**4. Use of GIS in agrometeorological products in India**

At present, under the GKMS project, extensive data on crop, weather and satellite data are being used to prepare the advisories at different temporal and spatial levels. In view

**Figure 2.** The mechanism for the preparation of agromet products.

of that, geospatial technology is being used in generating a number of products using ground-based data as well as the satellite data. To provide these services on a pan India mode, station-wise point data are not enough to generate the required products at the desired level. The present system helps IMD to compile data from various monitoring stations, analyse, generate advisories and disseminate information through online in near real-time basis. Since information is broadcasted in the form of maps and tables, it also helps users to extract various advisories and other information specific to the location of interest. Under the present system, it is possible to compile meteorological data from various monitoring stations along with geographic data from other sources, analyse, generate maps related to weather information, hydrology, agromet advisories, and so on and disseminate information through state-of-art communication system in near real-time basis. Since information will be broadcasted in the form of map and tables it helps users to extract various advisories and other information specific to location of interest. The software accommodates various algorithms and models to generate agromet, climatological and hydrological products.

It covers the following aspects:

utilised at the time of sowing of crops, irrigation scheduling, fertiliser application, pesticides

IMD is establishing a number of observatories like surface, agromet, and so on to provide operational and R&D on atmospheric sciences. IMD is having different kinds of networks of observatories in India to monitor and assess the extreme events which are conventional observational network, automatic weather stations (AWS), buoy/ship observations, cyclone detection radars, Doppler weather radars and satellite observations. Satellite and radar observations are very crucial for monitoring and assessment of hazards, especially the Himalayan

**Figure 1** shows the weather observational network in India. At present, there are surface (532), automatic weather stations (593), automatic rain-gauge stations (1352), agromet observatory (264) and DRMS (3500). Maintenance and strengthening of atmospheric observational network is absolutely required to sustain and improve the skill of weather forecasts. IMD has been augmenting its observing system networks over the past years. At present, geospatial technology is used to convert discreet data into continuous data. Using interpolation technique, the data are converted to spatial spread. These data cover each and every district of India at a high-resolution scale which can be used for the betterment of agro-advisory.

At present, under the GKMS project, extensive data on crop, weather and satellite data are being used to prepare the advisories at different temporal and spatial levels. In view

**4. Use of GIS in agrometeorological products in India**

application, and so on.

**Figure 1.** Observational network of IMD.

196 Multi-purposeful Application of Geospatial Data

region and North Indian Ocean.


The digital data are being collected from different authorised agencies through IMD for the preparation of digital database. The mechanism for the preparation of agromet products is given in **Figure 2**.
