Green space suitability evaluation for urban resilience: an analysis of Kathmandu Metropolitan city, Nepal

Abstract

Unplanned urbanization, demographic and environmental changes have forced many cities into more uncertainty and risk, challenging economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In this context nurturing resilience in the face of various uncertainties of environmental, socioeconomic and other sociopolitical risk is an urgent matter. Resilience has become an important goal for many cities throughout the world leading to the enhancement of urban ecology and maintenance of essential ecosystem goods and services to make sure the sustainable future for all. The Kathmandu metropolitan city is one of the fastestgrowing capital cities with recent and frequent evidence of unplanned development, loss of green space, tragic events of an earthquake, flood and other environmental problems causing devastation, economic damages, and loss of human life/health, and habitats. In this background, the paper evaluates suitable sites for urban green space development using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) based multi-criteria analysis methods with geographical information system (GIS).Variables taken for this study are school point data, health facility's location data, emergency service's locations, water bodies, emergency road network data, recent land use/land cover data, population data, existing park, and slope. The unit of a study is a metropolitan city. Our evaluations demonstrate the spatial distribution of different not suitable areas, less suitable, moderate suitable, and highly suitable area respectively, of the 4.47%, 7.19% of the area are high and moderate suitable area, while the largest area 78.87% is less suitable and 9.47% are not suitable for the development of green open space. The result indicates human occupancy is everywhere and per capita, open green space in the city is very below the global average. The local government must think about different modality for development of green open space in collaboration with other government agency occupying more open space or engagement with private sectors. This finding could contribute a planner for spatial planning of green space development in a Metropolitan City.

Assessing air pollution tolerance of plant species in vegetation traffic barriers in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

“…The environmental performance index ranked Nepal's air quality at the 178th position out of 180 in 2020 [7]. Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal with dense settlement areas and below global average open green space per capita [8], has been reported to be one of the highly polluted cities in Asia.…”

Surface air temperature trends in Kathmandu Valley for 2011-2017

“…It lies between the latitude of 27˚32' 13" and 27˚49' 10" North and longitude of 85˚11' 31" and 85˚31' 38" East with the mean elevation of about 1300 meters (4265 feet) above sea level [17]. The east-west and north-south axis of this valley are about 30-20 km, respectively [22]. For this study, we have taken the data of the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) station located in the Kathmandu valley, where various sensors are attached to detect various climatic parameters.…”

Pemetaan Rencana Pola Ruang Terbuka Hijau Menggunakan AHP dan Gis untuk Kota Subulusalam

“…Multi fungsi penting ruang terbuka hijau ini sangat lebar spektrumnya, yaitu dari aspek fungsi ekologis, sosial/budaya, arsitektural dan ekonomi (Alifia, N., Purnomo, 2016). Secara arsitektural ruang terbuka hijau dapat meningkatkan nilai keindahan dan kenyamanan kota melalui keberadaan taman-taman kota, kebun-kebun bunga, dan jalur-jalur hijau di jalan-jalan kota (Pokhrel, 2019). (Hendriani, 2016) dalam rangkumannya mengemukakan ruang terbuka hijau juga dapat memiliki fungsi ekonomi, baik secara langsung seperti pengusahaan lahan-lahan kosong menjadi lahan pertanian/perkebunan (urban agriculture) dan pengembangan sarana wisata hijau perkotaan yang dapat mendatangkan wisatawan.…”