TITLE:
Towards a Remote Sensing and GIS-Based Technique to Study Population and Urban Growth: A Case Study of Multan
AUTHORS:
Atif Ali, Anam Khalid, Muhammad Atif Butt, Rashid Mehmood, Syed Amer Mahmood, Javed Sami, Jahanzeb Qureshi, Kashif Shafique, Asdullah Khan Ghalib, Rizwan Waheed, Farhan Ali, Rais Mukhtar, Muhammad Azhar
KEYWORDS:
Urban Sprawl, Population Growth, Spatio-Temporal, Remote Sensing, Land Use, Pakistan
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Remote Sensing,
Vol.7 No.3,
September
29,
2018
ABSTRACT:
In
recent decades, the migration rates of the large cities of Punjab have been
risen up to a considerable level due to the lack of employment opportunities as
well as lack of facilities in the rural areas of the province. It has caused an unprecedented and unplanned
urbanization across the urban areas of the province. This study has been
undertaken to perform fractal analysis about the sprawl in rapidly growing
city. GIS and remote sensing data have been used in this study as an emerging technology which is cost effective as well as
accurate at the same time. Landsat images have been taken for the study and the
sprawl has been calculated with the analysis of the data of each decade for
past more than 40 years. It has been observed that the built up area is 47.8 to 141.12 Sq. Km whereas the pattern of urban settlement has been
classified as clustered and linear, following the roads network. The temporal
population growth also seconded these results. The population growth rate and
population density increase, are based on the pixel based extraction of the
data from satellite imagery for the period of 2000 to 2014, which is taken as a
decision support tool. In 2000, the population of the district increased from 2,071,694 (1981 census) to 2,939,907 and then in 2013, it became 4,384,191 at a rate to 2.93% upturn
per annum. Moreover, the study also reveals the extent of the growth of other
land uses as well which may be taken as a reference that in an agricultural
country like Pakistan, the natural resources are being wasted (by urbanization
of the fertile land). There must be some master planning to avoid such things
in the other cities as well.