Mansoor Tariq Khattak is a native of Shakardara, Kohat. Professionally, he is serving as an assistant director in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at the Board of Revenue (BoR) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). Additionally, he is pursuing his Ph.D. in remote sensing and GIS from the prestigious Punjab University, Lahore.

The evolution of geographic information systems GIS and remote sensing RS have their roots in the 1940s, a time when technological advancements in cartography gradually took place as computer science matured with respect to space (satellite) technology. Roger Tomlinson, frequently named the “father of GIS,” founded GIS in 1960 with his creation of the Canada Geographic Information System to manage and analyze geographical data.

With the advent of Earth observation satellites in the 1970s, remote sensing also emerged as a field allowing systematic data collection from space. That same evolution continued throughout the 1980s and especially through, in concert with improvements in computing power, data storage techniques, and satellite imagery. This allowed GIS/RS technology to be further developed into a much more feature-rich product as it is recognized today by numerous sectors.

At the present time, GIS and RS play a very important role in resolving global problems such as climate change, urbanization natural resource management, etc. It includes collecting, analyzing, and displaying spatial data by leveraging the power of modern scientific technologies for faster decision-making.

The fusion of GIS and RS with emerging technologies like AI, IoT, and cloud computing has also made these tools more advanced in terms of real-time data analysis and accurate mapping processes associated with even complex spatial phenomena. Therefore, GIS/RS technology is necessary to continue enhancing this human knowledge and help solve many of the world’s problems today.

Geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) history in Pakistan date back to the mid-1980s, initiated by SUPARCO, the national space agency of its era. They understood their potential utility in a few areas of applications among environmental monitoring and resource management—especially in agriculture, forestry, rangeland, and urban planning.

The University of the Punjab took the lead in this area and started to offer an academic program about GIS/RS in 1985, followed by NUST, COMSATS, and IST as a competitive environment. Although the implementation of these technologies started gradually due to prohibitively high costs and lack of awareness along with bureaucratic hiccups, provinces like Punjab and Sindh have been using GIS/RS for developmental purposes. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has followed at a slower speed in this regard.

However, there are still many problems with the infrastructure expertise and institutional support in Pakistan as........

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