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Cyclones pose significant threats to coastal regions, triggering widespread ecological and hydrological changes. This study presents an impact assessment of cyclone Biparjoy, which originated in the Arabian Sea and made landfall on the Gujarat coast of India on June 16, 2023. The research encompasses flood delineation and vegetation impact assessment in the Kachchh and Devbhoomi Dwarka districts of Gujarat, India. Sentinel-1A (VV polarized) imagery is used to precisely map the extent of inundation caused by cyclone Biparjoy. The total flooded area for Kachchh and Devbhoomi Dwarka was calculated to be 6556.73 km2 and 104.49 km2, respectively. The most affected LULC class in Kachchh is found to be bare ground (38.95%) and rangeland (38.94%) which is the major part of the Northeastern Rann region. In Dwarka, most waterlogging has been seen in the cropland (33.04%). The classification of the water and non-water pixels for the pre- and post-images is validated using the ROC curve. The accuracy was 93.2% and 89.5% for pre- and post-images classifications, respectively. Furthermore, vegetation impact was investigated to estimate the cyclone's ecological consequences. Alterations in vegetation density and overall health were estimated by calculating Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from both pre- and post-cyclone Landsat-8 OLI images. The cyclone-induced damage is further assessed for the mangrove trees in Kori Creek. This work contributes to understanding the ecological repercussions of such extreme weather events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ayurveda is a traditional system of healthcare that is native to India and has a rich documented literature of its own. Most of the historians agree that the documentation of core Ayurveda literature took place approximately in between 400 BCE and 200 CE, while acknowledging that the roots of its theoretical framework can be traced back to a much earlier period. For multiple reasons many significant contributions of Ayurveda literature to various streams of biological and medical sciences have remained under-recognized while recounting the historical milestones of development. This is true in the context of the physiology of digestion and metabolism too. In this communication we try to reconstruct a picture of the processes of digestion and metabolism as had been understood by ancient Ayurveda scholars. Though this understanding was primitive and insufficient in many ways, we argue that this deserves to be documented and acknowledged. To help with grasping the importance of these contributions, we juxtapose them with the corresponding insights pertaining to this subject reported by prominent western scientists. The major contributions of Ayurveda that have been recounted in this paper are those related to the description of three distinct phases of digestion (Avasthapaka), multiple sets of transformative entities acting at different levels of metabolism (Agni), and the roles ascribed to various internal and external factors in executing these physiological functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use land cover (LULC) mapping and temporal observations are indispensable drivers for sustainable development. This research showed the growth trends and land use transition for the Prayagraj district in the last three decades. Supervised classification of Landsat images was performed on 5-year temporal intervals using a maximum likelihood classifier. All satellite images were organized into six major LULC feature classes viz agriculture/open land, barren land, built-up, forest, sand, and water. The overall accuracy of LULC classification was achieved by more than 89% in all seven temporal points. Furthermore, the accuracy of the classified maps was estimated through area-based error matrix. The Land Change Modeler tool of TerrSet 2020 software was used to analyze the transition of classes and to incorporate the multi-layer perceptron–Markov chain (MLP-MC) technique. The transition potentials were included in MLP-MC with the help of sensitive explanatory variables and significant transitions of classes. Furthermore, these transition potentials and the Markov chain transition matrix were used to predict the future LULC dynamics and vulnerability. The change analysis revealed that a significant portion of the agriculture/open land gradually decreased and got converted to built-up land. The results depicted that agriculture/open land was reduced by 8.03% in the last three decades while the built-up region was grown by 199.61%. Forest area was continuously decreasing while the sand area increased due to river meandering. Overall, more than 75% of accuracy was achieved in MLP. The prediction model was first validated with observed data, and then the LULC scenario of 2035 and 2050 was simulated. LULC of 2050 showed that the built-up area would likely reach 13.90% of district area whereas the forest area would remain only 0.79%. The prediction model has given the output in the form of future LULC map along with projected potential transition maps. This would be useful for sustainable urban planning to deal with the alarming rate of built-up growth and agriculture/open land shrinkage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial analysis of primary schools is needed to ensure that they meet standards set by the Government of India. Therefore, mapping of Prayagraj district primary schools is carried out in this research work. The spatial analysis of schools is performed using various parameters that include: literacy rate, student gender ratio, teacher taught ratio, and students' toilets ratio. Several problems were revealed in the GIS based analysis of schools by highlighting their locations on the map. The results identify the location of all those schools where there is a need to take corrective measures. Further, the route analysis between home and school is handled in this research work. Sometimes, commutation is the sole criteria in the selection of a school. Therefore, optimal path analysis has been performed based on three parameters, i.e. population density, traveling distance and traveling time. A combined weight function is also given to find the optimal path. This work will help people to select the best possible path based upon their requirements. There is often a