Identifying Inequality of School Facilities and Resource Distribution Problems in Abbottabad City, Pakistan through Geographical Visualization

Abstract

Providing quality education in isolated areas is one of the major issues in recent times, mainly in the underdeveloped countries, especially in South Asia. As the population is increasing rapidly in Pakistan, the resources cannot meet the requirements of quality education. One such example is the Abbottabad District of Pakistan with 1900 schools in 51 union councils; the government educational authorities have not established any system for their proper management and monitoring. The main reason behind the lack of resource management is the absence of effective visualization systems as well as the distance of schools from the main city. Mapping schools geographically to visualize them for analysis and managing resources is an efficient and effective way to make better decisions. The purpose of this study is to geographically identify the inequality in distribution of school’s facilities and resources that can help educational authorities to diagnose problems when making decision and managing schools. Use of static conventional paper methods has consistently lead to poor results, because it is difficult to manage large amounts of school. In this research, the complete educational data was calculated from both government and local resources and then properly arranged in a database. That database was then connected to a web server to represent it publicly on a web-based application. The resulting map represents the spatial distribution of schools, depicting the improper distribution of almost 25% of the schools in different areas of Abbottabad. This research provides evidence that using GIS aided decision support and recommendation system will facilitate in better resource planning for education in developing nations.

Keywords: Geographical Visualization, Resource Management, Geographical Distribution, Abbottabad.