Kathmandu, November 12:

Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) is soon re-starting the digital Valley mapping project that was stalled some six years back. According to KMC officials, the project will kick off in this fiscal year after the approval of its budget.

The project was withdrawn by the European Union in 2002/03.

Talking with this daily today, Bimal Rijal, chief of department of urban development, KMC, said the digital mapping was the process by which necessary data collected from different streets in the Valley is compiled and formatted into a virtual image.

“The primary objective of this technology is to produce maps that give accurate representations of a particular area, giving details of major road arteries and other places of interest. It can be handy for users to go from one place to another,” Rijal added.

KMC had started the project in coordination with the Kathmandu Valley Mapping

Project (KVMP).

The programme could only complete the task of numbering houses and naming the streets because of the lack of coordination between Department of Survey and the Kathmandu Metropolis.

“The EU withdrew from the programme because of political instability and the

lack of elected representatives in the KMC,” he added.

The KMC restarted the project feeling that it was required for the systematic management of the KMC as well as for numbering houses, land and plot, Rijal added. He also said that some five to ten million rupees would be allocated for the project.

“We will call for proposal and select contractors after the budget proposal is approved,” he said, adding that the project will also become helpful in bringing the city dwellers under tax framework.

“We will also be able to design infrastructure required for the city from a room, as we will have all data and information about a specified place,” he added. Since we have all raw data in hand, we only need to give final touch before it is applied, Rijal added.