Abstract
India's earth observation (EO) capabilities built over the past 5 decades represent a wide range. Public investment played a seminal part in these developments and still they represent sizable contribution. Sea changes, which were witnessed in this field in the global environment, have changed many rules of the game. NewSpace systems had triggered disruptive trends in the market with reconfigured value chains and promising to commoditize EO data. This global context and rapidly evolving demand side in India for EO applications make it highly relevant to analyze the policy and strategic implications. The analysis carried out draws insights from a survey involving stake holders, mainly the providers and users of EO. It was also augmented by interviewing a set of 10 thought leaders—who played key roles in the leadership of the space agency, applications development, and industrial stewardship. Recent policy initiatives announced by the Indian government, particularly the Space Based Remote Sensing Policy of India 2020, the Geospatial Data policy, the National Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management Policy, and the initiatives for opening up the space sector, are further analyzed from the perspective of driving a healthy commercial sector of Future EO systems and applications in India.
Introduction
Recent years had seen some sea changes in the field of space-based Earth Observations (EOs) worldwide. The new rules introduced in the United States in July 2019 relaxed the already thinned down restriction on operations of EO companies by further allowing them to sell images of any set of characteristics, which are already available from foreign commercial entities. 1 The new rules also drop earlier restrictions on nighttime imaging, radar imaging, and short-wave infrared imaging. In May 2020, the new regulations are also codified in the Code of Federal Regulations under Title 15, Part 960—Licensing of Private Remote Sensing Space System. 2
Categorization of the applications for license and applicable license conditions under these regulations are indicative of the U.S. drive to maintain its global leadership. This is significant even as the NewSpace era EO had brought a paradigm shift in the business models that tend to commoditize data and are able to reconfigure or restructure value chains by seamlessly assimilating such data into information service chains. Powered by the integrative tools, analytical engines, and high-throughput networks, EO is fast converging into larger industry and business segments in the Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) domain.
The transformation of EO on a global scale is aided by the growth in Cloud computing infrastructure and related technologies. With such development, data processing is becoming a service area. One of the key developments that had significantly reduced the time and cost for users of EO data applications is availability of “Analysis Ready Data” as well as the use of cloud-based services such as Amazon Web Services, which can also offer flexibility to scale operations as per needs.
The adoption of revolutionary small satellite constellations coupled with use of advanced ground-based technologies have created unprecedented volume of data availability in tandem with a high cadence of coverage. Such availability of large volumes of EO data coupled with the advances in fields such as Virtual/Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and Deep Learning had accelerated mass market applications.
“Data on demand” as a concept had moved closer to reality, thanks to the big constellations of micro/nano-satellites such as Planet, Capella Space, or Satellogic. Present-day constellations permit intra-day revisits, with simultaneous capability for acquiring high-resolution data of multi-million square kilometers of the earth's surface every day, facilitating EO data Buckets in Big Data domains. 3
Public funding in EO systems had been traditionally strong and it had been driven by the public good objectives that these systems are made to serve. In addition, many EO missions funded by governments had also been instrumental in serving the international community by according free access to data and open software and also catering to many international cooperative programs. Open Data policies adopted by major programs or initiatives such as Copernicus dataset, Sentinel, Landsat, IRS, CBERS, and others are good examples.
High-quality data of even 10- to 15-m spatial resolutions are openly accessible. On the open-source software front, Raster Vision is an example of data processing software using deep learning and machine learning. 4 Apart from the government's total ownership of certain space systems, public private partnership (PPP) models also had been extended to systems providing data serving public policy objectives.
The EO data today are gathered by available alternate platforms to satellite systems, including Unmanned Aerial Systems, Aircraft, and Balloons. The capabilities of miniaturized satellites are blurring the boundaries of the performance of dedicated military satellites usually owned by the government and the commercial satellites. Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, mass production techniques having negligible random failure rates, and use of commercially off-the-shelf components in satellite equipment and subsystems suggest applicability of Moore's Law as hinted by Sir Martin Sweeting. 5
Indian EO Capabilities
Indian EO capabilities have been cost-effectively built over the past 4 decades, through the main role of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the national space agency, with the funding support provided by the Indian government. India's capabilities in this field are integrated, ranging from development, launch, and operation of sophisticated satellites to ground equipment to a broad range of applications that contribute to the national development.
