This Request for Proposal (RFP) represents a collaborative initiative between the JICA DX Lab and the Rajasthan Forest Department (RFD) to identify a Digital Partner for developing use cases aimed at:

The use-cases has following primary objectives:

i. Automated Land Parcel Assessment

ii. Site Reports

iii. Longitudinal Monitoring for Transparency

i. Frictionless PDD Preparation

ii. GIS-MIS Enabled Oversight by Officials

i. Habitat Intelligence

ii. Biodiversity & Fragmentation Indices

iii. Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) & Offense Mapping

It will be built on top of the RFD’s existing DigiVan portal, leveraging its established architecture, workflows, and partial data references-minimizing duplicate efforts and ensuring all new features align seamlessly with DigiVan’s foundation. This includes mapping relevant data sources, creating necessary APIs, enabling data analytics, building core business intelligence layers, and developing a user-facing visualization dashboard.

The maximum budget allocated for the development of the Use cases is USD 400,000, inclusive of all applicable taxes and expenses. However, this budget may be subject to revision based on the finalized Use case plan and associated costs.

Interim progress reports and a comprehensive final report will detail Use case outcomes, activities, and both quantitative and qualitative evaluations based on predetermined KPIs. These will be accompanied by technical, operational, and strategic recommendations for RFD and JICA DX Lab. Upon completion of the Use cases, the final product will be handed over to RFD, along with the necessary capacity-building support.

Rajasthan, India’s largest state, encompasses arid deserts in its western regions and forested, hilly terrains in the east. With roughly 9.6% forest cover, these woodlands are crucial for ecosystem services, climate resilience, and local socio-economic stability. However, persistent challenges such as desertification, climate variability highlights the need for more data-driven forest governance.
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has long provided support to Rajasthan’s forestry initiatives, financing various afforestation, biodiversity, and rural development projects over the past two decades. To further modernize forest management through digital means, JICA and the Rajasthan Forest Department (RFD) collaborated to launch DigiVan—a unified system that combines two key use-cases enabling Forest Monitoring and Planning. DigiVan demonstrated how consolidated, analytics-driven data can empower on-ground teams and inform strategic decisions at senior levels. Building on these foundational lessons, RFD and JICA aim to scale digital forestry efforts beyond just two use-cases.

・Nuxt.js based Front-End Portal: Provides geospatial dashboards (e.g., forest cover changes, NDVI trends) and basic administrative tools for RFD staff.

・NestJS based Backend: Connects to a Postgres database to render GIS and MIS based insights on the UI.

・Airflow-Based ETL: Automates data ingestion from various sources, storing key environmental parameters in a PostgreSQL (with PostGIS) database.

・Raster and Vector Server: Visualize map layers on UI

・Containerized Deployment: Ensures code consistency across pilot sites, facilitating partial offline usage for remote forest divisions.

Encouraged by these recent successes, RFD and JICA are now advancing to the next phase with a new set of use cases focused on streamlining Green/Carbon Credit Registration & Monitoring, and Habitat Monitoring.

1. Green Credits
The Green Credit Programme is an innovative initiative launched by the Government of India under the LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) mission. Currently, approximately 400 hectares of land have been registered under the programme in Rajasthan-a figure significantly lower than in leading states like Madhya Pradesh. Through this Use case, RFD aims to simplify the registration and monitoring processes for land parcels, thereby increasing the state’s participation in the programme.

2. Carbon Credits
Similarly, carbon projects are gaining momentum globally. One of the major challenges faced by project developers lies in collating large volumes of data and preparing the Project Design Document (PDD), which is essential for project registration. The Carbon Use case seeks to consolidate key data points in a centralized platform, reducing the time and effort required for the registration of agroforestry and community land-based projects.

3. Habitat Monitoring
Equally vital is the need to safeguard Rajasthan’s diverse ecosystems and wildlife. A persistent challenge in this domain is the fragmentation of habitat-related information across multiple systems and data sources (e.g., vegetation status, water availability, human-wildlife conflict records). The Habitat Monitoring use case integrates these data streams into one cohesive platform, allowing forest officials to track ecological changes in real time, prioritize interventions, and ensure long-term biodiversity conservation.
In alignment with these efforts, this RFP has been launched to identify a Digital Partner capable of complementing the initiatives of JICA DX Lab and RFD and executing the Use cases successfully.

