Each topic below explains the evidence, the business problem it creates, how GLOBEIR solves it, the benefits to your organisation, and how your data stays private and secure.
1. Groundwater Assessment and Aquifer Mapping
Groundwater is assessed every year by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) and the States together. The 2025 assessment estimates total annual recharge at 448.52 BCM, extractable resource at 407.75 BCM and extraction for irrigation, industry and domestic use at 247.22 BCM, giving a stage of extraction of 60.63 per cent for the country. Out of 6,762 assessment units (blocks, taluks and mandals), 730 are over-exploited, 201 critical, 758 semi-critical and 4,946 safe, while 127 are saline [1]. The assessment runs on a common web platform, the India-Groundwater Resource Estimation System (IN-GRES), and CGWB monitors water levels in near real time through about 23,000 telemetry-equipped Digital Water Level Recorders [3].
Under the National Aquifer Mapping and Management Programme (NAQUIM), started in 2012, CGWB set out to map about 25 lakh sq km of mappable area out of nearly 33 lakh sq km at 1:50,000 scale, and covered the full area before 31 March 2023 [2]. Aquifer maps and management plans for 654 districts, covering 14 principal and 42 major aquifers, have been shared with State and district administrations [1]. CGWB uses remote sensing and GIS for aquifer mapping and recharge zone identification, and deploys heliborne geophysical surveys in selected areas [3].
Satellites also see groundwater change at regional scale. Using NASA's GRACE gravity satellites, Rodell and colleagues estimated that groundwater in Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana (including Delhi) was being depleted at 17.7 ± 4.5 cubic kilometres a year, a net loss of 109 cubic kilometres between August 2002 and October 2008 [15]. NITI Aayog's Composite Water Management Index reported that nearly 600 million people in India face high to extreme water stress [16].
Business problem
Official categories are set by assessment unit, but action happens in villages and fields. Atal Bhujal Yojana worked with 8,203 water-stressed Gram Panchayats in seven States on community-led, demand-side groundwater management [3], and Jal Shakti Abhiyan builds recharge structures through convergence with MGNREGS, with expenditure of about Rs 1.5 lakh crore since 2021 [1]. District teams need to know which villages within an over-exploited block are declining fastest, where recharge structures already exist and where new ones will have most effect. Aquifer maps, water level series, well inventories and recharge works usually sit in separate files, which makes this targeting slow.
Our solution
- A spatial database that brings together NAQUIM aquifer units, CGWB and state observation wells and DWLR data, rainfall, land use, cropping, wells and existing recharge structures.
- Interpolated pre- and post-monsoon water level surfaces, long-term trend maps and ranking of villages and micro-watersheds by decline and recharge potential, delivered by our geospatial data science team.
- Terrain, drainage and land use analysis from satellite data to suggest suitable recharge sites for field confirmation, using our remote sensing services.
- Heatmaps and WebGIS dashboards that roll village-level results up to the block categories used in official assessments.
Benefits
- Builds on national data that already exists: NAQUIM covers the full mappable area [2] and the DWLR network provides near real-time levels [3].
- Helps target recharge and demand-side measures inside the 931 over-exploited and critical units [1].
- Industry example: satellite gravity data quantified depletion across north-west India that ground data alone had only suggested [15].
- Gives Gram Panchayats and district teams maps they can use in water security planning, in line with the community approach of Atal Bhujal Yojana [3].
Privacy & data security
- Aquifer and water level data is largely public and aggregated, but farmer-owned well locations and pumping records can identify individuals and are treated as personal data [18].
- Well-level results are shared only with authorised users; public maps show aggregated village or watershed results.
- High-accuracy survey data from field and drone work is stored and processed only in India [21][22].
2. Rural Drinking Water Assets and Jal Jeevan Mission Geotagging
The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), launched in August 2019, set out to give every rural household a functional tap connection. At its start only 3.23 crore rural households (16.7 per cent) had tap water; as on 3 March 2026, States and UTs reported about 15.82 crore of 19.36 crore rural households (81.71 per cent) with tap water at home [4]. The Mission's monitoring system includes geo-tagging of assets created, linking Aadhaar of the head of household for targeted delivery subject to statutory provisions, and third-party inspection before payments [4].