Forty-one remote-sensing satellites, constituting 37% of ISRO's total spacecraft missions, have been launched over this period. Indian Remote Sensing Satellites now branched into Resource Management, Cartography, Ocean, and Atmospheric Observations. Observation instruments cover a wide range of spectral bands, including optical, near/middle infrared, and microwave (both active and passive). With a range of spatial resolutions down to sub-meter level, fore-aft stereo and video imaging capabilities, all weather synthetic aperture radar operations, the sensors and instruments developed in India for EO represent not only an impressive range but also the best of the breed in many cases. Currently, India is operating 17 satellites for EO applications, including 4 of them in the geostationary orbit.
Linkage with users, the hallmark of the Indian EO applications, had triggered a great variety of practical applications of EO relevant to the Indian context. Beginning with proof-of-concept experiments in the 1980s and progressing through nationally coordinated applications program under the aegis of the National Natural Resources Management System, many applications are operationalized with the involvement of different ministries in the government. 6
Examples of applications operationalized for the user ministries include Potential Fishing Zone advisories as well as ocean state forecasts, the agricultural crop acreage and production forecasting, national drought assessment and monitoring, the biennial forest cover assessment, irrigation infrastructure assessments, groundwater prospect zoning and identifying sites for recharging structures, urban geospatial database preparation for cities, integrated watershed management program, support in weather forecasting, tracking of cyclones and prediction of landfalls, environment impact assessments, support for decentralized planning, and many others. 7
The ISRO's geo-portal BHUVAN has been instrumental in the growth of a wide range of geospatial services, such as mapping for natural resources census, water resources information, agricultural pest/disease surveillance and more, customized applications for government and non-government user communities, and promoting decentralized, transparent governance and sustainable development decision support.
Complementing the infrastructure created in the public domain is a strong geospatial industry in India that has been playing a major role in the export of services. Companies such as Cyient (earlier Infotec) have been primarily export oriented. According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies, during the financial year 2017–18, the services export in this area reached a value of Indian rupees (INR) 66.59 billion and further the government's procurements of GI hardware, software, and services amounted to INR 62.18 billion. 8
The post COVID-19 reforms announced by the government on Geospatial data policy, which will be discussed subsequently in this article, augurs well for the creation of an additional value of 100 billion INR in this field by 2030, 9 as per the government sources.
Benchmarking Indian EO Systems with the New Space Era EO Systems
A pertinent issue at this stage is also how far the challenges that the New Space EO systems create are being addressed through the capabilities of the EO systems being built in India. It can be observed that the resolution capabilities of Indian sensors have been close to the state of the art in the civilian domain. For instance, the spatial resolutions in Cartosat-2 and Cartosat-3 are improved to 0.65 and 0.25 m, respectively.
Both of these can provide multispectral data, and in addition, Cartosat 3 is also capable of providing hyperspectral imagery, although commercially not released. Although they also compare well or exceed in performance of other quality parameters such as signal-to-noise ratios or modulation transfer functions when compared with the New Space systems, the large difference comes in terms of mass and power specification of current nano- and microsatellites, whose high performance combined with low cost and short development times make it feasible to deploy bigger constellation of satellites.
An example is the Nu Sat B microsatellite operated by Satellogic, which weighs just about 37 kg, yet providing a ground resolution of 1 m in both panchromatic band and multispectral modes and a hyperspectral imaging capability at 30-m resolution. 10 The lower swath of its images (5 km) as compared with those of Cartosat-3 (16 km) is more than compensated by other advantages. Similar is the comparison between India's Radar Imaging Satellites (600 kg), equipped with a sub-meter resolution X-band synthetic aperture radar and the new generation commercial radar satellite of Capella Space 11 weighing about 40 kg, which provides limited capabilities and yet very high resolutions of 0.3 m with multiple looks.
When a constellation of 6 such satellites in 2 planes are achieved, the frequency of revisit can be once in 3 to 6 h. The essential lesson that one can draw from these comparisons is that there is a parametric shift of the cost and value relationships between these New Space era technologies and the incremental approach of innovations in the legacy systems.
