Development of village information system for Faridkot district using remote sensing and geographic information system

Abstract

Rural development has great significance in India as more than 70% of the population of India resides in villages. Development at ‘village level’ is of great importance to make the livelihood of the rural masses better. Knowledge of the current status of the villages is the foremost pre-requisites of the rural development process. But due to lack of reliable and compiled information, various government development schemes and policies, cannot be efficiently implemented for village level development. The current era is augmented on Information technology. This technology in collaboration with the geographic information system (GIS) can provide great opportunity for the development of rural India. Under the present study, a village information system has been developed in GIS environment for the district Faridkot, Punjab. The main objective is to integrate the information collected from diverse sources and disciplines onto a common platform and subsequently generate meaningful information by integrating spatial and non-spatial data, so that it can be used for effective decision making. The developed system provides detailed spatial information and information about forty-seven important attributes, pertaining to infrastructure, demography and socio-economic status at the “village level”. The system can be very helpful for identifying the candidate villages lacking important facilities. It can serve as a decision support system for the planners and policy makers, thus providing an effective and meaningful direction for planning and development of the rural areas.