Towards Co-PPGIS—a collaborative public participatory GIS-based measure for transparency in housing schemes: a case of Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

This paper focuses on implementation of a Web collaborative PPGIS (Co-PPGIS) modular framework named as Proactive Response Interactive System Management (PRISM), a procedural methodology for acquiring and/or preparing spatial data, and concludes by discussing some important issues encountered during data acquisition and operational implementation of this system. Co-PPGIS is developed for real-time map sharing application as part of a municipality’s planning and management services (Butt and Li in J Appl Geomatics 2014:1–23, 2014). It is an online virtual meeting infrastructure for supporting group collaborations on geographical information, such as maps and imageries, and capturing and sharing of local/domain knowledge in synchronous and asynchronous participatory environment. Co-PPGIS allows integration of geospatial data from different sources in the form of Web services and collaborators’ input in the form of geo-referenced annotations. Co-PPGIS has a lot of applications, including municipal planning and management, emergency response and preparedness, environmental resource management, public health and security, and facilitation of state and local government collaborative decision making. As a case study, the Lahore region was selected which is a huge metropolitan city of Pakistan with rapidly growing population and high migration rate due to which a significant number of private housing schemes have been launched to meet the demand during the past few years. The Lahore Development Authority (LDA) is responsible to ensure the authenticity and registration of these housing schemes. Many private construction companies claim to be registered with LDA to gain the trust of the customers. There is a need for an efficient information system which can accommodate all the spatial and attribute information of all the legal and illegal housing schemes in Lahore. The basic purpose of the study is to provide the transparency in planned schemes in relation to the awareness of the general public. Moreover, it is intended to design the geospatial Web-based application for identifying the recorded schemes which lie under the umbrella of LDA. Initially, maps, proposed plans, and land use data of existing housing schemes with administrative hierarchy are collected and then synchronized with high-resolution satellite imagery. The concept of participatory GIS (PGIS) is used to involve the general public that can participate through Web blog in order to view the legal status of advertised housing scheme. The usability of the proposed PGIS is also evaluated using a pilot Lahore-based case study.