Join us on this transformative journey to elevate RFD’s vision of becoming a front-runner in Green/Carbon Credit and Habitat Monitoring in India. Let’s work together to make a lasting impact-enabling Rajasthan to lead in afforestation-based Green Credit and Carbon Credit programs while also advancing proactive habitat conservation, ensuring thriving wildlife and ecosystems for future generations.

Prospective bidders (hereafter “Digital Partners”) must demonstrate both the technical capabilities and the organizational acumen necessary to design, develop, and deploy the Green/Carbon Credits and Habitat Monitoring use cases within the existing DigiVan platform making sure that it is scalable and robust.

The selection process has defined eligibility criteria to ensure only qualified candidates proceed. This is followed by a technical evaluation and interview, where eligible bidders present their proposals. Post-presentation, technical marks are awarded based on the assessment of the proposals. Subsequently, commercial bid opening occurs, determining the highest scorer based on combined technical and commercial evaluations. This structured approach ensures a transparent and merit-based selection of the most suitable bidder.

1. Organization Capacity

2. Understanding the Existing DigiVan Architecture

3. Microservice Development & Integration

4. Geospatial & Data Ingestion Expertise

5. Consent & Governance

6. Carbon Workflow & Use Case Relevance

7. Habitat Monitoring Workflow & Use Case Relevance

8. Offline-Friendly Containerization & Scalability

9. Legal & Ethical Standing

10. Legal & Ethical Standing

Develop 2 use cases to streamline green credit and carbon credit registration and monitoring in Rajasthan

・Development of a system to identify the degraded land parcels to be registered under the GCP based on certain rules like minimum land area of 5 Ha, canopy density less than 40% etc. It would also give GIS-MIS view of certain parameters like canopy density, land area etc. (non-exhaustive list)

・Site report of the selected land parcel with certain data points like tree cover, soil moisture, soil type, ground water levels, rainfall levels etc. (non-exhaustive list)

・Monitoring report of the land parcel which would be a GIS- MIS view of the information mentioned above over time.

・Development of a system that will bring all the necessary data points required for the preparation of PDD for carbon project registration.

・Ease out monitoring of existing carb-n projects by bringing key data points at one place.
An administrator system to manage and update all the data points.

・Admin & Stakeholder Dashboards: Include list of projects registered under Carbon Credit and Green Credit Program. Upon selection of a project the user is given access to all project details and other GIS- MIS data.

・Documentation & Code Transfer: Deliver comprehensive technical documents (API references, architectural diagrams, DevOps scripts), ensuring RFD and JICA DX Lab can maintain and extend the platform independently.

・Training & Capacity Building: Conduct workshops or knowledge-sharing sessions for RFD staff, developer communities, and potential operator teams.

・Future-Ready Expansion: Provide a strategic roadmap highlighting additional functionalities (e.g., carbon credit facilitation, biodiversity tracking), new data sources, and potential scaling strategies to other regions or users.

USD 400,000 including all taxes and expenses, however negotiable.

Microservices (NestJS)
・Use NestJS for new Carbon use case services, aligning with DigiVan’s existing containers and code base.

Frontend
・Existing Nuxt 3 framework in DigiVan

Containerized Deployment (Docker)
・Package all carbon USE CASE dependencies (libraries, environment configs) into offline-friendly containers.
・Ensure no external fetch calls at runtime, for restricted on-prem environments in Rajasthan’s Forest offices.

Data Ingestion & MDM
・Airflow (or equivalent) for scheduling ETL tasks, pulling relevant climate/soil data, local MIS, and updating DigiVan’s database with Master Data references (region codes, species).
・Ability to unify synonyms/duplicates for carbon-related data sets (e.g., IPCC factors, local region references).

Database & Storage
・PostgreSQL / PostGIS for storing geospatial or species references; possibly reusing DigiVan’s DB schema.
・Structured logging to keep track of disclaimers, carbon project details (e.g., land parcels, verification steps).

Security
・Encryption at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.3).
・Logging frameworks (ELK or Prometheus + Grafana) for compliance, auditing, and performance monitoring.

We plan to tentatively host an information session for prospective bidders on April 17, 2025, 11:00 (Indian Standard Time / GMT+5.5). If you wish to participate, please contact us at JICADXLab.RFP@bcg.com.
Confirmation of participation by email is mandatory to attend the information session.

We are happy to address any inquiries from Digital Partners via email. Please reach out to us at JICADXLab.RFP@bcg.com