The Union Cabinet approved JJM 2.0 on 10 March 2026, extending the Mission to December 2028 with a total outlay of Rs 8.69 lakh crore, including Rs 3.59 lakh crore of central assistance [5]. JJM 2.0 marks a shift from building infrastructure to assured service delivery, with reforms that include handover of completed schemes to Gram Panchayats (Jal Arpan), unique Sujalam Bharat IDs for drinking water assets, and geo-tagging and digital mapping of rural water supply infrastructure on the PM Gati Shakti platform [5].
Business problem
Service, not construction, is now the test. In the 2024 functionality assessment by an independent third party, 87 per cent of households with tap connections reported receiving water in the past week [4], which means some connections are not delivering regular supply. Departments, implementing agencies and Gram Panchayats need complete asset data from source to tap, with unique IDs, so that operation and maintenance can be planned, faults traced to a source or pipeline, and assets handed over with clear records [5]. Completion photographs taken once do not give this picture.
Our solution
- Field capture of sources, treatment units, overhead tanks, pumping stations, valves, pipeline routes and household or institutional connections in the My GLOBEIR app, with GPS, photos and attributes, working offline and syncing later.
- Network building on a WebGIS map, so each tap connection links back to its distribution line, storage and source.
- Recurring functionality and O&M inspections with geo-tagged checklists, so each asset has a history of checks and repairs; see our mobile GIS services.
- Asset registers and map layers exported in the format the department specifies, for the department to upload to its own systems and national platforms.
Benefits
- Supports JJM 2.0's emphasis on unique asset IDs, Gram Panchayat handover and digital mapping of infrastructure [5].
- Gives inspectors located, time-stamped evidence, building on the geo-tagging and third-party inspection already used in the Mission [4].
- Helps O&M teams trace complaints to the asset at fault rather than searching the whole scheme.
- Lets programme managers compare functionality between villages and schemes on one map.
Privacy & data security
- Household connection records can identify people, so names, phone numbers and any identity numbers stay in the department's own system; GIS analysis uses pseudonymised connection IDs wherever possible [18].
- Background location tracking of field staff in the My GLOBEIR app is optional and opt-in, with a persistent notification, and is used for work purposes only.
- Detailed maps of pumping stations, treatment plants and trunk mains are shared only with authorised roles, with access logged.
3. Watershed Development and Water Body Rejuvenation
Watershed development has been one of India's largest users of geospatial monitoring. Under the Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (WDC-PMKSY 1.0), ISRO built a geospatial solution to monitor about 86,000 micro-watersheds, with more than 18 lakh watershed interventions geotagged. Under WDC-PMKSY 2.0, around 1,150 projects are being assessed through Bhuvan tools using high-resolution Cartosat-2S and Cartosat-3 data [6].
Mission Amrit Sarovar, launched in 2022, aims to build or rejuvenate 75 water bodies in each district. The target of 50,000 Amrit Sarovars by 15 August 2023 was achieved ahead of schedule, with 59,492 completed by May 2023, and the Mission continues in a second phase. Remote sensing and geospatial tools are used from site selection to completion [7]. CGWB's assessments show that recharge from tanks, ponds and water conservation structures rose from 13.98 BCM in 2017 to 25.34 BCM in 2024 [7].
Business problem
State watershed agencies, rural development departments and districts oversee thousands of check dams, farm ponds, percolation tanks and Sarovars spread across remote villages. They must show that works exist where reported, are built as planned and continue to hold water and support the land around them. Field inspection of every structure is not practical, and progress reports often stop at completion. The Ministry of Jal Shakti already monitors many conservation structures through GIS-based applications [3], and States need the same capability for their own programmes.
Our solution
- Digitised project and micro-watershed boundaries, structure locations and planned works in a single GIS.
- Satellite mapping of water spread in ponds, tanks and Sarovars across seasons, and of vegetation and land use change in treated areas, through our remote sensing services.
- Geo-tagged field verification with the My GLOBEIR app for structures flagged by satellite analysis or selected by sample.
