PLANNING OF RIVER INTERLINKING USING - GEOSPATIAL DATA

Abstract

The spatial and temporal variation in the rainfall over India has led to denotation of 'water surplus' and 'water scarce' river basins in the country. The project for interlinking of the rivers in India aims at transferring the water from 'surplus' to the `scarce' basins. The rapid growth in the demand of freshwater driven by growth in the global population and of the economies has led to this natural resource which becoming scarce in many parts of the world. As a result, the ratio between the number of people and the available water resource is worsening day by day. In the global picture, India is identified as a country where water scarcity is expected to grow considerably in the coming decades. Further, drought conditions resulting from climatic variability cause considerable human suffering in many parts of the country, in the form of scarcity of water for both satisfaction of domestic needs and for crop protection. The project for interlinking of rivers of India emanates from a desire of the political leadership of the country to bring a permanent solution to the negative impacts of drought and water shortages in these parts. The objective of the present study is to explore the capabilities of GIS that will be very useful in solving the various issues of interlinking in order to expedite the process of interlinking. Interlinking of rivers involves multidisciplinary data on hydrological, environmental and agricultural. Moreover, these data will be derived from various sources, such as toposheets, remote sensing imagery, thematic maps, DEM and field data. GIS is a powerful spatial technology, provides the scientific environment to store and analyze multidisciplinary data for solving such real world problems. For the present study in spatial analyst environment of ARC GIS 8.3, Distance analysis is being carried out. In which weight analysis and shortest path method is performed in geospatial data and after that different alternative path is found. After performing the distance criteria, road crossing criteria drainage crossing criteria, sensitivity analysis and buffer analysis optimum link is found.