Stakeholder Survey
One of the striking characteristics of the changed global environment is the growing role of commercial and private space based EO systems. In this context, an exploratory survey had been undertaken to capture the perception of stakeholders in India on different dimensions of progressing EO, including its commercialization aspects. Guided by experts, trade directories, and the National Remote Sensing Centre, a sample of 310 stake holders, representing all key actors including the government, commercial remote sensing/Geographic Information System (GIS) industry, as well as user bodies, were contacted. Ninety responses were received for a structured questionnaire survey of the stakeholders representing 3 categories, namely, (1) providers of satellite data, (2) providers of applications, and (3) users of satellite data/applications were used in the following analysis.
Defining Commercial Space Activities
In the context of organizations engaged in activities contributing to space infrastructure or services derived from space systems such as satellites, there had been differing interpretations as to what constitutes “commercial.” Ken Davidian, after an extensive discussion, points to the twin criteria that can distinguish commercial space activities, namely, the free market driven character and independence from government. 12
Since in reality it is difficult to find space industry actors who completely satisfy both of the earlier criteria, this survey considered all those public, private, or joint sector entities engaged in commercial activities even to a limited degree in any part of the value chain.
Analysis of Responses to the Questionnaire
The questionnaire used for the stakeholder survey included 40 statements, the responses for which were assessed based on a 5-point Likert scale. The responses, when tested for reliability, had provided a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.839, indicating a good level of reliability and all the responses were valid. A snapshot of key factors and variables used in the questionnaire is presented in Table 1.
Key Factors and variables used in the Questionnaire
EO, earth observation; GIS, Geographic Information System.
Key findings from the survey indicated the following under each category, namely, the space segment providers, providers of applications, and the users:
The space segment providers strongly converged on the need for bringing India's indigenous capability for EO satellites on par with global advances. They perceived more sharply the challenge of small satellite constellations. On statements indicating the adequacy of present policies for the acquisition of any type of data needed by Indian industry, the sufficiency spectral bands for all application needs, adequacy of operational satellites, and timeliness of availability of data, their positions differed and were indicative of the need for change. Further, they did not consider that the total deregulation of satellite data for private users could boost the growth of commercial services industry, and this position was commonly shared by users too.
Providers of applications, on the other hand, strongly emphasized the role of new technologies as drivers for growth of applications, the global competitiveness of India's GIS services industry, and awareness of the diverse goals of Indian Remote Sensing satellites. They also strongly underscored the importance of the global competitiveness of indigenous EO satellite capabilities.
They also expressed different views on the adequacies of present policies for timely availability of data, the industry's ability to access data as per their needs, and adequacy of spectral capabilities for applications needs. They did not consider the competition from foreign commercial systems as a major inhibitor for space segment investments by India's private sector.
Users perceived a greater impact, in comparison to space segment providers, of subsidies or buyback commitments to incentivize the private sector and of the restrictions on data based on resolution in variance to global practice. They also, by and large, did not consider that for commercial remote sensing and GIS industry in India, competition from government institutions is a major issue.
On policy issues related to deregulation need, data acquisition, adequacy of the current satellite capacity, and timely availability of data they held similar but significantly more moderate views than the space segment providers. On user friendliness of accessing IRS satellites, however, they were less positive than the position of space segment providers.
Collectively considering all responses, the 4 most agreed positions were that:
It is important that India's indigenous capability for EO satellites should be on par with global advances. I am aware that the main declared goals of Indian Remote Sensing satellites are to support operational applications for natural resources management, weather watch, services for good governance, and societal development. The main growth drivers for EO and GIS applications in future are the use of new technologies such as geospatial data fusion, data mining, and analytics. It is important for India to have its own dedicated commercial EO satellite, in keeping pace with global trends.
The 5 most disagreed positions among providers and users were that: (In the order of higher to lower degree)
Present policies adequately permit the acquisition of any type of satellite data needed by the industry in India.
I am satisfied, by and large, with the timely availability of EO satellite data in India.
A majority of needs for applications are adequately met from currently operating Indian satellites.
The spectral bands for data available from Indian satellites meet all applications of my concern.
Access to Indian satellite data is sufficiently user-friendly.
