Election Spatial Information System

using the GIS & Remote Sensing Technology

1. Introduction
Election Spatial Information System has been developed at the request of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Manipur. The offices of the Chief Electoral Officer that have adopted GIS are beginning to realize that GIS can help them all year long with a myriad of tasks. The States Chief Electoral Officer can keep a track of the polling booths from the GIS Maps to make their works more systematic and logical. ESIS contains GIS layers such as road and drainage networks, location of Polling Stations, Polling command Areas, Health Centre, nearest Police station, post office, district HQs, Block HQs, Mobile network coverage and important landmarks etc. for 60 Assembly Constituencies (ACs) with 2,357 polling stations of Manipur as per the latest electoral data records. ESIS has been a key tool for the Election Management Body in examining numbers of electors in polling stations, location of emergency services, supplying of infrastructure & equipment, preparing transportation route, planning of manpower deployment etc This work is highly appreciated by the ECI and the inputs have been playing important role in the General Election (10th Legislative Assembly, 2012) of Manipur for successful election management purpose. The ESI system provides the following GIS layers with detailed attribute information : Roads, Settlement (Habitat Information) & Drainage / Rivers Administrative HQs & boundaries 60 Constituency Assemblies boundaries 2,357 Polling command area Location of Polling stations Area falling within 100-meter radius of each booth District HQ, Block HQs etc Nearest Polices station, Post office office, mobile tower, Health centres, etc. Mean sea level and Coordinates of polling Stations Land Use/Land Cover Other important landmarks e.g. Helipad Information etc Using this system we made accountable by linking more data upto polling booths manning staff, the shortest route leading to electoral headquarters, Polices station, post office, Health centres, managing the logistics of holding elections, deployment of a vast number of civilian police and security forces, supplying information to voters both before and after an election, and analyzing the results of elections. Time, manpower & cost savings from the new process allowed elections departments to focus on better preparing and organizing to conduct the polls. Other than spatial data we are also interested in population, number of registered voters, socio-economic data, recent electoral results and records of past violence and disturbance, Election Spatial Information System, Manipur 1

& presiding officer in-charge so that we can updates about the present law and order situation, and a detailed insight of the number of personnel arranged for polling and security reasons.

Some of the decisions taken in that meeting are as follows:

A set of meetings were held in the office Chamber of MARSAC, Manipur with the representative from CEO, Manipur. Some of the decisions taken are : 1. State CEO shall provide the data & information to MRASAC regarding the demarcation of polling stations command area, polling stations location, polling station etc 2. Health Centre, nearest Police station, post office, District HQs, Block HQs, Mobile network coverage and rationalized route planning etc. are to be collected and identify either from the existing data or from the field to bring them into GIS platform. 3. With satellite imagery of 0.6m resolution in urban areas and 2.5m resolution in rural areas, update the existing data & maps and few important landmarks (ground points) shall also be located on these images to facilitate subsequent ground verification at CEOs level. 4. Simultaneously, the state CEOs shall provide the attributes (like Electoral Roll 2012) and other data entered and get it linked to the maps to finally convert these maps into digitized GIS package. 5. State, District, Block, AC/ Polling Boundaries to be indicated with Geo-coordinates of polling station and Mean sea level. 6. District wise election maps, ACs Wise Election Maps, Polling wise election maps to be delivered. Electoral Spatial information system is formulated as per the directive of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Manipur. MARSAC is given full responsibility to carry out the work in collaboration with CEO, Government of Manipur.

2. Objectives
To develop the Election Spatial Information System (ESIS) for purposes of navigation and planning for the conduct and management of electoral process and monitoring of elections.

Study Area
Manipur:
Election Spatial Information System, Manipur 2

Geographical location of Manipur is between latitude 23.830N to 25.680N and longitude 93.030E to 94.780E. The state covers an area of 22,327 sq.m. It lies to the south of Nagaland State. It shares the international boundary with Myanmar on the eastern and southern side. District: Block: Sub-Division: Assembly Constituencies (ACs) Polling stations 9(nine). 41(forty-one). 38(thirty-eight). 60 (sixty) 2,357 (two thousand three hundred fifty seven)

3. Methodology
The methodology of the project involved the following steps: 1. Identification of spatial & non-spatial data sources and collection. 2. Updation and use of existing thematic maps prepare with DOS. 3. Field survey for verification and collection of additional information. 4. Quality check 5. GIS database development for Election Spatial information System & Outputs The flow chart of the methodology is given in the Figure2.

Figure2: Flow chart of methodology

4. Data sources and GIS layers creation

1. Existing Digital GIS base maps (Road, Villages, drainage, Administrative HQs & Boundaries) from the office of the MARSAC. Election Spatial Information System, Manipur 3

2. SOI topo maps. 3. Quickbird 0.6m spatial resolution for Valley Districts of Manipur & IRS P6 L4 multispectral data with 5.8m resolution & CARTOSAT-1 panchromatic images with 2.5m resolution for Hills District of Manipur. 4. Field survey data using Global Positioning System (GPS) 5. Collection of additional information such as available Network towers, Health Centres, Polices Station, post office etc from respective departments. 6. Latest Electoral roll information (2011-2012). 7. Google Earth Pro for Verification 8. Department of DST, Government of Manipur 9. Police department, BSNL Office and other Mobile service providers 10. CEO, Department of Election, Government of Manipur Since the latest village information and new polling stations location after bifurcation (2012) was not available, extensive field was carried out using GPS. Locations of nearest police and under which jurisdiction, health centre, available mobile tower etc. were also collected during field survey and integrated accordingly into the GIS environment.

