Karachi’s huge population at severe risk

on 03/04/2020

Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi sent yet another warning on Thursday (March 5) that the city may witness a horrific situation some day if the practice of constructing substandard multistorey buildings continues unabated in the city.
Most of the buildings stand with weak foundations may collapse if God forbids the city is hit by tremors. The city is already put in B2 Category after 2005 earthquake in Pakistan in which over 5000 people lost their lives.
This time in the city, a ground plus five storey building collapsed in the city’s Golimar area and thus snatched 27 lives and injured over 50 people. It was a only a month earlier, another building in city’s oldest area of Lyari developed cracks. The city has a number of such incidents of collapses but they fall on deaf ears of the authorities albeit hollow announcements of any action.
Why these buildings are collapsing and what is at the center of the issue? “Public ignorance, responds an experienced engineer, Al Kazim Mansoor who runs a reputed ‘Soilmats Engineers’ firm based in Karachi.
Karachi is the sea of multistory buildings as the city has encroached upon spaces not only horizontally but also vertically so that the pressure of burgeoning population is dealt with. This situation has given rise to a huge construction activity in both the settled areas as well as the Katchi aabadis (unsettled areas or slums).
The people including builders get building designs prepared properly and thus passed, Engineer Mansoor says. If they properly followed the design is an issue which must be looked into. If the design is not followed properly from engineering point of view, the building would be faulty.
Also, he believes the quality of construction material and the ratios which ought to be followed strictly are also not maintained. How can a multistory building with such practice sustain on a 60 yards plot?
Engineer Mansoor says the situation in cantonment areas is worse than the areas which fall in the limits of the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA). He cites examples of area like Delhi Colony and PNT Colony where high-rises like buildings are mounted on small plots in huge numbers.
But only passing design is not enough. The rest of the process of the construction is also equally important and it remains the responsibility of regulating authorities. “There is no regulation and the result is buildings are collapsing,” says yet another senior engineer who has a vast experience in construction industry.
The regulators are not working and thus design of the buildings are not looked into properly neither the columns nor other requirements. Thus, overstressing increases if the foundation of the building is weak, he says.
He claims the situation in Karachi was not so bad during late 1990s and early 2000 and it was after the establishment of SBCA the situation started turning worse.
Although, the provincial governments have been claiming to take strict measures to discourage illegal practice of allowing the construction of substandard buildings in Karachi, the situation on the ground remains the same.
Senior engineers in the city of which many run their companies are abreast of the situation. Some say even those in the power corridors including the chief minister who is also a civil engineer are well aware of the situation.
If it is so then what keeps them calm? Thank God that the land of Karachi is good otherwise the situation would be devastating, says Engineers Mansoor.
But there are many who fear the situation may be much worse because of over-exploitation of ground water in the city. Since ground water is being extracted in huge quantity the under erosion of seas continues and it affects the foundations of the buildings.
Al Kazim Mansoor and others do agree with this notion to a great extent. But one says it varies and depends upon the ground water table and thus affects also vary. In sum, it is an issue which must be addressed properly.
In case of overlooking the ongoing practice, there is a concensus among the engineering community that the buildings will continue to collapse and swallow human lives and Karachi’s huge population is at severe risk in case of any tremors

