Minister for Mines Pralhad Joshi launched India’s National Geoscience Data Repository (NGDR) portal on Tuesday. NGDR is a comprehensive online platform that will host the geospatial data for the entire country.
Terming the NGDR portal the culmination of the work of several years, Mines Secretary VL Kantha Rao said that out of the total 32 lakh square kilometres area of the country, the NGDR portal makes available detailed geospatial data of each square kilometre of 20 lakh square kilometres’ area. He added that offshore exploration data of close to 20 lakh square km is also available on the portal.
“The data will be useful to private agencies for preparing preliminary studies for exploration projects. I want to invite industry partners and researchers to make use of this data and undertake exploration projects which we can fund as well through NMET (National Mineral Exploration Trust),” said Rao.