requirement to reach all the schools to distribute the goods or other physical monitoring activities. This work gave the optimal route to visit all the schools by using the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). School accessibility results obtained in this research through TSP will assist in choosing the best possible route. This will help the government identify locations where new roads need to be constructed to have road connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is considered as a holistic framework for effective collection, integration, discovery, sharing and delivery on a common platform for better utilization of multi-source geospatial data by global community, thereby, resulting in increased awareness of the use of geospatial data and the cooperation between decision-makers and stakeholders. Cloud computing technology can provide convenient and on-demand network access to shared computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction, and has been widely used in different applications. However, much research could not be found related to adoption of cloud computing in development of SDI at various levels from local to country. The present research is a step forward to fill this research gap by development of an open, interoperable and efficient framework for implementation of SDI at City level (acronym GeoCloud4SDI) for Prayagraj city (India) and deploying the same on OpenStack private cloud. Accordingly, multi-tier client server web GIS based SDI architecture and cloud enabled SDI services and workflow using load balancing and elastic computing architecture is developed. The novel framework for GeoCloud4SDI is developed using four layers, namely, (i) physical layer, (ii) cloud services layer, (iii) geospatial services layer and (iv) client layer. The physical layer and the cloud services layer combined together enables the access of virtualized computing resources from the cloud to enhance the performance of City level SDI. Geospatial services layer provides two different functionalities, namely, (a) management, retrieval and access of spatial data and metadata, and (b) retrieval of cloud services from cloud service layer. The performance of GeoCloud4SDI is examined by cloud enabled load balancing and elastic computing framework and the results show the response time reduced up to 50.43% along with 1.95 s performance gain for 1000 concurrent requests. The developed and implemented cloud enabled framework of GeoCloud4SDI is built via Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant interoperable service standards using Open Source Software (OSS), thereby ensuring standardisation and interoperability, and can also be adopted for other cities in India and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identification of hospital sites and their ranking is important for the planning and development of any country's health infrastructure. The site selection problem is a typical multi-criteria decision making problem involving multiple stakeholders and their interests. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is a promising approach to solve a location-based problem due to the constitution of various criteria involved in decision making. In this research, eleven criterion are chosen which are classified under three main criteria; socio-economic, geographical and environmental. This research aims to identify the appropriate MCDA method for the selection of a new hospital sites. Here, two MCDA methods named Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy AHP (FAHP) are used. Further, Geographical Information System (GIS) based MCDA methodology is proposed in this paper. The results obtained with both AHP and FAHP methods are compared. This comparison is based on criterion rankings, proposed hospital locations and sensitivity analysis. The main difference in results is shown in the result of sensitivity analysis in which constant variation in site ranking is obtained when weight change analysis is performed using AHP. The FAHP result shows only one variation in site ranking after a change in weight from +10 to +20%. The result suggests that FAHP may be a better approach to the hospital site selection problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is a framework of geospatial data, metadata, and users that primarily function for the production and sharing of large geospatial data. Metadata refers to "data about data" and the metadata related to spatial data contains information like projection, scale, resolution, reliability, data provider, and distribution policy. Metadata is a key component of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) of all nations as this aims to provide data discovery and access. The metadata standard of Indian NSDI is based upon standards taken from existing international standards like FGDC, ANZLIC, Dublin Core, and CSDGM. The drawbacks faced by Indian NSDI include duplication of metadata elements; non-availability of automatic metadata generation capability and metadata standard template; duplication of effort and time in the generation of metadata over the data server and catalogue server separately; and catalogue repository updates in future. To address challenges faced in Indian NSDI and the existing research gap, the present study is undertaken to develop novel metadata standard and framework for modifying and generation of metadata elements automatically using Open Source Software (OSS) for Indian NSDI. The proposed Indian NSDI metadata standard is more efficient as well as the modified metadata elements are more compatible with the other metadata standards. The developed framework for automatic metadata generation is based on the principle of three tier client–server architecture. These concepts are then implemented efficaciously for developing a prototype model of public health SDI for Prayagraj city (acronym GeoMeta4Health) using OSS. The functionality of GeoMeta4Health will help in the search, discovery, access, and visualization of geospatial data and metadata. This research will help geospatial communities not only to generate metadata automatically but also to expand and exchange their geospatial data in a wider domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inherent statistics of the surface temperature pattern were used to categorize urban heat islands (UHIs) for a tropical