Digital Forest Intelligence for Sustainable Land Governance

Challenge

In many jurisdictions, forest records have evolved over decades in multiple formats, resulting in fragmented datasets, inconsistent maps, and limited spatial accuracy. These challenges complicate land administration, infrastructure planning, environmental compliance, conservation initiatives, and the timely resolution of land-related disputes.

Solution

SPARC designed and implemented a comprehensive WebGIS-based Forest Land Information and Decision Support System by geo-referencing historical forest records and integrating cadastral maps, satellite imagery, GPS surveys, administrative boundaries, and legal notifications into a unified spatial platform. The system provides a secure, centralized repository with interactive mapping, spatial analysis, reporting, and decision-support tools.

Results

The platform has modernized forest land administration by creating an authoritative digital forest inventory that supports evidence-based decision-making, improves inter-agency collaboration, and enhances transparency in land governance. It has significantly reduced the time required to access and validate spatial information and established a scalable digital framework for sustainable forest management worldwide.

Highlights & Impact

• The project covered 6 million hectares of forest lands in Odisha including reconciliation, settlement and DGPS survey of boundaries of 4000+ forest blocks covering about 4.3 million hectares.
• As Technical Partner to the Government, SPARC coordinates with 1000+ revenue and forest officials at the field level for training, capacity building and system implementation.

Technology Used

• Enterprise WebGIS Platform & GIS
• Forest Land Geo-referencing (GRFL)
• Satellite Remote Sensing & GNSS/GPS Field Survey Integration
• Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
• Digital Cadastral Mapping & PostGIS/Oracle Spatial
• OGC-Compliant Web Services (WMS/WFS)
• Cloud-enabled Enterprise Deployment