New Delhi, Jul 28 (IANS): Esri India, a leading geographical information system (GIS) software and solutions provider, said on Wednesday that it is looking at working closely with more state governments in helping them set up their geospatial infrastructure and data management systems.

Esri India aims to increase the use of GIS technology across core areas of the economy like agriculture, infrastructure development and healthcare sector.

The company said that it is working closely with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in collating data on various projects across the 100 Smart Cities for the India Urban Observatory.

"Our focus is on GIS technology for creating a sustainable future. It's important because the world is facing a lot of challenges like climate change, urbanisation, water security, shortage of energy and others besides the ongoing pandemic," said Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India, on the sidelines of the two-day Esri India User Conference (UC) 2021.

"GIS technologies can bring a transformation in handling some of these challenges as well as help the country in achieving its goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025," Kumar added.

Several state governments have been leveraging GIS technologies to manage the Covid pandemic better across different perspectives like hospital beds, inventory management and Covid data management to identify logistics, possible quarantine, or containment zones. The economic value of geospatial data can be quite huge as it can aid in making better decisions.

Dr Vivek Joshi, Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India in his keynote address focused on modernising the India Census with geospatial infrastructure.