Urban boundary extraction and sprawl analysis using Landsat images: A case study in Wuhan, China

Abstract

a b s t r a c tPeriodic monitoring and multi-scale characterization of urban sprawl is essential for improving urban planning and development. However, historical sprawl analysis is not well suited for the neourbanization occurring in most cities in China due to the limited data available. This paper proposes a concise and cost-effective method for automating the extraction of urban boundaries (UBs). The method uses integrated land-use information entropy (LUIE) model along with ordinary Kriging based on a gridded land-use map derived from Landsat imagery to extract UBs. Results indicate that overall extraction accuracies greater than 90% were obtained using an 800 m-resolution LUIE combined with Kriging. The method was applied to identify UBs in Wuhan, China during 1987e2010, and the UBs were characterized at multiple scales and analyzed using landscape metrics. Results show varied landscape dynamics at local administrative and city scales. The study demonstrates that the method for UB identification and multi-scale analysis has the potential to contribute to sprawl monitoring and measurement at multiple spatial scales. Moreover, the findings from this study can potentially guide policy makers and urban planners tasked with understanding and controlling development occurring under neo-urbanization strategies in China.

Delineating Urban Boundaries Using Landsat 8 Multispectral Data and VIIRS Nighttime Light Data

“…Secondly, mixed zones inside the UB consisting of urban green space, urban waters, or construction lands could be regarded as abrupt change points when applying the radius search mode to TM data. Therefore, these abnormal points should be removed through pixel-by-pixel inspections in previous studies [44]. The CZM search mode enables the abrupt change points to rest in the urban fringe.…”

Study on the Delimitation of the Urban Development Boundary in a Special Economic Zone: A Case Study of the Central Urban Area of Doumen in Zhuhai, China

“…Spatial distribution characteristics of urban boundaries and their development trends can be found by applying RS. Urban boundaries have been successfully extracted using Landsat images (Hu et al, 2015). In our study, Landsat images (122-45) collected in 2008 Thematic Mapper(TM) and 2014 Operational Land Imager (OLI) are used to extract urban lands whose boundaries are called urban development boundaries [27,28].…”

“…However, high-speed urban development is basically an extension of external expansion, which leads to a series of problems including threatened food and ecological security (such as farmland erosion and forest degradation), reclamation of river land, and low efficiency of land use and urban sprawl [5][6][7]. In this case, we have to change the pattern of urban development, control the urban scale and then guide rational urban development, because curbing excess urban sprawl and working toward sustainable planning strategies are urgent needs [8][9][10].…”

China’s New Urban Space Regulation Policies: A Study of Urban Development Boundary Delineations

“…With the development of geographical information science, more geographical information techniques have been applied to construct the UGB delineation model [7,31,32]. Low-cost, high-precision urban boundary extraction models were developed using the geographical simulation method, remote sensing technologies, and land-use information entropy models [33,34]. Computational models tend to rely too much on mathematical calculations, thereby failing to consider the directional expansion of urban morphology, and thus overlooking structural adjustments to urban boundary morphology.…”