Abdul Wahab Khan
Panaji
The state is planning a cutting-edge, integrated environmental monitoring and governance platform to unify multiple agencies to improve decision-making and ecological protection. The Goa Coastal and Environment Management Society (GCEMS) has initiated work on an Integrated GIS-Based Decision Support System (DSS) that will bring six key regulatory bodies onto a single digital portal.
The agencies proposed for integration include the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA), the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB), the Goa State Wetland Authority (GSWA), the Goa State Biodiversity Board (GSBB), the Goa State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (GSEIAA) and the Goa State Council on Climate Change (GSCCC).
GCEMS has floated
a tender to select a technology partner to design, develop and maintain
the platform.
The proposed system is intended to support real-time, map-based monitoring and analysis of environmental parameters, enabling coordinated action across departments. It will allow regulators to visualise sensitive zones, examine project proposals spatially, track violations, assess pollution trends, and review changes in land use, wetlands, biodiversity areas and coastal stretches.
Each department will operate through dedicated modules. For GCZMA, the portal will provide CRZ mapping and compliance tools with layers on coastal erosion, mangroves, khazans, tourism projects and marine ecosystems. The GSPCB module will map industries, waste facilities, monitoring stations and pollution hotspots while tracking consent compliance.
The GSWA component will map wetlands, Ramsar sites, catchments and buffer zones and issue conservation alerts. The GSBB module will include biodiversity zones, species habitats, heritage landscapes and tree-cover assessments. The GSEIAA module will digitise environmental clearance applications and overlay project footprints on environmentally sensitive and archaeological layers. The GSCCC component will host climate datasets, flood- and heat-risk models, and change-detection analytics.
Officials said the portal is expected to improve coordination among departments dealing with coastal regulation, pollution control, wetlands, biodiversity, environmental clearances and climate change.
The platform’s architecture will include a geospatial engine with multi-layer mapping, automated data exchange, user-based access controls and mobile inspection tools. It will also support workflow automation, document management, environmental indicators, predictive modelling and dashboards for monitoring.
Training, maintenance and long-term support systems will be built into the project to ensure sustained use across departments once the DSS is operational.
