Pakistan GISwww.pakgis.blogspot.com

A free source of GIS/ RS Data in Pakistan

Brief History

• Idea of Pakistan GIS was generated by a group of students from University of Engineering & Technology Lahore in 2008

• Initially it was a group to share geographic data which was available as a product of study assignments of students

• In 2009, an open source BLOG was created to share the data with other students and researchers all over the Pakistan

• In 2010, Process of data collection was expedited and volunteers from Punjab University and NUST also joined hands

• In 2010, Founder members established City Pulse (Pvt.) Ltd. And PakGIS was officially declared as A project of City Pulse. Since then City Pulse (Pvt.) Ltd. has been supporting the initiative by providing technical guidance and financial support to student volunteers

• In 2011, database grew really fast. Became biggest source of free GIS data in Pakistan

ObjectivesPakGIS holds the honor of being the first online plate form in Pakistan aiming at creating conducive environment for research in GIS , Urban Planning and Disaster Management in Pakistan by:

• Taking measure to ensure free availability of Pakistan related GIS data to academic researchers and professionals

• Capacity building of students, researchers and professionals in use and application of GIS/RS in urban planning and disaster management

• Voluntarily creation, development and collection of GIS/RS data for whole Pakistan

Working Principle

• Based on the principle of volunteerism• Data is provided for research activities to students (through

Data Request Form) who promise to return improved and value added data back to PakGIS

• Resultantly a Chain process of geo-data creation remains continued and improved data becomes available for future users

Current Database of Geo-dataavailable freely for research work

• Vector Data– Admin boundaries (for whole Pakistan)– Urban area maps (for 30 Cities)– Road network (whole Pakistan)– Settlements data (whole Pakistan)

http://pakgis.blogspot.com/2009/07/vector-datasets_22.html

• Raster Datahttp://pakgis.blogspot.com/2009/07/raster-datasets_21.html

Achievements• Up till July 2011, PakGIS has supported 510+ researchers, students,

humanitarian workers and government officials all over the world in their tasks by providing Pakistan related geo-information.

Achievements (continued)

Volunteer Registration ProgramThis program has been initiated through PakGIS for the sustainability of the forum. Curently we are having 82 volunteers working on the following tasks off an on:

• The creation of a standard geo-database for the shapefiles of city maps available at PakGIS

• Development of new GIS maps of different cities in Pakistan• Creation of a Road network dataset for complete Pakistan, we have raw

data available. just need to compile in ArcGIS• Managing visitors on the blog and ensuring in time feedback mechanism.• Establishment of some GIS working groups of students in universities

department

Future Plans• Creation of PakGIS Geo-network (web space provided by City Pulse)

– Admin rights can be shared and de-centralized with enthusiastic persons and groups (like you )

– With improved meta-data, searching is enhanced– End User access to geo-data will be enhanced– More volunteers can give inputs in systematic way

Future Plans

• Development of new data and completion of existing data gaps

• Strengthen Volunteer Registration Program for students– To form PakGIS working groups in universities– To develop a student- industry relationship for better jobs

• Improve collaboration with other volunteer GIS groups for more productive and sustainable solutions

Pakistan GIS & YOU

• All geo-data available at PakGIS is yours. You can have that whenever you need for your research with the promise that you will return the value added data. Use Data Request Form to get Data freely.

• Join us as volunteers to be part of functional network of professionals

• Join us at PakGIS Facebook to stay up to date with work progress and job opportunities

• We can grant you access rights to Pakistan GIS Geo-network if you are capable of managing geo-spatial metadata and adding additional datasets to this network