Tamil Nadu: GIS helps reach food to fishing community

Chennai: After successfully using Geographic Information System (GIS) in marine conservation, a team from Omcar Foundation, an NGO, is using the tool to feed fisherfolk in coastal villages of Thanjavur hit hard by the national lockdown.

Mapping using GIS allows one to answer questions about data that relate to a location.

“When we go to fishing villages, there are chances that we reach areas where we have already distributed provisions. With GIS mapping, we have a ready-reckoner of sorts to check and work accordingly,” said marine scientist Vedharajan Balaji, who heads the team.

The documentation of relief work using GIS and Google Maps helped the NGO reach out to more people in need of relief material. “We update the GIS map “Omcar Covid-19 Relief Support” every day after distributing relief material. The documentation helps us get a clearer picture of who received what,” said Balaji.

The team shares its maps with the Covid control room of the collector’s office in Thanjavur to help the administration understand the geographical range of donations made by them. Omcar’s volunteers, recruited for conservation of dugongs, were deputed to prepare a list of people whose livelihood had been affected due to the lockdown. They found that many fishermen in coastal areas, particularly in Sethubavachatthiram block, had no food or money. “This is the first time we used the map for marking houses. So we had to be careful about identifying the geographic location of each house, unlike in the case of mapping a larger area."

Omcar volunteers are not new to using GIS. The team first used GIS to map mangroves and land use patterns in Palk Bay in 2012-14. Between 2014-18, the team used GIS for mapping dugong feeding grounds in northern Palk Bay. The team has donated relief material to more than 20 villages and plans to cover six more.