Rana Waqar Aslam

Wuhan University | WHU · State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing

Cities are complex and dynamic entities in close proximity of people, implying multi temporal observations to analyse and understand the urban context. At present, open-source data and geospatial intelligence are becoming the important means of exploring, monitoring and predicting urban status of area growth and population increase. In last few dec...

Aside from Ramsar Convention awareness programs, the concept of wetlands is mostly ignored in developing countries. Wetland ecosystems are essential to hydrological cycles, ecosystem diversity, climatic change, and economic activity. Under the Ramsar Convention, there are 2414 wetlands that are internationally recognized, and Pakistan is home to 19...

Wetlands are important in many ways, including hydrological cycles, ecosystem diversity, climate change, and economic activity. Despite the Ramsar Convention's awareness programmes, the importance of wetlands is frequently disregarded in underdeveloped countries. The Ramsar Convention recognises 2491 wetlands worldwide, 19 of which are in Pakistan....

Although it is a globally significant wetland, the ecological environment of Soon valley (Ucchali and Khabeki wetland lakes, Pakistan) is being negatively impacted by the rapid transformation of its land-use change brought about by economic and human activities. Through supervised classification and interpretation, we extract land use categories fr...

Wetlands provide vital ecological and socioeconomic services but face escalating pressures worldwide. This study undertakes an integrated spatiotemporal assessment of the multifaceted vulnerabilities shaping Khinjhir Lake, an ecologically significant wetland ecosystem in Pakistan, using advanced geospatial and machine learning techniques. Multi-tem...

Insufficient freshwater recharge and climate change resulted in seawater intrusion in most of the coastal aquifers in Pakistan. Coastal aquifers represent diverse landcover types with varying spectral properties, making it challenging to extract information about their state hence, such investigation requires a combination of geospatial tools. This...

Rangelands globally face escalating threats from overgrazing, land conversion, and climate change. This study investigates spatio-temporal rangeland degradation patterns in Pakistan's Bhakkar District, a semi-arid region dependent on fragile pastoral ecosystems, over the past four decades at 10-yr intervals (1990, 20 0 0, 2010, 2020). Remote sensin...

The site selection for Low Impact Development (LID) practices is a significant process. It affects the effectiveness of LID in controlling stormwater surface runoff, volume, flow rate, and infiltration. This research paper presents a comprehensive review of various methods used for LID site selection. It starts by introducing different methods and...

This study undertook an assessment of 24 physiochemical parameters at over 1094 sites to compute the water quality index (WQI) across the upper and central Punjab regions of Pakistan. Prior to the WQI calculation, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was employed to assign specific weights to each water quality parameter. The categorization of WQI...

Google Earth Engine (GEE) is presently the most innovative international open-source platform for the advanced-level analysis of geospatial big data. In this study, we used three machine learning algorithms to apply this cloud platform for Land Use Land Cover (LULC) research in the Mardan, Pakistan. The machine learning algorithm in GEE is the most...

Remote sensing images are an essential tool for mapping the amount of flood inundation after flood events. For early flood estimation, flood mapping is a crucial component. This study used an integration of geospatial techniques to evaluate the flood extent in District Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan. The Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI...

The research is aimed at evaluating the process of urbanization and it's spatio-temporal impacts on albedo and the changing climate of the Punjab. Climate change in urban areas has become a public focal point, as urban development in our present-day environment is one of the most critical aspects of human activities. The shift in the reflective pro...

Rapid urbanization has become an immense problem in Lahore city, causing various socioeconomic and environmental problems. Therefore, it is noteworthy to monitor land use/land cover (LULC) change detection and future LULC patterns in Lahore. The present study focuses on evaluating the current extent and modeling the future LULC developments in Laho...

Agricultural crop cover identification is a major issue and time-consuming effort to verify the crop type through surveys of the individual field or using prehistoric methods. To establish the scenario of crop identification, the stage of crop provides diverse spatial information about the variety of crops due to its spectral changes. The main aim...

The notion of this research is based on the two devastating earthquake events that happened on October 8, 2005, and September 24, 2019, in the regions of Azad Kashmir and Muzaffarabad. This study aims to (i) identification of the susceptible zones where landslides can occur in the future; (ii) preparation of landslide inventory maps using vector da...

In this work, we extracted the near-surface CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> concentration from the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) CarbonTracker model datasets for a temporal period of eight years fro...

The notion of this research is based on the two devastating earthquake events that happened on October 8, 2005, and September 24, 2019, in the regions of Azad Kashmir. This study aims at (i) identification of the susceptible zones where landslides will occur in the future; (ii) preparation of landslide inventory maps using vector data, satellite im...

