Use Of Remote Sensing For Urban Impervious Surfaces: A Case Study Of Lahore

Muhammad Asad, Sajid Rashid Ahmad, Farhan Ali, Rashid Mehmood, Muhammd Atif Butt, Sana Rathore

Impervious surfaces are manmade surfaces which are highly resistant to infiltration of water. Accurate and rapid classification of impervious surfaces would help in emergency management after extreme events like flooding, earthquakes and hurricanes, by providing quick estimates and updated maps for emergency response. The advances on remote sensing technology provide easier, faster and cost effective method to do adamage assessment. In this study, three different remote sensing techniques (Normalized difference built up index, Supervised Classification and Object based image analysis) was used to assess the current status of impervious surfaces in district Lahore. As Increasing population, new development in open lands and recreation areas, and growing towns all translate into increasing impervious surface areas across Lahore. Therefore, estimating and mapping impervious surface is significant to a range of issues and themes in environmental science central to global environmental change and human environment interactions. The datasets of impervious surfaces are valuable not only for environmental management, e.g., water quality assessment and storm water taxation but also for urban planning, e.g., building infrastructure and sustainable urban development.