RAWALPINDI, Feb 19: The City District Government Rawalpindi has decided to put in place a Geographical Information System (GIS) for future development planning, code enforcement and monitoring of health-related drives.

Sources told Dawn on Sunday that after completing the task, sewers, vacant plots, commercial, residential buildings, planned and unplanned roads, parks, agricultural land and utility services would be checked through computers.

Six months back, the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) launched a project worth Rs15 million for checking commercialisation in the city. The RDA hired two private firms for establishing the system and got high resolution satellite image of the city from Suparco, as Google maps were quite old.

The sources said RDA had managed to get high resolution image of the city but CDGR withdrew the authority to check commercialisation from it. However, after receiving directives from the Punjab government to use GIS for future planning, District Coordination Officer (DCO) Saqib Zafar invited the RDA for presentation of its project two days back.

After this, the DCO directed the civic agency to develop the system for the whole district.

The sources said the city government would build GIS for different departments like municipal services, roads and bridges, parks and horticulture and health.

“The local police and special branch will also use this system to find the hideouts of criminals as it will mark the suspicious places,” they said and added that every department would developed its own layer on the satellite map for its internal purposes and the information would be used only by the relevant department employees, including law enforcement agencies.

The GIS would also help the administration, police and first-aid providers in case of an emergency to reach the place and deal with the situation.

When contacted, the DCO said the CDGR had decided to use GIS for future development in the district. “At present, we want to use this system for the anti-dengue campaign in the district,” he said.

The DCO said the health department would mark those areas from where the number of reported dengue cases had been high and where anti-dengue spray and other activities had been launched. It would provide exact data about the people and houses, he added.

“Yes, we will also use this for code enforcement as a single click will tell the administration about the data and ground figures of any locality. It will also help the administration in planning new projects and utility services,” he said.