Context: Recently, India Observatory has come up with a Geographic Information System (GIS)-enabled dashboard called Collaboration/Covid Action Support Group (CoAST India) to monitor the movements of migrants.
About CoAST India

• The platform is a map reflecting the movement of migrants in real-time on their long journeys, often on foot, along with facilities and relief organisations on their routes.
• It is a collaboration with Anand-based Forest Ecological Security (FES) as its main nodal point.
• It draws information from 55 organisations on the ground, mostly in villages, and aims to make such data available so that it would enable governments and small local civil society groups to be of assistance.
• The map matches time and spatial data, on administrative facilities in the area, transportation and healthcare facilities of an area and summaries, on the fly, in real-time of people passing by.

About Geographic Information System

• A GIS is a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface.
• By relating seemingly unrelated data, GIS can help individuals and organizations better understand spatial patterns and relationships.
• GIS can use any information that includes location. The location can be expressed in many different ways, such as latitude and longitude, address, or ZIP code.
• GIS can include data about people, such as population, income, or education level.
• It can also include information about the sites of factories, farms, and schools, or storm drains, roads, and electric power lines etc.

Features of the portal

Four elements are sought to be brought together in this portal:

• Location of migrants and vulnerable people, their specific needs,
• Location of key infrastructure on the way which can double up as a rest-centre, or
• Quarantine space and location of relief and
• Rehabilitation providing NGOs and civil society organisations

About India Observatory

• The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), an NGO working on conserving natural resources at the grassroots, has brought together a unique ecosystem of tools – open data platform India Observatory – to help understand the status of local-level resources and facilitate the action plans for conserving them.
• The data made available on India Observatory platform has been pooled from various sources and dates as far back as the 1960s.
• India Observatory was set up in December 2019, with FES focused on ecological issues about forests, water bodies, conservation, etc. that needed “a bird’s eye view or a satellite’s vision”.
• It is a research unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).