The analysis of variances among categories, namely the providers of data, application providers, and users, indicated that the groups differed significantly on the following positions:
Present policies adequately permit the acquisition of any type of satellite data needed by the industry in India.
Government subsidies and long-term buyback commitments to the industry are necessary to attract the entry and sustenance of private EO satellites for India.
A majority of needs for applications are adequately met from currently operating Indian satellites.
The GIS services industry in India has the potential to be globally competitive.
The earlier cited analysis also indicated that overlapping roles of the government and commercial organizations are a hindrance to expand commercialization, and a policy intervention is called for.
Interviewing Thought Leaders
In view of the complexity of variables that drive EO activities in India in general and their commercialization in particular, a lateral approach was adopted by conducting interviews with a few thought leaders at the national level, with experience in high-level policy making in industry or the government. Ten eminent personalities were chosen among members of the Space Commission, Earth Science Commission, members nominated to the Upper House of Indian Parliament, and visionary leaders of EO applications in research organizations and industry.
The semi-structured interviews covered topics such as the goals for EO systems in the contemporary context in India, the application priorities and commercialization perspectives, the government's role, the strategic responses to the environment, and future perspectives including policy challenges. The essence of the feedback is discussed as follows:
Goals Drivers for EO Systems in India
The underpinning drivers of future goals should be the creation of autonomous capacity for all nationally relevant applications in combination with a comprehensive range of EO capabilities, which are in synergy with global developments. Located in a tropical region, India has cloud cover for 6 months in a year, and hence microwave Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data are crucial for applications. In addition, in recent years, the dependence of users on high-resolution commercial data had increased due to the enhanced scope of applications in several areas.
India needs to fill in gaps that exist with reference to (1) uninterrupted coverage by SAR, (2) use of hyperspectral data as a diagnostic tool, (3) SAR interferometry, (4) high-resolution stereo-coverage/Light Detection and Ranging, and (5) multiple coverage during a day by a constellation of satellites for applications such as disaster monitoring. Turning to the oceans area need is to monitor ocean color daily. For sea state parameters such as wind vectors, data from a scattero-meter is needed once in 6 h. All these need augmentations of space segment capacity.
Weather applications require data on a global basis, requiring downlinking of data from most orbits in a day, cost-effectively through stations in polar latitudes such as Antarctica. Recent years have also seen the development of new technologies that involve the use of radio signals for the detection of ships and their movements, in particular dark ships trying to avoid detection due to their engagement with illicit activities or new instrument technologies involving advances that enable greater precision, granularity, and coverage of measurements that are relevant to climate change monitoring.
The capability of measurement of methane and carbon dioxide profiles in the atmosphere with unprecedented detail, ground resolution, and field of view by an advanced instrument of a wide-angle Fabry-Perot imaging spectrometer in the GHGSat constellation is an example. Emphasis should also be on the faster dissemination of validated products. Data and value-added products need to be available within an hour of data acquisition.
Application Services
Diversification of applications are being enabled due to the availability of greater quality and quantity of data due to developments in sensors, orbital constellations, and the storage and processing technologies on the one hand and advances in fields such as Analytics, Block Chain, AI, and Deep Learning on the other. Already, the government is a big consumer of EO applications now. It will remain so in future too.
The EO applications in Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance industry are trending up. The applications are more readily adopted for agricultural insurance, whereas the applications of geospatial technologies in banking for financing operations of agriculture, industry, and infrastructure and monitoring of non-performing assets are bound to increase. Startups such as RMSI Cropalytics are rapidly bringing necessary expertise to combine modeling, machine learning, and domain knowledge in agriculture and meteorology.
There are huge needs for governance, national development, security, and public services. India's priorities in areas such as a sustainable increase in agricultural production, better management of water resources, development of watersheds, fisheries, monitoring disasters and their mitigation, conserving forests, smart cities development, crop insurance, development of infrastructure such as highways, ports, new airports, and real estate are continuing to drive growth.
Location-based services, benefiting from the convergence of EO, have a large scope for growth in India with the demonstrated trends and potentials of future economic development, an expanding urban need, upgradation of transportation infrastructure and services, and the continuing advances in mobile communications. Data availability from the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (NavIC) provides further opportunities for developments in ground-related equipment, software, as well as applications. Going further, once the demonstration of a new application is complete, the ISRO should find ways of getting applications done on a routine basis by concerned stakeholders or through industry.