5. External Quality Check

Internal quality check is done jointly by CEO and MARSAC. For external quality check purpose, the MARSAC handed over the printed maps to respective SDOs, Block Level Officer and Political Partys Representative as Third Party to mark the corrections and to verify on the ground of new Pollings catchment areas, Location of polling station, ACs Boundary and important land marks at their end and returned them to the MARSAC for updation.

6. Analysis and Interactive Map

Using both spatial and non-spatial data contained in the Geodatabase, it has been possible to carry out analysis that helps in decision making. - Analysis provides critical baselines that can guide decision making and necessary interventions for proper and effective management of elections and for civic engagement with citizens. - Analysis aids in making rapid interventions during observation, dissemination of data and information on the electoral processes including outcome of elections. - It also helps the observers to map out locations for proper and effective deployment and, for better and coordinated observation and monitoring. - It helps the security personnel to map out the location of polling stations and plan properly and effectively for security deployment and coordination of security related issues during elections. Some advantages of this system are that, the GIS environment provides the ability to relate the tabular data to the geographic features and able to perform spatial and overlay analyses. Following figure shows an example of extracting attribute information about a GIS layer by clicking over it.

Figure 5: Attribute information of a particular polling station

Election Spatial Information System, Manipur 4

7. Development of Query based system

Once all the necessary GIS layers were integrated into the GIS environment then GIS functionalities for query based services like road connectivity between any two points, distance and accessibility (of various amenities from a given isolated place), information bank based on buffering and proximity analysis, route information like shortest route, alternate route etc. in a given area during emergency situation based on network analysis have been incorporated. The system works successfully with the following few queries: 1. Find the nearest Helipad/Hospital/Polices station to the specific polling station ? 2. Which are the sensitive/hypersensitive polling/areas? 3. Which are the Polling stations/Village not connected by motorable roads? 4. How many kms is the Polling station far from District HQs? 5. Which are those Villages beyond 2 km from the Polling stations? 6. How many Polling stations having population (voter) above 1200? 7. Which Polling stations are more than 10km away from Hospitals? 8. Alternate/Shortest routes, finding closest facilities during emergency situations. 9. Find the list of polling stations having more than 2 villages? 10.Available Mobile (cell phone) coverage around each Polling station etc.

8. Output maps of Election Spatial Information System

Output delivered is in form of 1. Soft copy in pdf/jpg format And also upload to the website www.ceomanipur.nic.in Election Spatial Information System, Manipur 5

2. Hardcopy in A0, A1,A3,A4 size 3. Web based maps (Google map with Kml from ESIS) Map contains Polling Stations, Neighborhood Polling Station 100 meters Buffer, Pollings Catchment Area, Assembly Constituency Boundary, Administrative HQs & Boundaries, Nearest Police Station and its jurisdiction, Nearest Post office, Nearest Health Centre, important landmarks, Waterbodies( River, Lake & ponds etc), Road name with distance in Kms from HQs. Figure1: ACs Map of Manipur as on 2012 records Figure2: ACs Map of Manipur with polling Stations as on 2012 records Figure3: ACs Map of Imphal East district with their Polling Stations Figure4: ACs Map of Imphal West district with their Polling Stations Figure5: ACs Map of Bisnupur district with their Polling Stations Figure6: ACs Map of Thoubal district with their Polling Stations Figure7: ACs Map of Senapati district with their Polling Stations Figure8: ACs Map of Ukhrul district with their Polling Stations Figure9: ACs Map of Chandel district with their Polling Stations Figure10: ACs Map of Churchandpur district with their Polling Stations Figure11: ACs Map of Tamenglong district with their Polling Stations Figure 12: Polling stations Catchment area of Naoriya Pakhanlakpa Imphal West attribute information

with

Figure 13: Polling stations Catchment area Map of chandel district with attribute information Figure 14: Polling stations Catchment area Map of Jiri Imphal East district with attribute information

9. Web Based Maps

The development of web based maps is one of the approaches that MARSAC has undertaken in Election Spatial information Systems map development. The maps use the Google map platform as the base map. The maps is developed using KML files generated from shapefiles using ArcGIS. Google mapss API, Shape files depicting the boundaries of all assembly constituencies and XML files of the Lat/long points of all polling stations. A hyperlinked page in www.ceomanipur.nic.in is created which has buttons linking to specific constituencies for all the 60 constituencies and 2357 polling stations. The decision to use Google maps as the base map is because of the ease of access by everyone from their browsers without procuring any costly GIS software.

10. Recommendation for future

a)

GIS cell : Since the electoral information is dynamic in nature, it has to be updated
during the time, hence it is proposed to set up a GIS cell in Election Department in order to update, manage and monitor the GIS database of entire Manipur. Election Spatial Information System, Manipur 6

b) ArcGIS Explorer in publishing : We are looking at the possibilities of utilizing the online version of ArcGIS Explorer in publishing these maps.

11. CONCLUSION
Election Spatial information System (ESIS) is able to come up with a geodatabase which is powerful tool to model GIS behavior maintain data integrity, and work with an important set of spatial relationships. It has been a fruitful experience thus far. We believe that our goal of providing the ESIS that will be useful in strengthening the conduct and management of elections and supporting integrity, credibility and transparency in elections. It will also enhance geographic visualization of electoral dynamics and elections outcome.

CONTACTS
Mr. Nahakpam Shamungou Singh, Director MARSAC, Mr Yumnam Nilakanta Project Scientist (Geoinformatics) Mr Oinam Nodiachand Singh(Programmer) MARSAC, Manipur P.O. Box 795001 Email: nyumnam@gmail.com

Election Spatial Information System, Manipur