LAHORE – Geographic Information System (GIS) lab of population Census Organization, Lahore equipped with latest equipment has been established with collaboration of UNHABITAT with the main objective of developing baseline GIS Maps.

These digitized maps would be helpful to the census field staff in Housing Listing Creation of building blocks leading to the successful census operation in the field.  While inaugurating this system in Punjab, Mr Rabbi Royan, the country representative of UNFPA in Pakistan said that world was moving towards three dimensional data so in Pakistan digitization of data was the part of this plan.  In 2011, he added, US contributed around 1.2 mn$ in this regard while for the year 2012, US had given around six hundred and forty four thousand for this activity.

Mr Royan said that by the end of this year 90 per cent urban areas while 60 per cent of rural area would be digitized under this programme. He told the audience that around 100 people had been trained in GIS to handle this digital system for human capacity building in Pakistan. “All this is being done to bring Pakistan at a global level in handling this system of GIS”, he observed.

In his presentation on the occasion, Mr. Hashim Tareen, the Provincial Census Commissioner, highlighted the various aspects of this newly formed system in Punjab.