Potential to Grow Commercial EO Activities
A number of GIS/geospatial companies in India, in addition to catering to domestic needs, have been servicing the global market; there is, undoubtedly, vast scope for commercialization of space-based applications in India. The GIS industry is broad based and strong today. It is converging into the mainstream IT-enabled services. It is demanding skills in many IT tools and processes. With a size of 191 Bi $ during the financial year 2020–21, the players in Indian ITES and Business Process Management industry could be incentivized to invest in space.
For a host of infrastructure development activities, land acquisition is becoming important and very often it becomes controversial. Timely and accurate data regarding land use and changes are essential to manage such challenges. To deliver all such applications efficiently and to move up the value chain, commercialization is very important. There is no limit to the newer applications, given the advances taking place in the EO data quality and availability.
Value enhancement in the conversion of EO data into application could be 5 to 6 times as compared with data costs, and the ultimate benefit when effectively used could even be a hundred times. Many users, including in governments, would be willing to pay for the information than always to buy data and further work on data.
Government's Role
There is a need to maintain national capability, notwithstanding the availability of free data from elsewhere. Second, the investment from the government is also important for further evolution of technology. This would ensure the national ownership of systems that could not only serve national needs but also in shaping India's role among the global community. In view of the large governmental demands for information, public investments into high-resolution systems are also justified to assure continuity of services.
India needs to enhance its investment in the area of microwave remote sensing and in building a constellation of high-resolution satellites for meeting the emerging needs of geospatial industry, governance, and security. These efforts could be shared by commercial operators. Comprehensively defining the roles of public and private sectors, with maximum possible exclusivity of roles, will help to reduce conflict between the 2. In this context, policies existing now need further liberalization. An example is the access to data gathered from space, on par with contemporary global practices. Further, the limiting aspects of Map policy too can be relooked to enable industry to more easily digitize, add value, or publish maps.
Future of EO and a Strategic Response
Impact of Trends in the Environment and Strategic Response
In the current global environment, the high-resolution remote-sensing data are widely available across the globe on a short turnaround basis. Any policy should ensure that Indian users are not at a disadvantage, especially when their counterparts outside India have such access. Also, now with multiple sources existing, there is reasonable assurance of continued availability of data even during adverse times. Nationally, the gaps in recent years caused due to disruptive trends, such as the low-cost Low Earth Orbit constellations, data on demand, and access to Analysis Ready Data and so on, need an effective response in terms of technology upgradation, and enhancement of skills and even partnerships with relevant foreign players.
The ISRO's focus should be on generating state-of-the-art knowhow and high-quality data on a timely basis, but services should be transferred to industry. Transforming changes had been witnessed globally in the field of the user's access to data. Users need to pay only for the extent of use for the area of his interest. Advanced tools and technology platforms can be cost-effectively used by enterprises with available service architectures of geo-databases and mapping and analytics web platforms.
Dawning of New Space Era in India
A new awakening is on the horizon in India, with the collective consciousness springing in young educated Indians. This is manifested in an entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial opportunity in an environment where service-oriented markets are expanding. Space technology is one of the areas attracting the techno-entrepreneurs who dare to see opportunities in the disruptive NewSpace phenomena enveloping the globe presenting the challenge of some dominant competitive forces along with the opportunities arising from failure of legacy systems to respond rapidly for change.
Also spurred by recent outlook and policies of the Indian government toward renaissance of the growth in manufacturing and services through innovation and private investments, several entrepreneurial startups that would not have been thought of earlier are emerging. Though a few of these even had to face unfortunate early setbacks, it had not disheartened many new entrants. It is interesting to see that these startups aimed at operating in many frontier areas, including earth imaging satellite constellations, Internet delivery from space, electric propulsion systems, small satellite launch vehicles, analytics involving data from space, satellite platforms and Internet of Things, additive manufacturing for space, optical communication systems, navigation aids, and space debris mitigation, to name a few areas.
