What does Geotagging mean?
- Geotagging is the process of adding geographical information to various media in the form of metadata.
- The data usually consists of coordinates like latitude and longitude, but may even include bearing, altitude, distance and place names.
- Geotagging is most commonly used for photographs and can help people get a lot of specific information about where the picture was taken or the exact location of a friend who logged on to a service.
Explaining Geotagging
- Geotagging location services can be used to find location-specific websites, news and other information. It is based on positions and coordinates and is often directly taken from a global positioning system (GPS).
- Some social networking sites and services give out the location of their users, which allows users to know exactly where their friends are as they are logged on to that website (or check in to the service).
- When tagging photos, the tagging may be done by the camera after processing the shot, or it can be applied when the photo is posted online. Most cell phones have built-in GPS, so they can geotag any photos taken using the phone’s camera.
Why is Geotagging important?
- Several assets are created in the states under various schemes of the Ministry of Agriculture.
- Under RKVY also, states have been utilising substantial amount of funds for creation of infrastructure/assets in agriculture and allied sectors such as soil testing labs, pesticide testing labs, bio fertiliser setting units
- Monitoring of such widespread activities is of paramount importance to states and Government of India to understand flow of funds, inventorising the assets, bringing in transparency, planning of assets for future, and finally informing the farmers about the facilities available.
- Monitoring of MGNREGA assets through Geotagging in his budget speech.
- Geotagging for monitoring of assets has already started in the Ministry of Rural Development for MGNREGA and Department of Land Resources for monitoring of watershed activities in the states.
- Postal department has also geotagged the post offices using NRSC Bhuvan Platform.
Source: techopedia.com and ThePrint
