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Assessing Applicability of GIS as a Development Management Tool at Local Level: A Case Study of The City District Government, Lahore-Pakistan  Mubushar Hussain Assistant Professor Institute of Geographical Information System (IGIS) National University of Science and Technology Islamabad-Pakistan  Faisal Masood Qureshi Assistant Manager Satellite Ground Station (SGS), SUPARCO Islamabad-Pakistan  Kashif Siddiqi Project Manager Institute of Geographical Information System (IGIS) National University of Science and Technology Islamabad-Pakistan Abstract Cities in under-developed countries are growing at a faster rate. The local authorities are limited in resources to properly manage and control the development particularly physical development. Control over development is critical for better urban design not only for existing area but also for the future. Ever increasing demand for development control with few resources has resulted in the emergence of new techniques & technologies. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is one of the technologies to better control and manage the existing development from local to global level. In major cities of Pakistan, mainly the development plan is Master / Structure Plan and allied local plans. Building control remains the primary tool to control the development of buildings and other uses at local level. Present study mainly focuses on exploring the potential of GIS in effective management of development at local level. Analyzing existing building control process, firstly a GIS model is designed comprising digital maps as geographic features and their attributes in the form of relational database. The attributes are joined with spatial features. The model is implemented for a small housing scheme using primary and secondary data. Afterwards different GIS capabilities are explored and certain queries and analysis are made to demonstrate how GIS can be useful in better and successful management of developmental activities. GIS is found to be an extremely useful tool for development management at local level Introduction The growth of global population has been the source of attention for urban planners. Rate of population growth in Pakistan is very high particular in the urban areas as compared with rural areas. As a result of fast growing population, size of our main cities like Lahore becomes double in almost 25 years. Public Bodies are responsible to control/manage this rapid development with limited resources, which necessitates the application of new practice and technology for development control. Geographic Information Technology (GIS) is such a leading emerging tool, which can perform an active role in development control. The use of GIS has grown dramatically in the 1980s from obscurity to become commonplace in business, universities and governments where they are now used for many diverse applications. GIS is a computerised system that facilitates the phases of data entry, data analysis and data presentation especially in case when dealing with geo-referenced data (Rolf A. De By, 2000). GIS has capabilities for database management, mapping, image processing and statistical analysis. A GIS defines entities (or features) on a map using spatial and descriptive (or attribute) data. Spatial data indicates the location and dimension of a feature. Geographical objects also have none-spatial attributes, such as material, ownership, age and area, which describe characteristics of an object. It is the ability of a GIS to reference and describe objects by a location that distinguishes it from traditional database and spreadsheets (Paul Box, 1998). During the 1960s, the Canadian Government built first GIS, the Canada Geographic Information System, to analyse data collected by the Canada Land Inventory. In Pakistan, Master/Structure plans are prepared for large cities and Outline Development Plans (ODP) are prepared for small cities. The printed Master Plan is static in form and limited in its application. Any addition / alteration regarding present / proposed land use or road network is very difficult to represent on the plan. No new information can be extracted from printed map like area, location and number of various units like institutions, hospitals, petrol pumps etc. required for analysis and effective building / development control. Implementation of master plan involves a number of local departments/organization and each one need the Master Plan document. The Local Town Planning Department cannot afford to provide it to all departments along with up-to-date local plans in a printed form mainly because of its limited resources.
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