A few enterprises have successfully attracted venture capital funding, which rose more than 3-fold in 2020 since 2016. Pixxel, which had planned to launch and operate a fleet of 24 satellites, aims at collecting high-quality data and integrating their operations for analytic services using advanced AI tools and models for global applications in the fields of agriculture, mining, defense, forest fire, natural disasters, oil and gas pipeline monitoring, and so on.
Nearly a score of EO satellites planned by Kawa Space targets customers in financial services, government agencies, and those concerned with strategic risk management. Skyroot Aerospace, Bellatrix Aerospace, and Agnikul are startups working in the fields of launch vehicle and propulsion systems. Low earth orbit constellation plans of Astrome's 198 satellites aim at very low-cost and high-speed Internet delivery direct to homes covering the most remote areas by innovative use of its patented millimeter wave technology that promises to provide 180 Gigabits per second aggregated up and downlink capacity in its every micro-satellite.
These are typically mentioned of enterprise activities, whose likes are also represented by many others such as Vestaspace Technology, Dhruva Space, Astrogate labs, Alpha Designs, Earth2Orbit, Exseed Space, SatSure, Saankhya Labs, Team Indus, and the like. Notable development is also the participation of some key legacy players in the NewSpace phenomena for global ventures such as OneWeb by Bharti Global. Other existing or established companies such as Ananth Technologies too are spearheading such global partnerships. NewSpace momentum, though very challenging is hardly an opportunity to miss and it is a harbinger of a new culture that the government should be keen to promote.
Future Perspectives
India should consider its strengths, looking at its diverse range of capabilities in the field of camera systems, satellites, launch capabilities, and data acquisition as well as analysis. The need for other platforms such as drones, balloons, and aircraft for aerial survey and surveillance have also become relevant. The role that the geostationary orbit will play in future will also have to be factored in. The strategy to maintain integrated capabilities can still take advantage of the developments at the global level on the one hand and enhancing the autonomy consistent with the needs of security on the other.
In the full range of capabilities, one can have open-loop activities such as individual drones obtaining information and aiding remedial measures locally, and further closed-loop activities of systems generating information on status, triggering actions, and helping generate future action plans, using new developments in Big Data Analytics, AI, Deep Learning, and so on. An overarching policy framework linking diverse elements of EO and their applications will be called for. Taking cognizance of the global opportunities, data pricing policies are to be moderated, enabling the growth of downstream applications.
Suggestions on Policy Aspects
All developed countries have enabled the entry of commercial systems in this field through enactment of policy and laws that tended to reduce risks. Global developments suggest various models, including governments' anchor tenant role to PPPs to the market-driven commercial industry focused on areas excluded by the public investment policies. Thus, many high-resolution and radar-equipped EO systems are in the private commercial domain.
The prospect of Indian private industries investing in high-resolution satellite constellations and their domestic and global operations could take some more time. Private companies will hesitate to enter when they have to compete with the government for the market. Assurances on knowhow transfer and buyback commitment can initially incentivize private investors. The need for investments in the development of newer algorithms, processing chains, data analytics, and decision support systems is also recognized.
Setting up world-class training centers for skill development open to students globally is an opportunity. It is also noteworthy that any information has security risk. By and large, the character of information is that it can be misused. A more sophisticated approach is necessary to balance the restrictions due to security concerns with the developmental needs. There is a strong need in India to strengthen academic research and think tank activity that can guide with necessary dynamism the strategic planning, policy directions, mid-course corrections, and other organizational innovations.
Recent Initiatives of the Government of India
A watershed in the policy environment comprised the recent initiatives of the Government of India. The announcements of new horizons of growth for the space sector 13 by the Finance Minister in May 2020 focused on boosting private participation in space activities. The initiatives announced included assurance on creating a level playing field to private companies in satellites, launches and space-based services, predictable policy and regulatory environment, access to the use of the ISRO's facilities, opening of future projects for planetary exploration and outer space travel to the private sector, and liberalizing geospatial data policies.
The aforementioned initiatives of the government address highly relevant gap areas of the Indian space ecosystem. The nature of goals implied in the earlier initiatives would not only need long-term orientation in implementation but also parallelly demand refined regulatory mechanisms to implement a level playing field as well as anchor support roles effectively. The key transformation that is necessary is to make the industry a partner in the technology development tasks to overcome the disruptive impacts in the global developments.