- Monitoring dashboards that show progress and change by district, block and project.
Benefits
- Industry example: more than 18 lakh watershed interventions have been geotagged and monitored at national scale [6].
- Industry example: recharge from tanks, ponds and conservation structures rose from 13.98 BCM to 25.34 BCM between 2017 and 2024 [7], showing why tracking these structures matters.
- Satellite monitoring covers far more structures than field visits alone, and field effort can be focused where change is unexpected.
- Before-and-after maps give a clear record for reviews and audits.
Privacy & data security
- Structure locations and satellite maps hold no personal data, but beneficiary lists and farm-level works linked to them do, and are kept to authorised users [18].
- Drone surveys finer than 1 m horizontal or 3 m vertical accuracy are stored and processed in India and never reach servers of a non-Indian entity [21][22].
- Public dashboards show structures and aggregated results, not beneficiary details.
4. Reservoir and Surface Water Monitoring
The Central Water Commission (CWC) monitors the live storage of 161 important reservoirs, with a combined live storage capacity of 182.46 BCM, and publishes a weekly bulletin [8]. These reservoirs account for about 70.74 per cent of the live storage capacity estimated to have been created in the country, and in April 2025 CWC launched a web-based Reservoir Storage Monitoring System portal [9]. The India Water Resources Information System (India-WRIS) gives public access to rainfall, river levels and discharge, water bodies, groundwater levels and reservoir storage, receiving data from CWC, CGWB, IMD, NRSC and several States [10]. CWC's Flood Watch India app reports on 592 flood monitoring stations and the storage of 150 major reservoirs [3].
The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) maps and monitors surface water bodies across the country with automated water body extraction algorithms applied to daily data from IRS satellites, and uses satellite data to assess reservoir sedimentation, since reservoirs lose live storage capacity over time [11].
Business problem
National bulletins cover the largest reservoirs, but State irrigation departments, water supply boards and city utilities also depend on medium and minor reservoirs, tanks and lakes that are not part of them. Many of these have old capacity tables and few gauges, and storage is often known only from manual readings that arrive late. When monsoon rainfall is uneven, decisions on drinking water reservation, irrigation releases and drought measures have to be made quickly with incomplete data.
Our solution
- Seasonal and monthly mapping of water spread for a client's reservoirs, tanks and lakes from optical imagery, with radar imagery during cloudy monsoon months.
- Water spread linked to available area-capacity information to give approximate storage trends between gauge readings, with the method and limits documented.
- Dashboards that combine the client's own reservoirs with public data from India-WRIS and CWC bulletins [8][10], built on our WebGIS services.
- Optional time series of shoreline and water spread change to support sedimentation and encroachment studies.
Benefits
- Extends the coverage of national monitoring to the smaller reservoirs and tanks that local supply depends on.
- Industry example: NRSC already processes daily IRS data with automated algorithms to map surface water bodies [11].
- Brings public storage data and the client's own data together in one view [10].
- Gives an early, area-wide picture of falling storage for drought and allocation planning.
Privacy & data security
- Reservoir and water body maps contain no personal data; operational details of dams and intake works are restricted to authorised users.
- All dashboard access is role-based and logged, and data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2 or higher) and at rest (AES-256).
- Government clients can host on MeitY-empanelled government cloud or on-premise [23].
5. Irrigation Command Area and Canal Network GIS
Satellite monitoring of irrigation infrastructure is well established in India. Under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP), NRSC used high-resolution Cartosat data to inventory canals and structures and assess construction progress, monitoring 103 irrigation projects across 20 States and then transferring the method to the Central Water Commission through the Bhuvan-SatAIBP portal [11].
In April 2025 the Union Cabinet approved Modernization of Command Area Development and Water Management (M-CADWM) as a sub-scheme of PMKSY for 2025-26, with an initial outlay of Rs 1,600 crore. It will supply irrigation water from canals or other sources in designated clusters through underground pressurised pipes to farm gates up to 1 hectare, and use SCADA and IoT for water accounting and management, aiming to raise water use efficiency at farm level [12]. Raising water use efficiency by 20 per cent is one of the five goals of the National Water Mission [17].
