The Madhya Pradesh Forest Department was facing challenges both natural and technological. Remote areas with low connectivity were generally inaccessible and hence exposed to greater danger. Biodiversity in these rich forests was threatened due to human interference and if unchecked could cause immense losses. It was thus important that these areas be provided with adequate connect, manpower and overall facilities. To address these challenges, the IT team of MP forest department decided to revamp its infrastructure and deployed Microsoft® Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Mobile. By using these technologies the forest department developed a series of applications based on GIS, remote sensing, GPS and hand held devices. These applications effectively dealt with all challenges yielding a number of long term benefits.
Situation
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The Wild Life management system has been launched in Bandhavgarh, Kanha, Pench and Satpuda Tiger reserves where around 350 GPS enabled PDA’s have been deployed. As of 15th March 2011, data of 1641 patrols have been uploaded on the server. |
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Dr. HS Pabla
Chief Wild Life Warden
Madhya Pradesh Forest Department |
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The Madhya Pradesh Forest Department is engaged in the management of the largest forest area in India. The economy of about 95 lakh tribals is inevitably linked to its forests. The forest’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries are listed on the map as tourist attractions. The MP forest department employs 27,944 people who are collectively responsible for forest management. In 2010-2011, the department earned INR 900 crores for the state exchequer.
Forest products are both useful and in high demand. Forests and forestry provide countless, invisible services. Not only do they employ people, but are also a vital source of income for the state. However, the department faces a lot of challenges while maintaining all of the above. Challenges faced are both natural and technological.
Remote, inaccessible terrain is still out of reach and as a consequence, unprotected. Any disaster that occurs here potentially has far reaching consequences and is tougher to deal with. For instance, a fire in the jungle, if not detected on time, can wipe out entire tracts of forest area. In addition, poaching can and has made certain species extinct. Inaccurate planning and mapping has led to inefficient record keeping and zero transparency leading to loss of credibility.
The MP forest department needs to effectively deal with all of the above situations. It needs to cost-effectively put systems in place that would ensure quick identification of potential problems, offer alternate solutions and immediately execute decisions once taken. “An efficient IT system was the order of the day,” says Anil Oberoi, Head of IT Wing, MP Forest Department. “We needed not one, but a series of solutions that would solve our daily challenges and that would help us to grow and evolve.”
Solution
In order to address such a diverse set of challenges, the Madhya Pradesh forest IT team decided to develop a set of applications for automating forest management activities like fire detection and forest crimes. After careful evaluation, it was decided to base these applications on the Microsoft platform. “The decision to deploy Microsoft products was taken consciously as it provides a complete solution from data collection to visualization on web, and integration of GIS, RS and GPS technologies using Microsoft tools,” says Anil Oberoi. “The Microsoft integrated team model helped to transfer Microsoft knowledge to the MP forest project team members.”
Primarily based on GIS, remote sensing, GPS and hand held devices, the twelve applications developed by the IT team include:
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Wildlife Management System
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Fire Alert Messaging System
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Forest Dwellers Survey System
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Forest Offence Management System
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Forest Financial Management System
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Forest Planning & Geo Mapping System
Moving ahead the MP forest department is offering these applications to other government departments and states of India as services from a central datacenter. With technical assistance from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), the MP forest IT team has embarked on this innovative initiative. The new infrastructure consists of:
Service enablement of existing applications
The servers are virtualized using Microsoft Hyper-V technology and prepared to host multiple virtual machines (VM). VMs by themselves can be clustered thereby enhancing high availability.
The IT team of MP deployed Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 to monitor the infrastructure, platform and software layers. This monitoring and management component helps monitor the availability of systems, applications and services and alerts on noticing failures or degradation of performance. Corrective actions can also be defined in this component thereby reducing the overall downtime and improving performance of the system.
One of the goals of MP forest was to accelerate the implementation of its services to its customers. Provisioning and deployment automation was one of the techniques through which this objective was met. Self Service Portal (SSP) from Microsoft helped achieve automation in this regard. In addition to automating deployment of regular virtual machines, this technique can be extended further to automate deployment of workloads as well.
The IT team also deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services to offer the transparency needed by customers on the services offered including virtual machine performance and availability, network performance and availability, and service level reports. Data provided by the system and network monitoring systems, aligning with the data provided by service management system, can help provide these reports to MP forest’s customers.
Last but not the least, the IT team took care of inventory services, software updates, and patch deployment with the implementation of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007.