mega city and its satellite towns. Application of flexible threshold values for UHI zoning made this procedure independent of seasonal or locational influences. UHI zones for the years 1999, 2009, and 2019 were mapped from Landsat thermal bands by applying the mono-window algorithm. The parameters affecting the UHI intensity were rigorously investigated. Dynamics of land use land cover patterns provided in-depth insight into the spatiotemporal variability of UHI. The abrupt rises in localized surface temperature for every decade were recognized and thoroughly explained with the fall in fractional vegetation cover index and increase in normalized difference impervious surface index. The temporal nature of urban agglomeration and fragmentation of vegetation cover was quantified through landscape metric algorithms. The vegetation pattern and associated surface temperature fall were further used to evaluate the weakening of UHI intensity around major recreational zones. Substantial cooling by 0.938 °C was noted on daytime, from urban built-up at a 50-m distance to the green parks. Differential rates of urbanization and associated magnification of UHIs were looked into separately for central urban and satellite town areas. The characteristics of built-up density and proximity to green areas were employed to strategize mitigatory measures for the constantly growing UHI problem. Urgent needs for sustainable policies and green landscaping were highlighted through multi-criterion analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The applications of Geographic Information System (GIS) in the education sector are increasing day by day. The geospatial information can be published, discovered, searched, analyzed, and displayed through webGIS-based applications. Lack of an open source geospatial resource-based platform for data sharing, discovery, and service delivery in the education sector is a critical issue in managing the education of large population in India. The use of open geospatial consortium (OGC) developed open standards for geospatial web services will result in the interoperability of geographic information. In this paper, an interoperable and secure service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based webGIS framework is developed to handle the technical and non-technical issues in the education sector. In this research work, spatial analysis on schools is performed along with the design and development of webGIS framework using SOA, OGC standards, and open source software. The developed webGIS framework, acronym as EduGIS, is interoperable and secure which is implemented for the education sector. The development of webGIS framework is based upon three-tier thin client architecture. The present research work has investigated an optimized adoption of various free and open source software like Quantum GIS, GeoServer, Apache Tomcat, PostGIS, and uDig in different tiers of developed webGIS framework. The interoperability of developed EduGIS ensures that it can be shared across different technologies, data, platforms, and organizations. The development of open source-based webGIS framework will serve as a means of reducing licensing costs in developing countries like India and will promote indigenous technological development for primary education in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advancement of GIS technology since its inception in 1960's, many educational institutions, government departments, public/ private sectors and individuals have started its use for the production and management of spatial data. Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) concept was introduced in the early1990's and provides a set of technologies, standards, protocols, policies and guidelines on the whole cycle of geospatial data production and distributions, i.e., from data capture to storage and to sharing. SDI initiative at national level, termed as National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), has been taken by different countries including India. Geospatial community is facing various challenges like handling of large volumes of geospatial data, requirement of high computing resources to process geospatial data, scalability and interoperability. Therefore, need of advanced technologies in the form of SDI and cloud computing is realized to resolve the above challenges. Cloud computing has several characteristics like scalability, elasticity and self-provisioning that offers high-performance computing resources to perform geoprocessing efficiently. The main aim of the present paper is to study SDI and its components along with analysis and comparison of NSDI of various countries as well as to conceptualize and discuss service oriented architecture of cloud enabled SDI. Several challenges of the spatial data handling and processing that occurred due to the high intensity of data and lack of processing capability can be solved by adopting proposed cloud enabled SDI architecture. This research will help geospatial community and SDI developers in various perspectives including data sharing and management, interoperability, security and reliability, fault tolerance, mass market solution, upfront cost and global collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenal progress has been witnessed in the field of Geographic Information System (GIS) in recent times. The development of webGIS is the result of the growth of the Internet and consequently World Wide Web. The webGIS architecture is continuously changing according to contemporary technologies and requirements. In this paper, webGIS and its architectures are reviewed. Firstly, GIS and invention of the Internet are discussed. Evolution of webGIS is then covered along with major milestones of its development and open source initiatives. It is followed by discussion on client server architecture and its types. Thick and thin client architectures are then described and compared. As the paradigm in the computing world shifted towards web services, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is also discussed in context of webGIS. Spatial cloud computing and cloud-based architecture for webGIS are then described. The paper also provides a comparison of different webGIS architectures so that suitable architecture can be selected by the user based upon the requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]