The usage of artificial light is excessive and improper. Earth's night picture has changed significantly from space and studies have shown that over-exposure of night to the artificial light can influence animals, the environment and human beings. The purpose of this study was to monitor and measure skylights of Lahore City and temporary light poll...

The study is a comparative analysis of water quality among two variant areas of Lahore. There are several problems regarding drinking water facilities. Drinkable water can be contaminated due to various reasons. Thus, the study highlights infrastructural causes (material of pipes and outdated pipes) of water contamination. Wall City and Gulberg are...

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most significant greenhouse gas, and its concentration is continuously increasing, mainly as a consequence of anthropogenic activities. Accurate quantification of CO2 is critical for addressing the global challenge of climate change and for designing mitigation strategies aimed at stabilizing CO2 emissions. S...

Pakistan offers the nation's citizens basic health care with a well-developed primary and public health system but the health sector is underdeveloped in the Southern areas of Punjab and Multan district is prominent area. Multan District has developed and evolved over time, but it still struggles to provide basic health services to its people, espe...

This paper synthesizes research studies on spatial forest assessment and mapping using remote sensing data and techniques in Pakistan. The synthesis states that 73 peer-reviewed research articles were published in the past 28 years (1993-2021). Out of all studies, three were conducted in Azad Jammu & Kashmir, one in Balochistan, three in Gilgit-Bal...

The substantial reliance of South Asia (SA) to rain-based agriculture makes the region susceptible to food scarcity due to droughts. Previously, most research on SA has emphasized the meteorological aspects with little consideration of agrarian drought impressions. The insufficient amount of in situ precipitation data across SA has also hindered th...

Seismic records from IRIS (NIL, KBL, MSEY, KMI, QIZ, DGAR) were used to compute AWARAN September 24 2013 Earthquake's focal mechanism. Earthquakes are one of the most drastic threats that are likely to cause heavy human casualties and can destroy entire cities on a scale of minutes. We processed the waveform data from 6 separate stations for the co...

Carbon dioxide (CO) is the most important greenhouse gas and several satellites have been launched to monitor the atmospheric CO2 at regional and global scales. Evaluation of the measurements obtained from these satellites against accurate and precise instruments is crucial. In this work, aircraft measurements of CO2 were carried out over Qinhuangd...

Citation: Mustafa, F.; Wang, H.; Bu, L.; Wang, Q.; Shahzaman, M.; Bilal, M.; Zhou, M.; Iqbal, R.; Aslam, R.W.; Ali, M..A.; et al. Validation of GOSAT and OCO-2 against In Situ Aircraft Measurements and Comparison with CarbonTracker and GEOS-Chem over Qinhuangdao, China. Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 899. https://doi.

Industries, being commercial productive units perform as manufacturing agents to produce large quantity of goods to cater the needs of increasing population. Manufacturing units use raw material and goods to deliver the final product. The findings of this research are consistent and reliable. The study area mainly consists of three types of industr...

Urbanization is the biggest issue of emerging economies now a days, which is badly effecting cities, and considered a communal phenomenon worldwide. In this study GIS and remote sensing techniques are used to estimate transformation of irrigated areas into built-up areas. Irrigated lands are considered most beneficial lands because these provide gr...

Urbanization has become a hot issue in context of environmental and socio-political scenarios which is being addressed at every forum internationally. The classification results of Islamabad showed that the total area of Islamabad was about 899.56 sq.km. The area wise percentages of various landuse features remained very diverse in the period from...

Lahore is famous for its rapid urban growth providing bread and butter to around 11 million population. Availability of clean drinking water to general public is the responsibility of the state. Pakistan ranks at 80 in terms of providing standard drinking water to people. This research is based on monitoring the temporal changes in water quality of...

In this study, district Mansehra, Pakistan was chosen as the study area. The main objectives of this research are to assess the extent and the changes in the rate of deforestation in Mansehra since past 20 years. It also examine the impacts of deforestation on the Climate by establishing and mapping the magnitude and rates of land cover changes tha...

The Punjab Cities Growth Atlas provides a unique perspective to our cities, as this is an attempt to spatially demarcate the urban extent of 194 cities in the province. This reflects functional boundaries of Punjab's cities in contrast with the administrative boundaries of local government system. The world today focuses on population size to iden...

This research has been conducted to assess the water quality in and around Lahore Metropolitan area on the basis of three different land uses, i.e. residential, commercial, and industrial land uses. For this, 29 sample sites have been selected on the basis of simple random sampling technique. Samples were collected at the source (WASA tube wells)....