The Indian Navy’s Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) in Gurugram, the nodal agency for maritime information and monitoring, set up after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, is on track to upgraded into the National Maritime Domain Awareness (NMDA) centre in about three years.
Once operational, the NDMA Centre will house people from 15 agencies under seven Ministries enabling exchange of maritime information in real-time across the board, officials said. The contract for setting it up is set to be concluded shortly and it should be ready in under three years, according to official sources while expressing confidence that the time can be compressed further.
Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) is the lead integrator for both software and hardware for the NMDA and as per contractual terms it should be executed in three years from contract conclusion.
Approved by the Defence Acquisition Council in 2012, the IMAC became operational in 2014 at a cost of ₹450 crore and is located in Gurugram. It is the nodal centre of the National Command Control Communication and Intelligence System (NC3I) which was established to link the operational Centres and lower echelons of Navy and Coast Guard spread across the country’s coastline including the island territories.
The IMAC tracks vessels on the high seas and gets data from the coastal radars, white shipping agreements, Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) transponders fitted on merchant ships, air and traffic management system and global shipping databases.
