Bhimavaram: Geospatial tech to help growth of agriculture, says Thailand professor

Bhimavaram: Geospatial technology will help the development of agriculture, said Dr Manjul Kumar Hazarika, director of Geo Information Centre of the Thailand-based Asian Institute of Technology.

He addressed the inaugural session of the five-day webinar on Monday organised by the Civil Engineering department of SRKR Engineering College on the third phase of 'Capacity Building and Training on Geospatial Technologies.

Dr Hazarika said that satellite data will help monitor the floods, advent of tsunami, population density of the towns and cities, and even agriculture products. He recalled that information pertaining to Covid-19 has been collected from all over the world through geospatial centre.

He said that drones are also helpful in collecting data from low height and the pictures would be clearer. Their institute has developed a drone on its own, he said.

Chief coordinator Dr PA Ramakrishnam Raju said that the Geospatial Information Centre of the college has been conducting research along with various international institutes. A European Union-India project was undertaken by the college at a cost of Rs 31 crore and some more projects are in the pipeline.

Principal Dr M Jagapati Raju said that the college secured second place in the State in the Times Group survey. He said that the college was selected in the Unnata Bharat Abhiyaan to enable the college to selected rural students to make them part of the national development. The college was designated as business incubation centre to promote MSMEs, he said.

Coordinator Dr K Meher Ganesh said that the AICTU was sponsoring the international webinar. Secretary and correspondent Sagi Vithal Ranga Raju, CEO SRK Nisant Varma, Dr P Raghuram, Dr T Rambabu, N Siva Kishan, Dr G Suribabu, Jivan Kumar and others were present.