Building a Transport GIS in Manipur
By Keith R Johnson

PART 4
Earth Sciences
This major component owes much to Dr Arun Kumar and his GIS team in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Manipur (MU). The co-operation between us started early in our work. We had digitized the road network from a 1:250,000-map base and MU provided us with the following vector tables (layers): -

• Geological formation

• Soils

• Main Rivers

• Waterbodies

• Epicenters

• Faultlines

• Relief (250m increments)

which they had digitized from a 1:250,000 map base. Figure 5 shows the Epicenters and Faultlines overlaid by the main roads in the District of Tamenglong.

More recently we have 're-digitized' the rivers using the 1:50,000 toposheets as a base.

In the Imphal Valley and the surrounding foothills we have together digitized the contours (100 m).

The locations of and information about recent landslides were obtained from PWD and supplemented by searches through past copies of the local newspapers.

- Dr Arun Kumar and his team are currently processing satellite images acquired by PCCS from IRS to prepare land-use/ land cover maps.

Raster Images
Raster images have two main roles in the GIS. The first is to provide the base mapping on the screen for heads-up digitizing and the second is to present information that is not, or not yet, available in vector form. (Photographs fall into the second category)

There are five folders of raster images in the GIS.

- Map250000 - 1:250,000 scale maps

• Survey of India 1:250,000 scale maps of areas adjacent to Manipur available as gray scale as well as color

• Original Blueprint with roads drawn on provided by PWD - Road Tracings - these were prepared by tracing the roads and rivers on the 1:50,000 toposheets. Additional village names from the District Maps were added.
  - Satellite Photographs - obtained from IRS.
  - Toposheets - 1:50,000 Topographic Map Sheets
  - Various - The Development Constraint Maps (19 in all) from the "Zoning Atlas for Siting of Industries" prepared by the Central Pollution Control Board. Photographs, mostly of the roads, taken on the road observation tours. Pages from Manuals etc for use in training/ presentation.

Other 

Road Accidents
Information on all road accidents in the five years 1994-1998 was prepared by the Police or the Director of Transport. Only personal injury accidents were recorded. The locations of the accidents are written descriptions. From these we were able to identify on which road link in the Road Network the accident occurred in three out of four cases. For economic assessments and to guide road safety campaigns additional data on injuries received in road accidents were obtained from the Hospital.

Historic Sites
The location of important historic sites was obtained from local literature.

Hospitals and Major Health Centers 
Information on health facilities were obtained from the Dept of Health and the 1991 Census.

Acknowledgements
Without the encouragement and support of E. BinoyKumar Singh (ex-Chief Engineer, PWD), A. Nilamani (Project Director, PWD), R Riding (Team Leader) and the co-operation of Dr Arun Kumar the GIS would not be so comprehensive. Further without my Manipuri GIS Team - Tarun, Subho, Jeetu, Oken, Biswajit and Tampha little of the above would have been possible.

Back to Top             << PART 1   << PART 2   << PART 3