Blogs
Points-Of-Interest (POIs) Datasets - The Possible Uses and Application
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Points-of-Interest, or POI, are locations or features that are of particular interest or significance within a geographic area. These can include landmarks, businesses, public facilities like schools, hospitals, parks ATMs, and other points of interest that are often visited or referenced by people in the area.POI datasets include, foremostly, the POI name, its category, geospatial coordinates (typically a longitude & latitude point, and less often a building footprint), business hours, contact information (e.g., website), and potentially — depending on the source — number of user reviews, average review rating, information about prices, photos, among others. This data is often collected and maintained by government agencies, businesses, or other organizations as a way to better understand and serve the needs of the community.
Finding the blue skies: Lahore’s Air Apocalypse
Thursday, November 10, 2022
Air pollution has emerged as a significant issue in the subcontinent. Multiple Pakistani cities have made the list of the world’s most polluted cities in recent years. Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, is one of the world’s three most polluted cities. The current state of Lahore’s air quality puts the lives of the city’s 12 million residents in grave danger. For the most part of the last three years, the air quality index (AQI) stayed between poor to severe. The AQI is a metric used to quantify the effect of air pollution on human health based on limited exposure. The higher the AQI number, the more health risks there are. Typically, environmental protection agencies/departments collect and publish these values together with a health recommendation for residents. In winters the smog, fog, and haze resulted in the closure of the major highways, airports, and transportation incurring economic losses and social unrest.
Exploring the bittersweet relationship of schools’ closure and smog
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
While the onset of the fall season liberates the Lahoris from the scorching temperatures of summers, it paves the way for a far more severe threat: smog. This season, as the looming threat of smog-2021 shrouded the city of Lahore, the urban mobility experts within grand challenge fund (GCF) team at the Smart Data Systems and Applications (SDSA) cohort at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) donned their socially conscientious hats. Leveraging technology and data-centric expertise, our team is focused on pioneering data-driven analysis of policy decisions for the city of Lahore.
Extracting Road Network of Lahore from Open-Source Imagery
Monday, July 25, 2022
A road network is a collection of nodes and edges, much like any other graph. Junctions and roadways are represented by nodes and edges, respectively. A straight road has only two nodes at the beginning and end, but a curved road may contain additional nodes (not representing junctions) that aid in the tracing of road segment shapes. Unlike other graphs, each node is given a latitude and longitude to indicate where it is on the earth’s surface. A sample road network is shown in figure 1. The intersections are represented by the red dots (nodes), while the roads are represented by the green lines (edges). Each node has longitude and latitude; however, I’ve only shown the coordinates of one (yellow) node in this diagram.
Population in Pakistan and Data: An Overview
Wednesday, March 9, 2022
The collection and study of human population density data continues to soar in significance around the globe. Countries are actively collecting data on their residents every few years via undertakings that involve thousands of volunteers and cost up to millions. The costs associated with data collection may seem to be substantial, however, studies show that they can be outweighed by the potential benefit this data may provide: population density data can open doorways to several research avenues, such as health and infrastructure that contribute to improving human life.
Urbanization and its Impact on Land Surface Temperature
Saturday, January 8, 2022
Urbanization is a global phenomenon, it has intensified and grown more dynamically in developing countries, particularly in South Asia. Pakistan have also been escalating rapidly with an annual rate of 3 percent. In Pakistan, the urban population has grown from 32.5 percent in 1998 to 36.4 percent in 2017. It is expected that approximately 50 percent of the country’s population will be residing in urban areas by 2025 (UNDP, 2019). Cities in Pakistan are facing tremendous pressure due to rapid urbanization. They are being extended haphazardly, putting strain on already depleting natural recourses by replacing agricultural and vegetation lands. While these land use/land cover (LULC) transformations have a positive impact on the urban economy, they harm the urban environment significantly (McCarthy, Best, & Betts, 2010).