Dynamic Role of Artificial Intelligence

on 03/04/2020

Computer science characterizes artificial intelligence (AI) look into as the investigation of intelligent agents: any gadget that sees its condition and takes activities that amplify its risk of effectively accomplishing its objectives. A progressively detailed definition describes AI as a framework’s capacity to accurately decipher outer information, to gain from such information, and to utilize those learning’s to accomplish explicit objectives and assignments through adaptable adjustment.
Numerous artificial intelligence algorithms are equipped for gaining from information; they can improve themselves by learning new heuristics (procedures, or “general guidelines”, that have functioned admirably previously), or would themselves be able to compose different calculations. A portion of the “students” depicted underneath, including Bayesian systems, choice trees, and closest neighbor, could hypothetically, (given limitless information, time, and memory) figure out how to surmised any capacity, including which mix of numerical capacities would best portray the world[citation needed]. These students could in this way, infer all conceivable information, by thinking about each conceivable theory and coordinating them against the information. By and by, it is never conceivable to think about each probability, in view of the wonder of “combinatorial blast”, where the measure of time expected to take care of an issue develops exponentially. Quite a bit of AI explores includes making sense of how to distinguish and abstain from considering an expansive scope of conceivable outcomes that are probably not going to be advantageous. The intellectual abilities of current models are restricted, utilizing just an improved rendition of what knowledge is extremely prepared to do. For example, the human psyche has thought of approaches to reasoning incalculable and coherent clarifications to various events throughout everyday life. What might have been in any case clear, an equally troublesome issue might be trying to illuminate computationally rather than utilizing the human psyche. This offers to ascend to two classes of models: structuralism and functionalism. The basic models plan to freely mirror the fundamental knowledge tasks of the brain, for example, thinking and rationale. The practical model alludes to the associating information to its processed partner. Furthermore, a few ventures endeavor to accumulate the “rational information” known to the normal individual into a database containing broad information about the world. Among the things a far-reaching practical information base would contain are objects, properties, classes and relations between objects; circumstances, occasions, states and time; circumstances and end results; information about information (what we think about what others know); and numerous other, less very much examined areas. A portrayal of “what exists” is a cosmology: the arrangement of articles, relations, ideas, and properties officially depicted with the goal that product operators can decipher them. Artificial intelligence is vigorously utilized in robotics and expert system. Progressed automated arms and other mechanical robots, broadly utilized in present-day manufacturing plants, can gain as a matter of fact how to move productively in spite of the nearness of grating and apparatus slippage. An advanced versatile robot, when given a little, static, and noticeable condition, can without much of a stretch decide its area and guide its condition; in any case, dynamic situations, for example, (in endoscopy) the inside of a patient’s breathing body, represent a more noteworthy test. Movement arranging is the way toward separating a development task into “natives, for example, singular joint developments. Such development frequently includes agreeable movement, a procedure where development requires keeping in touch with an object. Numerous issues in AI can be unraveled in principle by shrewdly looking through numerous potential arrangements; Reasoning can be diminished to playing out a hunt. For instance, sensible confirmation can be seen as looking for a way that leads from premises to ends, where each progression is the utilization of a deduction rule. The easiest AI applications can be separated into two kinds: classifiers (“on the off chance that sparkly, at that point precious stone”) and controllers (“in the event that gleaming, at that point get”). Controllers do be that as it may, likewise arrange conditions before surmising activities, and accordingly, characterization shapes a focal piece of numerous AI frameworks. Classifiers are capacities that utilization design coordinating to decide the nearest coordinate. They can be tuned by models, making them extremely alluring for use in artificial intelligence

Sindh govt continues to implement SC orders School Education and Literacy Dept removes B.Tech, Diploma holders

on 03/04/2020

Sindh’s School Education and Literacy Department has removed all B.Tech and Diploma holders holding engineering positions in the departments, says organization’s letter which claims to have complied with the orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Signed by the secretary, the letter says B.Tech and Diploma holders are restricted to perform engineering work as defined in PEC Act and order f the apex court.
The year 2020 brought good news for engineers working in Sindh government departments.
In January, at least, one of their long-awaited demands was met as the Sindh government moved to implement the decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) for removing non-engineers from all engineering positions in public sector departments in the province.
Besides SC’s decision, Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) has been pressing government both at the center and the provinces for removing B-Tech graduates and diploma holders who were posted on engineering positions.
The government kept on delaying compliance to the orders of the apex court issued on October 3, 2018, order which asked for removing hundreds of non-qualified engineers posted on BPS-19 and BPS-18 positions.
On January 8, , the Sindh Services, General Administration and Coordination Department (SGA&CD) finally directed the provincial secretaries of works and services, local government, public health engineering, agriculture, irrigation and other departments to ensure prompt compliance.
“… government shall not allow or permit any person to perform professional engineering work as defined in the PEC Act, who does not possess accredited engineering qualification from the accredited engineering institution and his name is not registered as registered engineer or professional engineer under the PEC Act,” the order’s operative paragraph reads, as cited in the petition filed by Moula Bux Shaikh and others against Sindh chief minister and other parties.
The government’s directives were issued after the SC’s assistant registrar wrote to the provincial government, following the filing of a complaint in the court by Rashid Razvi and Associates on behalf of the petitioners.
Engineers working in government departments, as well as PEC, have, for long, maintained a stance against employing B-Tech graduates and diploma holders on engineering positions, arguing that they lack the required qualification.
PEC’s Act defines a professional engineer as a person who holds an accredited engineering qualification, has passed the prescribed engineering practice examination and is registered as such by the council. Registered engineers are also registered with the council but they are not allowed to work independently on projects’ designing. On the other hand, B-Tech graduates and diploma holders are neither registered with the council nor are their qualifications accredited.
Following SGA&CD’s notifications, departments like local government and works and services also issued notifications on January 8, directing swift compliance to the apex court’s order.
“… B-Tech [graduates and] diploma holders… maybe restricted and relieved from engineering work and furnish compliance report[s] into the matter within 24 hours,” reads a notification issued by Sindh local government’s Housing and Town Planning Department.
It was addressed to Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, Karachi Development Authority, Lyari Development Authority, Sindh Building Control Authority, Malir Development Authority, Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and Sindh Solid Waste Management Board.
Hyderabad Development Authority, Water and Sanitation Agency, Hyderabad, Larkana Development Authority and Sehwan Development Authority, among others, had also been issued the same directives.
In the same month, the Works and Services Department had relieved BS-18 executive engineers Muhammad Azam Memon and Ghulam Abbass Soomro, posted in Hyderabad and Sukkur, respectively.

