Smog Risk Reduction for Lahore Metropolitan, Pakistan

Abstract

Recently, Pakistan has experienced drastic effects of smog; smog is the mixture of fog and smoke, polluted air formed by human activities like burning of coal, excessive use of vehicles and many others. Lahore is one of the most crowded cities of Pakistan and facing the soil or road dust due to construction, industrial and vehicular release of gases. These all has increased the pollutants in the atmosphere, especially PM 2.5 that is recorded four times more in winter than in summer for the data recorded over the years from November, 2005 to December, 2007 (Lodhi, 2019). Lahore experienced the smog for the first time in the month of November, 2016. In earlier studies, very limited research work has been done related to smog, therefore, this research is aimed to study the pattern of smog in Lahore (Zartab Jahan, 2019). The study aimed to identify techniques through GIS and RS to evaluate the vulnerability assessment and to identify the institutional challenges which contributes in smog risk reduction through urban planning. Satellite images is used for this study to identify the most vulnerable areas so that it will help to locate that what type of communities or people are most likely to get effect by this risk. The study area is specific due to the nature of risk; to study smog risk reduction the area of application is Lahore. Lahore is the second largest metropolitan area in Pakistan, and the capital city of Punjab province. The population of Lahore district is 11,119,985 according to the 2017 census with the area of 1,772 km². As per justification, Lahore has been the victim of this risk from 2016 and many health issues has been reported due to smog. Moreover, the air quality index (AQI) of Lahore in December 2021 was 296 which consider hazardous air for breathing. Considering the health and environment issues of Lahore, the study area has been specific to Lahore District boundary.