Urban Sprawl of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Region Using Remote Sensing and ARC-GIS

Abstract

The world around us is undergoing complete metamorphosis, which is boosted by the population explosion and technological expansion. The problem is more severe for India which has more towns which have to be transformed in to large cities to accommodate its ever-increasing population. In this study an analysis is done by using ARC-GIS (geographic information system) where map of the region was analyzed for recognizing the distribution of land use types throughout the area; land types considered are-Forest, Agricultural, Industrial, Residential, Water bodies. This analysis was performed for three years: 2005, 2010 and 2015. Results obtained show that the area of barren land, forest and agricultural land is continuously decreasing and that of residential land is rapidly increasing because of increase in demand. Maps were again analyzed using Buffer analysis in which Acharya vihar was chosen as the point of interest and multiple circle buffer analysis was performed to study the spread of agricultural and residential areas over the buffers and identify the directions in which the city is expanding, and it was found out that north and north-west directions have undergone massive expansion over the span of 10 years