Paper Details

The project under observation is of Lahore-Sialkot Motorway that is a north-south motorway currentlyunder construction in Pakistan. The 91 km long motorway will connect Lahore to Sialkot via Sambrial and is expected tobe completed by 30th December 2019 at a cost of ₨ 44 billion (US$420 million). Once completed it will reduce traveltime between Sialkot and Lahore to 50 minutes. The motorway is consisting of 4 no of lanes, having 7 - interchanges, 6 -flyovers, 29 - bridges, 36 - underpasses, 33 - cattle creeps and 252 - culverts. In Lahore, the motorway will be linked tothe Lahore Ring Road, which will allow motorists direct access to the M2 and N5. The Interchanges given at differentlocations connects the cities mainly the link roads emanating from N-5. The major cities along the route of the motorwayare Lahore, Muridke, Narowal, Wando, Gujranwala, Pasroor, Dhaska, Sambrial and Sialkot. Assessment is needed to becarried out for evaluating the significant effects since it will plays a central role in future safe planning, designing andexecution of such infrastructure projects. A worksheet is specially designed for this purpose, applied on the specific LSMProject and a Compliance Index is obtained which clearly indicate the safety level of the particular structure underobservation against health of Ecology. A value of overall compliance index is obtained as a result of different complianceindexes for Land use, Crops, Animals & Birds and Environment (Air & Water). Effects on Land use, Crops, Animals &Birds and surrounding environment depends on the physical condition of the project and their design level. The WeightedCompliance Index obtained is calculated automatically with help of the worksheet. The Weighted Compliance Indexes arethen combined to give Overall Compliance for each category. Further, the Overall Compliances Indexes of fourcategories give the Multiple Compliance Index for the whole Project. The value obtained in this context for MultipleCompliance Index is 0.59, that is greater than the Mean Compliance Index (i.e Greater than 0.5). It shows that keeping inview the key questions that were designed to assess effect of infrastructure development on ecology, shows that the projectis not good for health of Ecology. Therefore needs close consideration.

Engr Saeed Jan, Dr Ammad Hassan Khan, Engr Kashif Ali, “Effects of Infrastructure Development on Health of Ecology”, International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD), Vol. 7, Issue 7, pp. 47-51, July 2020.