NCCPL, NCCS-NED to develop information security products

on 03/04/2020

National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited (NCCPL) and NCCS-NED have signed an MoU to develop Information Security products in Pakistan National Centre for Cyber Security (NCCS) has been established by the government of Pakistan to play a leading role in securing Pakistan’s cyberspace and making Pakistan world’s premier nation in Cyber Security.
NCCS, in collaboration with NED University, initiated a project to develop Information Security products indigenously in Pakistan. National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited (NCCPL) being a significant institution of Pakistan’s Capital Market providing automated clearing and settlement services to Pakistan Stock Exchange Limited, has joined hands with NCCS-NED University to inculcate national cause of developing Information Security products in Pakistan.
Prof. Dr. Muhammad Tufail, Pro Vice Chancellor, NED University and Muhammad Lukman, CEO NCCPL signed a Memorandum of Understanding between NCCPL and NCCS-NED at NCCPL Office.
In accordance with the MoU, NCCPL will share its technical expertise and provide a certain logistic arrangement to NCCS-NED to develop and customize Information Security products according to market needs.
This joint venture is well aligned with Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s vision of promoting local products & researches, which will not only make our nation IT and Cyber Security self-reliant but will help in significantly reducing the import of Information Security products.
NCCPL senior management, Virtuosoft CEO Shoaib Ur Rehman, and Director IT NED Dr. Asad Arfeen were also present at the occasion to witness the ceremony and support the vision of the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Bayer, XAG shake hands to commercialize digital farming technology in Pakistan

on 03/04/2020

Bayer and XAG have announced a strategic partnership to bring, promote and commercialize digital farming technology in Southeast Asia & Pakistan (SEAP).
The collaboration was formalized with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two companies.
Bayer was represented by Andre Kraide, Country Head for SEAP, while XAG was represented by its Co-founder, Justin Gong.
The collaboration will enable smallholder farmers in SEAP access to digital farm management know-how and technology, and help them overcome their farming challenges including labour shortage, water availability, product stewardship and safe use, and most importantly, allowing them to grow more with less. “It is estimated that around 500 million smallholder farmers produce 80 percent of the food consumed in the developing world,” said Andre Kraide. “We know that we need to double food production to feed 10 billion people by 2050, but we also know that we will not get more land or resources to do so. This is where digital farming comes into the picture”, he said. “As the leader in agriculture, Bayer is committed to enabling smallholders access to digital technology and solutions. We look forward to working closely with XAG, our channel and value chain partners, as well as the governments and other key stakeholders in the countries, to leapfrog the smart agricultural movement in Southeast Asia and Pakistan from farm to table,” he added.
Under the agreement, Bayer and XAG will jointly explore commercial collaboration in SEAP, including the distribution of XAG products and solutions through Bayer’s channels, as well as joint promotion and market development efforts including establishing channel service providers with local business partners in the countries.
The collaboration in SEAP follows an earlier partnership between Bayer and XAG in Japan, which was announced in Tokyo in October 2019.
Under the agreement, the two companies commit to work together on optimum spraying solutions that combine the unmanned aerial systems (UAS) with innovative formulation technology. Key countries in SEAP including Thailand, Vietnam, and Pakistan have been the leading exporters of rice in the region, while on the other end of the spectrum, others such as Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore have been striving towards self-sufficiency. Robust demand for corn as both food and feed has also seen an increase in corn imports to supplement domestic production in SEAP. Vietnam and Malaysia lead the region in corn imports, driven by strong consumer demand for pork and poultry, respectively. Despite the diversity in the region, they all boast a unifying trait – which is that almost all the agricultural production in these countries are undertaken by smallholder farmers. “XAG has grown from a drone manufacturer based in Guangzhou, China, to the world’s leading agriculture technology company with a 20 million-hectare crop protection service record.
Our product portfolio includes survey and spray drones, agricultural utility vehicles, and IoT equipment such as weather stations and farm cameras,” said Justin Gong. “By the end of 2019, we launched our robotics and software solutions, and enriched the smart agriculture ecology of XAG. We are proud and excited to collaborate with Bayer to bring integrated tailored solutions that leverage drones, artificial intelligence and IoT, to help smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia and Pakistan tackle their pressing agricultural challenges.” Following the signing of the MOU, Bayer and XAG will work together on country-specific commercial agreements over the next few month