Business problem
Many canal commands deliver less than designed. Canal and distributary networks, outlets and command boundaries are often recorded only on old drawings, and the irrigated area actually achieved is hard to compare with design canal by canal. Projects such as M-CADWM need accurate digital network and cluster maps before pipelines, sensors and Water User Societies can be planned [12]. Without them, engineers cannot easily see where tail-end commands are short of water or where structures need repair.
Our solution
- Digitisation of main canals, branches, distributaries, minors, outlets and structures from project drawings and high-resolution imagery, with field checks of alignment and condition in the My GLOBEIR app.
- Outlet and chak command boundaries linked to village maps, so each part of the network is tied to the area it serves.
- Crop and irrigated area mapping from multi-date satellite imagery to compare actual with designed irrigation by canal reach, using our AI and machine learning methods.
- Network maps prepared as the base for pipe layout, sensor placement and water accounting, delivered through GIS mapping and WebGIS.
Benefits
- Industry example: Cartosat-based monitoring tracked construction of 103 irrigation projects and is now used by CWC [11].
- Gives M-CADWM and similar projects the network and cluster maps they need for planning [12].
- Shows which reaches and outlets underperform, so maintenance and rotations can be targeted.
- Supports the National Water Mission goal of higher water use efficiency [17].
Privacy & data security
- Canal networks and crop maps are not personal data, but farmer-level records linked to outlets or Water User Societies are, and are pseudonymised for analysis wherever possible [18].
- Survey data finer than the DST threshold is stored and processed in India [21].
- Water user data is used only for the agreed irrigation purpose and is never sold or shared.
6. Urban Water Distribution and Non-Revenue Water
Non-revenue water (NRW) is water that is produced but not billed, lost through leaks, bursts, unauthorised connections, meter errors and billing gaps. A 2018 peer-reviewed study estimated global NRW at 346 million cubic metres a day, or 126 billion cubic metres a year, worth about USD 39 billion a year even at a conservative USD 0.31 per cubic metre [14].
AMRUT 2.0, launched on 1 October 2021 to make the 4,902 statutory towns water secure [2], lists reducing non-revenue water to below 20 per cent among its major reforms, alongside 24x7 supply with drink-from-tap, recycling of treated used water and GIS-based master plans [13]. Each city prepares a City Water Balance Plan covering water sources, treatment and distribution infrastructure, area-wise coverage and the status of NRW [13].
Business problem
Many utilities do not have a complete map of their pipe network. Pipe diameter, material, age and valve positions may be unknown, and consumer connections are not linked to the pipes that serve them. Without this, district metered areas are hard to define, supply cannot be compared with billing zone by zone, and leak detection teams search large areas without direction. The AMRUT 2.0 NRW target is hard to measure, let alone meet, without a reliable network map [13].
Our solution
- Mapping of transmission and distribution mains, valves, hydrants, meters, reservoirs and consumer connections from drawings, surveys and field checks with the My GLOBEIR app.
- A WebGIS network model used to design district metered areas, with consumer connections linked to the zones that supply them.
- Zone-level water balance and loss indicators calculated by linking client-supplied bulk meter, SCADA and billing data to the map, using our geospatial data science services.
- Mapped complaint, burst and repair history, with heatmaps of recurring problem areas to guide leak detection and pipe replacement.
Benefits
- Gives utilities the network map needed to track progress against the AMRUT 2.0 NRW reform [13].
- Industry example: global NRW is estimated at 126 billion cubic metres a year [14], so even small percentage reductions recover large volumes.
- Lets leak detection teams start in the zones with the highest losses rather than the whole city.
- Supports City Water Balance Plans with consistent, map-based data [13].
Privacy & data security
- Consumer connection and billing data is personal data; GIS analysis uses masked or pseudonymised account IDs and results are aggregated by zone wherever possible [18].
- SCADA and network maps reveal critical infrastructure, so they are restricted by role, with all access logged, and can be deployed on the utility's own servers or air-gapped where required.
- Cyber incidents affecting the utility's systems are reported by the client under CERT-In directions, and GLOBEIR supports the client's incident process and log retention [20].