In recent decades, unprecedented urban expansion has taken place in developing countries resulting in the emergence of megacities or urban agglomeration. It has been highly concerned by many countries about a variety of urban environmental issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and urban heat island phenomenon associated with urbanization. Generally, thermal environment is monitored by remote ...

Jingjinji area (namely Beijing, Tianjin and He Bei Province) is one of the three largest regional economic communities in China. Urban expansion has sped up in the past 20 years in this area due to the rapid economic and population growth. Evaluating the landuse suitability for urban growth on a regional scale is an urgent need, because the most suitable areas and the most suitable scale of urb...

This study presents a practical methodology to monitor the spatiotemporal characteristics of urban expansion in response to rapid urbanization at the provincial scale by integrating remote sensing, urban built-up area boundaries, spatial metrics and spatial regression. Sixty-seven cities were investigated to examine the differences of urbanization intensity, urbanization patterns and urban land...

This study explores the combined application of remote sensing, spatial metrics and spatial modeling to the analysis and modeling of urban growth in Santa Barbara, California. The investigation is based on a 72-year time series data set compiled from interpreted historical aerial photography and from IKONOS satellite imagery. Spatial metrics were used both specifically to assess the impact of u...

Numerous studies have identified associations between the surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect (i.e., SUHI, hereinafter is referred to as UHI) and urban growth, particularly changes in land cover patterns. This research questions their causal links to answer a key policy question: If cities restrict urban expansion and encourage people to live within existing urban areas, will that help in c...

Data mining methods have been widely and successfully used in many fields in the last decade. And geographic knowledge discovery and spatial data mining also have attracted more attentions recently. This paper presents an ART-MMAP neural network based spatio-temporal data mining method to simulate and predict urban expansion. The spatial matrices derived from different urban related features, i...

Data mining methods have been widely and successfully used in many fields in the last decade. And geographic knowledge discovery and spatial data mining also have attracted more attentions recently. This paper presents an ART-MMAP neural network based spatio-temporal data mining method to simulate and predict urban expansion. The spatial matrices derived from different urban related features, i...

Key Findings. (1) A larger proportion of the rural population than the urban population is uninsured and low income (living at or below 138% of the federal poverty line [FPL]) (9.9% as compared to 8.5%) and a larger proportion of the rural population than the urban population will be eligible for subsidized Health Insurance Marketplace (HIM) coverage due to income levels and current lack of ins...

Rapid urbanization on the coast of China has attracted much attention. The objective of this study was to explore the differences in dynamics and related driving forces between urban and rural settlements. Applying the quantitative method, we demonstrate that substantial heterogeneity in settlement growth, landscape pattern metrics, change, land sources and driving forces is exhibited across th...