Measurement and monitoring of urban sprawl in a rapidly growing region using entropy

Abstract

Rapid urban development and dramatic change of landscape have been recently witnessed in some developing countries as a result of rapid economic development. The measurement and monitoring of land-use changes in these areas are crucial to government officials and planners who urgently need updated information for planning and management purposes. This paper examines the use of entropy in the measurement and monitoring of urban sprawl by the integration of remote sensing and GIS. The advantages of the entropy method are its simplicity and easy integration with GIS. The measurement of entropy is devised based on two locational factors - distances from town centers and roads - to capture and reveal spatial patterns of urban sprawl. The entropy space can be conveniently used to differentiate various kinds of urban growth patterns. The application of the method in the Pearl River Delta, one of the fastest growing regions in China, has demonstrated that it is very useful and effective for the monitoring of urban sprawl. It provides a useful tool for the quantitative measurement that is much needed for rapidly growing regions in identifying the spatial variations and temporal changes of urban sprawl patterns.