The Environmental Effects of Urban Development in Hanoi, Vietnam from Satellite and Meteorological Observations from 1999–2016

Abstract

Since 1990 the Hanoi capital region (or Hanoi metropolitan area) in Vietnam has undergone rapid development, which has gone together with increasing socio-economic growth and prosperity. However, the environmental degradation that has accompanied urban development has raised considerable concern from the public in recent years. This research investigates the effects of urban development on urban sprawl, urban heat island (UHI), and metropolitan weather phenomena that are related to the quality of urban life in the period from 1999–2016. To achieve these objectives, remote sensing technologies were applied to satellite images at three time points (i.e., 1999, 2009, and 2016) that were associated with the meteorological dataset from ground-based stations. The spatial distribution evolution was examined for the land use/land cover changes while using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized difference built-up index (NDBI). The increasing impact of urban sprawl on UHI intensity is determined based on the land surface temperature (LST) in multi-temporal forms. Increasing urbanization with the development of gradual outward and northward expansion from the city centre intensified the correlation analysis shows that the UHI. The potential formation of new UHI areas in the near future is also indicated. Furthermore, more than 30% of the metropolitan area is decaying in ecological quality according to an assessment of the urban thermal field variance index (UTFVI). With respect to metropolitan weather, the urbanization in Hanoi affected the observation of meteorological parameters revealed that the relative humidity, total rainfall, temperature, and wind speed over both urban and rural areas. The overall results imply that urban development and its environmental effects and impacts have imposed pressing issues and new challenges to sustainable development in the Hanoi metropolitan area.

Spatial Distribution of Surface Temperature and Land Cover: A Study Concerning Sardinia, Italy

“…The theoretical LST data implemented into model (1) should be compared to direct LST observations in order to justify their use to define and develop spatial planning policies aimed at decreasing LST and at mitigating its negative impacts on urban and rural areas. A clear-cut and straightforward validation methodology is described and applied by Nguyen et al in a recent article concerning Hanoi [1]. Secondly, at present, the Sardinian municipalities and the regional administration seem very far from understanding the potential of policies geared towards decreasing LST, such as urban green and blue grids, green roofs and facades, and afforestation.…”

“…Fast changes aimed at promoting social and economic development have characterized international land cover dynamics in the last few decades [1,2]. Land cover features are related not only to rapid urbanization, but also to processes of higher anthropization, such as the transformation of forest areas into agricultural areas or transitions from woodlands and shrubs to new predominantly homogeneous agrarian areas [3,4].…”

Naturalist intelligence and personality: An understanding students’ responsible environmental behavior

“…Environmental problems occur in many countries, such as India (Bhattacharyya et al, 2015), China (Aregay, Zhao, Li, Xia, & Chen, 2016), Vietnam (Nguyen, Lin, & Chan, 2019), and Indonesia. One city that has environmental problems in Indonesia is Bandung (Septian, Ruhimat, & Somantri, 2016).…”

Spatiotemporal Changes in the Built Environment Characteristics and Urban Heat Island Effect in a Medium-Sized City, Chiayi City, Taiwan

“…Previous studies [8][9][10][11] have shown that built environment factors or urban physical characteristics such as population density, building cover ratio, floor area ratio, and anthropogenic heat, can significantly affect the UHI intensity. The population density can show the concentration and distribution of the urban population and the urbanization intensity within a city [9] and be used as a metric to determine spatial variation in electrical use and thus estimate energy consumption and the magnitude of anthropogenic heat in a city [9,20].…”

“…The effects were investigated of urban development in a tropical area on urban sprawl, the urban heat island (UHI) effect, and metropolitan weather phenomena that are related to the quality of urban life in the Hanoi metropolitan area in Vietnam. The results imply that during the study period from 1999 to 2016, urban development and its environmental effects have imposed pressing issues and new challenges for sustainable development [10]. From the 2000-2015 Bangkok survey, it was found that urban physical characteristics have a significant impact on the UHI magnitude, particularly the floor area ratio (FAR) and building coverage ratio (BCR), in which temperature levels at 10 p.m. and the thermal cooling rate between 4 and 10 p.m. had a correlation value (r) of over 0.50 [11].…”