The perceptions by analysts on the past Space Activities Bill 2017 as a restrictive instrument than a promotive instrument for innovators and new entrants would need a reversal. There had also been concerns 14 that space activities, being multidimensional, should have a regulatory architecture, which allows for a coordinated but clearly decentralized regulations for application areas that cater to economic and societal interests. In addition, the scope of heavily regulated segments due to national security considerations or any international obligation or concern should be well defined.
The government has also created a single-window nodal agency, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre 15 for authorizing and overseeing the activities of non-government private entities in the field of space and also extending handholding support and sharing of technology. Although this is a progressive step, the possible conflicts due to the combination of regulatory and promotional functions in a single entity and evolution of an efficient and independent mechanism for dispute resolution need to be looked at. The regulatory mandates should also be backed up by the National Space Legislation.
Remote Sensing Policy
A Draft Space Based Remote Sensing Policy of India (SpaceRS Policy), 2020, 16 released for public consultation in November 2020, is a major step in addressing core concerns in the earlier policies on remote-sensing data. The new draft includes most of the provisions of earlier versions brought out in 2000 and 2011, but it also relaxes the restrictions placed on access to “sensitive data,” which is now defined as “very high-resolution data” having a ground sampling distance of better than 50 cm.
It is noteworthy to observe the displaced synchronism between the Remote Sensing Data Policy and the National Geospatial Policy, which relaxes mapping to 1 m, that can justify the availability of data with a pixel size down to 30 cm, considering that the thumb rule for the limit of mapping ability equals 3 times the size of pixels. Though the stipulation in the new Indian policy for limiting resolution of data availability is still more stringent than the limits prescribed by countries such as the United States for dissemination of commercial imagery, this relaxation should meet most of the demands.
Contemporary developments in the EO industry and services would need policy perspectives that consider the EO in a global context rather than a pure national context for markets, operations, technological preferences, and advance initiatives. This underlines the need for transforming policy development from a reactive stance to proactive path.
Also, the revised policy should consider the needs of new models of transnational collaborations in the commercial domain, the lease or buying of satellites in the orbit, the export of ground systems that are capable of tasking and receiving data from Indian satellites, the export of data acquired in India, the operation of joint ventures, and so on.
Guidelines on Geospatial Data
Some notable further developments that had taken place on the policy front relate to the new policy on geospatial data and related services, announced by the Government of India in February 2021. It would permit Indian entities to acquire and generate geospatial data and offer related services, including mapping, relaxing the need for prior approvals, licenses, or security clearances. In addition, the policy mandates the availability of all data generated through public funding to the Indian entities for economic, developmental, or scientific uses. 17 The paradigm of access policy based on differentiated activities combined with user accountability in place of gross restriction based on product characteristics would lead to greater initiatives and innovation from the industry.
With specified thresholds for accuracies of mapping parameters, freedom for value adding, access to services for real-time positioning, terrestrial mobile mapping without limits on accuracies, and a host of other provisions for Indian entities augur well for the industry to catch up with new technologies and skills and to create growth opportunities.
The Drone Rules, 2021
Another regulatory measure brought out by the Government of India initially through the promulgation of Unmanned Aircraft System Rules, 2021, which came into force on March 12, 2021 but that was further replaced by The Drone Rules, 2021, was notified on August 25, 2021. The scope of these new regulations covers autonomous systems and remotely piloted aircraft and a revised authorization process for all the systems.
Though weight-based classification continues, a number of relaxations to the earlier rules were introduced such as certain exemptions in respect of R&D entities, and no need for a pilot license requirement for micro (for non-commercial use) and nano drones, In the green zones as specified, no flight permissions are necessary. Although a detailed discussion is not undertaken in this article due to the extensive nature of these guidelines, it is observed that the compliance requirements are made user-friendly and a Digital sky platform will be established as a single window to facilitate self-generated authorizations and minimal human interface. Regulations address the concerns of security and safety, which also impinge on accountability and liability aspects. However, these rules could evolve in response to the needs in the ecosystem from time to time.
