Pakistan
The Survey of Pakistan is worried about amatuers not only mapping the country, but also mapping sites harmful to national security. So, it's time for a new law to allow enforcement.
With the objective of regulating and implementing surveying and mapping standards in the country, to obviate potential security risk to sensitive information, to prevent damage to affixed survey makers, to avoid duplication of effort in mapping and to transform SoP into a national mapping agency, a draft land surveying and mapping bill has been prepared by the SoP.
The salient features of the Bill are as follows: (i) to transform SoP into national mapping agency ie an authority regulating surveying and mapping activities in the country; (ii) to make it compulsory for all firms involved in surveying and mapping activities to get themselves registered with SoP; (iii) to make it obligatory to all firms involved in surveying and mapping activities to adopt surveying and mapping standards framed by the national mapping agency ie SoP; (iv) to stop unqualified firms to take part in surveying and mapping activities that can pose a security risk to the State; (v) to protect established and affixed survey makers at various locations throughout the country from damage by assigning their responsibility to local district management; (vii) to avoid duplication of efforts in the field of mapping, especially in the public sector, thereby economising on public exchequer; and (viii) to assess the mapping requirements of public and private sector on a yearly basis, thereby lending technical support to federal and provincial development plan and activities.
Part of the logic for doing so relates to how other countries have addressed the issue.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has suggested to the government to frame a law aimed at stopping unlawful activities related to mapping firms, given that several western countries, including Australia, China, India, Turkey, USA and UK, have enacted supportive laws, official sources told Business Recorder.
- Business Recorder (Pakistan)
India
Dehli Police now has a link off its home page (Know Your Police Stateion) of its police stations. It can help residents navigate to the station and find the one covering a certain issue. The department built it in partnership with Microsoft and it uses Silverlight.
- ZeeNews
Nigeria
The Kwara [state in Nigeria] government has concluded arrangements to launch the state Geographic Information System (GIS) in the first quarter of 2012, Alhaji Usman Hamza, the Senior Special Assistant on Information Technology, said.
The state already has a land information system and plans an emegency response system for the future.
Singapore
The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) yesterday announced a new competition that it hopes will spur application developers to create new uses for electronic maps.
The inaugural OneMap Challenge offers top prizes of 20,000 Singapore dollars (US$15,556) cash each in the two categories of desktop and mobile applications, and a total of more than 70,000 Singapore dollars in cash and prizes.