“MP Forest Department gets tech savvy,” says RK Dave, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), MP Forest Department. “IT wing of MP Forest Department used Microsoft Technology which enabled efficient forest management, positive environmental impact and enhanced wildlife protection. We have laid the foundation for a secure future for our forests.”
Benefits
The MP forest department is the first in its field to use technology based applications to address forest level challenges and make a positive impact on environment. These applications have yielded so many benefits that forest departments of other states also want to utilize these services.
Informed Decisions
The biggest impact of these applications has been quite subtle; in fact only the personnel more deeply involved with the department have been able to feel it. One of top officer voiced these feelings when he said, “Now we are able to take more informed decisions’ resulting in a lot of cost, effort and time savings.”
Real Time Governance
Introduction of the most spectacular technological intervention is the digital wall laden - “The Strategic Planning Implementation Monitoring & Command Room”, which acts as an eye in the sky. This intervention facilitates surveillance of key works and activities of the frontline staff engaged in important assignments. In the Command Room all the land based activities can be watched and periodically monitored. The important detections are published on dashboards for all stakeholders.
This facility has created a new dimension in governance and has improved management in remote areas.
Secured Forests and Wildlife
With the Fire Alert Messaging System and Wildlife Management System in place, all incidences of fire and poaching are captured and transferred to the field enabling necessary actions immediately. Effective monitoring has resulted in correct reporting of fire and poaching incidents resulting in quick response. All field units and staff are properly networked resulting in effective use of resources.
From January to June 2010, 3,368 fire points have been reported and dealt with. More than 10,000 SMS have been sent using the system. The response time to combat has come down from several hours to less than an hour. The average burnt area per active fire has also reduced significantly from 50 hectare to just 4 hectares.
Poaching is also showing a declining trend. Because of strict regimen, the cases of poaching detection have increased. Earlier staff used to hide information because of fear of action. Now they cannot hide as the new system captures all incidences. Thus, every case is being reported whether it is poaching or incident of natural death or any accident.
Enhanced Transparency and Accountability
Most of the core business processes have been automated and made online, thus making them transparent. The element of capturing data at source by the responsible executive has introduced accountability. The introduction of satellite based monitoring of works using High Resolution Satellite Imageries (HRSI) readily explains the quality and quantity of works thereby compelling the functionaries to perform well. It has also helped superiors to evaluate performance of executives. Now no one can deny the factual situation. Those who ventured have been penalized. So the element of fear is creating a behavioral metamorphosis in the work force.
Efficient Delivery
There has been a marked improvement in the delivery mechanism which has now become service and people oriented. Whether it is forest fire alerts to the forest dwellers or delivery of title deeds to tribal under the Forest Right Act or digital map delivery to public or management alerts to front line staff or tiger alerts in critical wildlife habitats or visual dashboard services on forestry affairs to public and media all have transformed the forestry sector. From a closed and compartmentalized department it has transformed into a completely open and mainframe development department which is caring and sharing peoples concern on forests, environment and climate change.
Anil Oberoi explains, “The outcome of the various applications is very impressive in terms of time taken and database creation. This is reflected strongly by the progress of implementation of Forest Rights Act within a short period of one year. In 45 districts of Madhya Pradesh 187824 hectares of forest land belonging to 126177 forest dwellers were surveyed using the application in about a year. These surveys were conducted over 188728 plots in 4589 villages.”
Social Audit
Central repository of data served in a visualization mode has augmented social audit. People appreciate and acknowledge the fact that the MP forest department can now boast of state level centralized common databases of extremely important figures that are not only available online but are also live along with on-the-spot data entry of newly generated data. The information is displayed in visual form so that even a common man can access and understand it. The decision support systems and query systems based on these databases and available online. Real time informed decision making coupled with feedback mechanism has made people interaction possible.
User Friendliness and Improved Technology Efficiency
By equipping end-users with a capability to request for provisioning and have virtual machines provisioning in an automated manner, the MP forest department has enhanced the experience of the users in obtaining service. Additionally, automation in provisioning virtual machines results in technology service efficiency that is well-appreciated by end users and customers.
Meets Security and Compliance Requirements
Configuration manager integrated into the virtual machines right from the time of provisioning the virtual machine ensures that system security compliance requirements are taken care of in an automated manner. What was happening in a manual manner is now automated through provisioning system and leaves no room for non-compliance to system security policies.
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For more information about MP Forest, visit the website at: www.mpforest.org
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