Need for Overarching Policy
The compartmental structures of work division and accountability in the governmental system often lead to a fragmented policy framework that needs further alignments. In the context of convergences in technological areas and reorganized value chains due to disruptive innovations, policy integration is a need that can hardly be ignored. The transforming downstream relevant to the field of EO has seen such a trend, which is referred to in the earlier part of this article, Applications end, thus, should be the basis for the integration and alignment of policies. In this context, there is the need to unify the diverse policies defined into a comprehensive geospatial information generation and services policy.
The synchronism between limiting resolution of remote-sensing data and the mapping accuracies permitted needs to be ensured. In this context, the Space Remote Sensing Policy 2020 and The Policy on Geospatial Data and Services are still out of synchronism and unification of the 3 is a desirable goal.
Conclusions
Interaction with the thought leaders and stakeholders strikingly revealed that due to the tremendous expectations and pressure on governance and development in the context of a diverse democratic society such as India, the users need systems that can deliver ready and complete solutions. They have no time to wait.
In turn, this implies a robust national capability in EO and many downstream technologies and infrastructures, with a balanced development of public and private investments. The global trends should be taken advantage of wherever it is possible, with the objective of creation of higher economic, societal values or intellectual property. Clearly, the strategy should be to focus on efforts that will lead to future leadership in some areas at a global level rather than “catching up” with competition.
Advances in global and national EO in terms of super-fine resolutions, near real-time revisit capabilities, vastly improvised spectral contents, and global coverage are all of advantage in creating business opportunities for services, which is a major component of the growing Indian economy. Further, the higher potential for diversifying and expanding applications can also be realized through advances in higher storage, modeling and analytics, and mobile connectivity to address applications at even an individual level.
India has tremendous needs due to the growing economy and other developmental needs. The magnitude of Indian application needs is a sound basis for commercial development in services. There should be strong R&D efforts to develop modeling, analytics, and so on in a way that the further potential that is yet untapped from EO can be realized.
The EO, positioning, and associated geospatial information technologies provide capabilities for integration across geographies from local to national level, integration with external data facilitating Big data Analytics, integration across different time scales, as well as refined spectral divisions enabling better monitoring and predictions of manmade and natural phenomena. Further, converging with positioning/mobile technologies, the geospatial information technologies also enable a high degree of personalization in applications.
These capabilities represent immense untapped potential for India in fields such as sustainable agriculture, decision support for disaster management, banking, insurance, smart cities, internal security, health care, water management, and so on. Again, such wealth of data is an asset for scientific research in areas such as climate change.
The private enterprises that had been unleashed at a global level in the new space era through micro, nano, and small satellite constellations are providing super high data volumes. There is the trend of their converging with mainstream information services in several vertical segments of the industry. Since there will be enormous oversupply of data in some segments, it is necessary to promote enterprises that can easily access images, fuse them with other data in analytics models, and provide services.
On the policy front, there had been a high degree of concurrence on the policy of government investment into EO satellites for public good and these should continue. A similar position exists with reference to the desirability of standardization of costs to check unhealthy competition in GIS industries. The vast majority believe that severely restricting access to very high-resolution data will affect the competitiveness of commercial applications.
The need for policy incentives for attracting and sustaining private investments had been discussed earlier. In particular, the co-creation approach by the government institutions through startups or established industries for meeting the challenges for new technology developments is called for. Even as the government had started responding through many impactful new directions to the policy, the challenges involved would demand a dynamism that requires recognition of the latency of outcomes of the policy renewals and overcoming the lack of synchronism between the domestic and international environment.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges Jain deemed-to-be university, which provided the environment for research into this topic; Dr. C.G. Krishnadas Nair, for guiding the research. The author is also indebted to several leaders in academics, research, and industry whose names make a long list for sharing their experience, visions, and views. Special mention is made here with gratitude to Prof. Arup Dasgupta, Dr. P.S. Goel, Dr. V.S. Hegde, Dr. K. Kasturirangan, Dr. A.S. Kiran Kumar, Dr. Mukund Rao, Dr. Rajesh Mathur, Dr. Ranganath Navalgund, Dr. Shailesh Nayak, and Dr. Pavuluri Subba Rao for their time and valuable insights during one-to-one meetings.
Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.
Funding Information
No funding was received in the course of this research by any institution.