ways, we don’t have to embark on expeditions, but simply plan our itineraries on maps that will take us to the best places.

In fact transport linkages play a vital role in the development of the economic strength of any place; be it a country, a state, a city or a business district. The effective management of these transportation systems and networks directly contribute to the overall development of the area. Also in order to make these transport networks trouble free and sustainable, efficient management tools and techniques need to be evolved. Within a generation, the developing world's urban population will increase by 2 billion. Urban sprawl is likely to increase to the detriment of public transport, reducing accessibility and services for the poor. At the city level we now need to think in terms of mass transit systems that can be beneficial to the large populations that cities inhabit.

Geographic information is one of the primary tool as well as the key to most transport network management. Traffic flow, transit management and intelligent transportation systems are some of the present issues that need urgent attention in the field of Transport. On-line computerised traffic control, often giving public transport vehicles priority at traffic signals, have increased effective capacity of road systems substantially, as well as allowing traffic to flow at speeds at which emissions per vehicle mile are much lower. Traffic signalling coordination can increase effective road capacity by as much as 30 percent. Traffic management can also protect environmentally sensitive areas or road user categories from vehicular traffic.

In view of the above overriding issues, a Training Course in GIS Applications in transportation and a One-day seminar is jointly being organized in collaboration with National Consortium on Remote Sensing in Transportation (NCRST), University of California, Santa Barbara during the event of Map India 2003. NCRST is funded by US Department of Transportation and NASA, and is part of NCGIA. In order to cover the broad spectrum of the Transportation sector, the seminar has been divided into the following three sections:

• Transportation: Infrastructure Management and Protection
• Transportation Dynamics and Environment Management
• Panel Discussion on India US cooperation for Transportation Management in India

Programme Schedule