Investigating the characteristics of urban expansion is helpful in managing the relationship between urbanization and the ecological and environmental issues related to sustainable development. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Line-scan System (DMSP/OLS) collects visible and near-infrared light from the Earth’s surface at night without moonlight. It generates effective t...

This study analyses the expansion of urban growth and land cover changes in five Saudi Arabian cities (Riyadh, Jeddah, Makkah, Al-Taif and the Eastern Area) using Landsat images for the 1985, 1990, 2000, 2007 and 2014 time periods. The classification was carried out using object-based image analysis (OBIA) to create land cover maps. The classified images were used to predict the land cover chan...

mashhad city, according to the latest official statistics of the country is the second populated city after tehran and is the biggest metropolis in the east of iran. considering the rapid growth of the population over the last three decades, the city’s development area has been extended, significantly. this significant expansion has impacted natural lands on suburb and even some parts e.g. rang...

Mashhad City, according to the latest official statistics of the country is the second populated city after Tehran and is the biggest metropolis in the east of Iran. Considering the rapid growth of the population over the last three decades, the city’s development area has been extended, significantly. This significant expansion has impacted natural lands on suburb and even some parts e.g. rang...

Land-use change models are used to explore the dynamics and drivers of land-use/landcover change and to inform policies affecting such change. A broad array of applications and modeling methods are available and each type has certain advantages and disadvantages depending on the objective of the research. This work presents an approach combining cellular automata (CA) model and supported vector...

Urban sprawl has been at the center of current debate on urban structure. Compared to the rich literature on urban sprawl in Western cities, relatively little is known about whether Chinese urban expansion is excessive or inefficient. This paper provides an integrated analysis of two seemingly contradictory phenomena in China’s urban development in recent two decades, namely development zones a...

Nowadays, urban computing has gained a lot of interest in regards to guiding the evolution of cities into intelligent environments. These environments can be appropriated for interactions between individuals that may ultimately affect and modify their behavior. These changes require new approaches that allow us to better understand how urban computing systems should be modeled. In this work, we...