In just five months, a Rs 7-crore contour map project will mark every inch of Mumbai in amazing detail and even help you cope with floods
In just five months, a Rs 7-crore contour map project will mark every inch of Mumbai in amazing detail and even help you cope with floods
In less than five months, for the first time ever, all of greater Mumbaiu00a0 437.71 sq km will be mapped in incredible detail. In effect, this means you can locate every tree, speed breaker, coffee shop; find out the height of every building, the area of an encroachment or a low-lying area something never found on a Mumbai map before. The cost: Rs 7 crore.
The remarkable, but not unique technique (international cities have it), called contour mapping, is being spearheaded by the BMC, for which it has appointed private companies.u00a0
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God is in the details: Regular maps point out names of roads and major landmarks, but not details like these and more |
The city will be mapped from aerial topographic pictures shot through a 96 megapixel camera fit below a low-flying aircraft. The shooting has already begun and should end in 20 days, while mapping will take another five months. The plane, hired from Mesco, will be manned by a pilot, a co-pilot and a cartographer.
Said R A Rajeev, additional municipal commissioner (city), "With accurate pictures, we will find it easier to plan and execute projects. While the required permission from the Ministry of Defence came through last month, we still have to seek the Air Traffic Control's permission every day before flying."u00a0u00a0 V L Joshi, chief engineer, storm water drains, added, "The plane gets permission only for one-and-a-half hours every day and they let us know only at the eleventh hour when we can fly."
So who will benefit? All government bodies involved in public utility works like the MMRDA, the MSRDC and MTNL. And you. However, you won't have access to the maps.
Post the Mumbai deluge, the Madhav Chitale Committee, appointed to investigate the floods, had recommended a contour map survey, recording contours at intervals of five metres. The mapping would not prevent flooding directly, but would help flood prevention projects like building storm water drains, pointing out low-lying areas and widening roads where there is water logging. Delays in the execution of these projects will be cut.
Conditions
Sensitive buildings will not be mapped. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had initially turned down the proposal for contour mapping Mumbai on security grounds, but subsequently cleared it after stipulating conditions like a ban on mapping high-risk areas like the naval base, Mumbai Port Trust, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and international airport. The MoD representative will be present when the photographs are taken, and the BMC will only take possession of the maps after the MoD clears the final map.
Contour vs regular map
>>u00a0Regular map will only tell you a road is 60-ft wide. Contour map will point out sections that are in fact less.u00a0
>> Regular will point out a cinema hall, but not that it's a low-lying area or that a stormwater drain or a gas pipeline is below it.
What is contour mapping?
Contours are lines that connect a series of points of equal elevation and are used to illustrate topography on a map. Contour mapping is used worldwide to create accurate digitized maps that chart the height, depth of a location above the sea level.
