Bengaluru to be remapped as satellite images show variations

Bengaluru: Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the Bengaluru civic body has decided to remap the tech hub landscape after latest satellite images from the ISRO exposed chinks in its outdated property records, an official said.
“We are soon going to re-map the city with the help of the latest satellite images from the Indian space agency, which used geospatial technology in mapping accurately all the properties that have come up exponentially over the last decade,” a senior official told IANS.
Though the civic body drew the maps based on satellite pictures a decade ago, the latest images reveal the fault lines in its property records, including open/lung spaces and commercial/residential buildings that have mushroomed in all its 198 wards due to reckless and explosive growth of the city.
“As the old maps were drawn on the images available then (2009-10), the property records do not reflect the ground realities, which have changed dramatically due to rapid urbanisation, infrastructure development, housing and civic amenities,” recalled the official.
To boost property tax collection and increase revenues from its assets, the civic body has decided to use the high resolution satellite pictures from the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for creating digital maps to show each and every property, spanning residential, commercial and industrial.
The civic body has recently entered into an agreement with the city-based ISRO for using its Cartosat-2 remote sensing satellite images to identify the various properties spawning the garden city for bringing them under its tax net.