Real time, operational picture among several automation initiatives of Army (GS Paper 3, Defence)
Why in news?
- A new Battlefield Surveillance System (BSS) under Project Sanjay is in the process of being deployed, after extensive validation carried out in the plains, deserts, and mountains.
What is BSS?
- Under BSS, the aim is to have surveillance centres for all field formations by December 2025.
- It will integrate thousands of sensors which will enable provision of an integrated surveillance picture to commanders and staff at all levels, besides completing the sensor-shooter grid by integrating with the Artillery Combat Command and Control System (ACCCS).
- The system also integrates data on the movements of India’s adversaries received from various sources across borders, including sensors, satellites, UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles, and patrols.
Implementation:
- Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL), Ghaziabad, is the project’s system integrator, and after hundreds of trials across terrains, it has shown a rate of success of more than 95%, meeting the army’s aspirations and requirements.
- As part of the trials, a few surveillance centres were set up under two corps of the Army, and with the bulk production clearance now granted, the full project will be implemented by the end of 2025.
Decision support system:
- To enable these projects, the imminent operationalisation of the secure Network for Spectrum will provide an abundance of bandwidth to the services.
- Further, the Army is setting up captive data centres across the country and these will be fully operational this year.
- Complementing the BSS is the Army Information and Decision Support System, an upgraded and redesigned version of the erstwhile Combat Information Decision Support System, which will integrate inputs from all operational and managerial information systems.
- A decision support system called the Situational Awareness Module for the Army (SAMA) has successfully integrated inputs from ACCCS, BSS, e-Sitrep, and the Management Information Systems Organisation.
Way Forward:
- This is among a series of automation projects being rolled out which are expected to cumulatively improve operational efficiency, enhance battlefield awareness for Commanders on the ground, and also provide functional efficiency for human resource management, logistics, inventory management, medical services and other administrative functions.
COVID pandemic is no longer an emergency, declares WHO
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Why in news?
- Recently, the World Health Organization said that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking a symbolic end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic.
- The announcement, made more than three years after WHO declared the coronavirus an international crisis, offers a coda to a pandemic that stirred fear and suspicion, hand-wringing and finger-pointing across the globe.
Still global health threat:
- It said that even though the emergency phase was over, the pandemic hasn’t ended. They pointed to the recent spikes in cases in Southeast Asia and the West Asia to support their case.
- WHO says thousands of people are still dying from the virus every week, and millions of others are suffering from debilitating, long-term effects.
- The pandemic had been on a downward trend for more than a year, acknowledging that most countries have already returned to life before COVID-19.
Background:
- When the UN health agency first declared the coronavirus to be an international crisis on Jan. 30, 2020, it hadn’t yet been named Covid-19 and there were no major outbreaks beyond China.
- More than three years later, the virus has caused an estimated 764 million cases globally and about 5 billion people have received at least one dose of vaccine.
- WHO raised its highest level of alert and termed the infection a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, a designation that remained in place for over three years.
