Thiruvananthapuram: The data collected by local bodies with the help of volunteers has found minor to major discrepancies in the GPS location tags of around 2,000 households affected by floods and natural calamities. According to sources, the inaccuracy in the GPS location tag was mainly due to the problem with the mobile phones used by the volunteers for collecting the data. Efforts are being made to correct the locations using other tools.
The government also plans to incorporate the GPS locations of the houses with the spatial data infrastructure of the state so that it could be used for the mitigations plans of flood and natural calamities in future.
As part of assessing the damage, the government has been collecting details like extent of damage and pictures of each flood-affected household. The GPS location tags of each houses are also being collected. A mobile app was developed and the data collection is being done with the help of volunteers.
They have so far collected the details of about 3.27 lakh households, of which 3.18 lakh were already verified by the overseers or assistant engineers of the local bodies concerned. As many as 2.44 lakh were approved by the local body secretaries concerned. Considering this volume, the discrepancies in around 2,000 is very small.
Sources said that in many cases, the GPS locations of the households were shown by the location of the nearby mobile phone towers. In some cases, the GPS location of a household would be shown in the area of another local body. In some cases of houses near district and state borders, the GPS location collected falls in the neighbouring district or state. This is due to the lack of facility in many mobile phones to identify the exact GPS location. Instead, it is determined by the location of the mobile phone tower from which the phone is connected. Hence the discrepancies. Kerala State IT Mission and Information Kerala Mission (IKM) are managing the application for the data collection.
