Delhi joins cities with utilities on digital format

The national capital today joined an elite group of cities like New York, London and Paris when Delhi government unveiled a unique portal comprising all the over ground and underground utilities like telephone lines and water pipes in three dimensional digital format.

Inaugurating the portal, chief minister Sheila Dikshit said the project, one of its kind in India, was a giant leap towards making Delhi a new age city as digitisation of all underground and over ground assets would improve urban planning and governance to a great extent.

"The availability of underground utilities in digital form would enable the concerned line departments to undertake preventive maintenance programmes as well as locate the fault in the underground utility with precision," she said.

Officials said the portal developed using geo spatial technology now comprises digital details of assets of the New Delhi district only and it would be accessible to 30 line departments of Delhi government.

Chief secretary Rakesh Mehta described the Delhi State Spatial Data Infrastructure (DSSDI) project as one of its kind in the entire world in which all the underground utilities in the city are being mapped afresh using state-of-art technology of 'ground probing radars'. Terming the project as one of the key components of her government's preparation for the  ommonwealth Games, Dikshit said it would be a model project for other cities of the country to follow.

Officials said digital mapping of all the assets of all the nine districts of the city will also be made available soon.

They said the digital data mapping will comprise all roads, routes of Delhi Transport Corporation, Metro, ward and district boundaries, police stations locations, underground and over ground utilities, parks and hospitals etc.

The portal will provide access to departments like MCD, NDMC, DDA, Delhi Police, besides bodies of Central and state government.

She said under the project three dimensional modelling of the entire range of public utilities including pipelines for water supplies, sewerage systems, telephone and electricity cables-overground and underground, apart from hospitals and a range of other physical structures dedicated to the delivery of different services will be made available.

The chief minister said the project will provide the clear vision for urban planning and easy monitoring of ownership of properties, tenancy, land use apart from providing greater preparedness for disaster management.

The common database would be made available to various government departments for design, planning, execution and monitoring of all infrastructure projects.