An introduction to the Indian National Centre for Geodesy

Geodesy in India, officially, began in 1767 with the establishment of the Survey of India. Thereafter, the historically most typical geodetic survey of the Indian Great Trigonometric Arc was initiated in 1802. In addition to the various accomplishments of this survey including the measurements of the giant peaks of the Himalayan belt, the theory of isostasy came into existence in the 1850s as an important scientific by-product of the survey. Further, in 1929, a relation between the latitude and the age of the Moon was also identified by a series of latitudinal observations of Dehradun (in India) using prismatic astrolabe. Despite India being one of the key countries for geodesy, the geodetic education and research became elusive with time.

However, in 2019, DST, Government of India established the National Centre for Geodesy (NCG) to revive the geodesy education and research activities in the country. The centre was established as a solution to the limited national-level education in the country on geodesy and other aligned areas. The primary objectives of the NCG are 1) capacity building in geodesy through various outreach activities, 2) development and dissemination of related educational resource and 3) conducting cutting edge research in geodesy while acting as the national resource centre to provide extensive support to the students and researchers from academia and state/central government departments in the country. It has a vision to support various government agencies in infrastructure development and related areas to facilitate strong industry-academic collaboration in geodesy. Through the organisation of educational activities involving training programs, workshops, schools, conferences, etc. on geodesy fundamentals and its state-of-the-art research studies, NCG aims to develop an international consortium on Geodesy with contributions and collaborations from national and international institutions.