Investigation and prediction of urban-sprawl and land-use changes for Chennai city using geo-spatial technologies

Abstract

Monitoring urban sprawl is a vital component to assess landscape changes as it directly affects the quality of life. Multi date land-use and land-cover thematic layers were generated using multi-date high resolution remote-sensing data and Survey of India topo-sheet and spatial changes in urban land-use and urban-sprawl were studied using GIS. The residential and commercial urban area of city increased from 14,865.8 and 2,121.27 hectares in 1991 to 35,564 and 3,527.34 hectares in 2014. This study revealed that 51% of agricultural land and 2% of water bodies have been transformed as other urban land use features, in the form of built-ups. Based on current landscape trends, a 29-year forward simulation for the years 1991 to 2020 was performed using GIS land use change modeller analysis tool. The results show that by 2020 the residential and commercial urban of Chennai would increase to 51,059 and 4,246.7 hectares, respectively.