GEOSPATIAL APPROACH FOR URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Abstract. Growing population and change in gentrification patterns of urban areas affect the environment quality, especially in the developing nations. Most cities are thereby, facing serious environmental sustainability challenges. A resilient urban planning is required to solve these environmental problems, which in turn need information that is not available in the desired scales, hence, making it difficult to comprehend. In this study, an approach is proposed to comprehend the environmental quality of a city at community level. Landsat 8 images are used to compute the biophysical indicators, namely, land surface temperature (LST), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference built-up index (NDBI), modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI) and normalized difference impervious surface index (NDISI) in ArcGIS software. These indicators are then integrated with the indicators from the government census data to compute the community level index for urban environmental quality (UEQI). The results depicted that the highest value of our developed index occurred in the places where there is more of greenery and less built-up area. Based on the obtained UEQI values, different areas of the city are divided into five categories. The index values suggest that urban greening significantly contribute to enhance the urban environmental quality. Also, it highlights the critical zones where intervention should be made by the planners and policymakers for the sustainability of the city.