| dc.description.abstract | The extensive history goes back to urban development, and human convinced
build-up area and urban spreading through the specific region is one of the most
important areas of human-induced urban expansion. Due to the unplanned
urban expansion, Urban sprawl is a prominent issue in the cities nowadays. In
today’s world, these have become important topics in many scientific fields. This
study probes the expansion of the 13 GN divisions in the Weligama urban council
area. The main objective of this research is to find the urban land expansion
index (SI). Remote sensing and GIS (Geographical Information Science) provide
some methods for finding the expansion index using satellite imagery. Satellite
images were used in 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 as primary sources taken by
USGS earth explore. By using the NDBI (Normalized Difference Built-up Index)
extract the built-up area and then the urban expansion index/sprawling index
(SI) were calculated to identify the expansion of the study area. Finally, the maps
of expansion of the built-up areas were prepared in Weligama urban council
area to identify the urban expansion index. Considering such context for the
town planning, it is better to use the expansion and sprawl analysis method to
determine the extension patterns to create sustainable development. As per the
results, the region has slightly expanded between 2005 and 2010, but between
2010 to 2015 and 2020 it takes a moderate speed for expanding the Weligama
urban council area. Consequently, the final output shows that the urban
expansion has happened along the beachside to the city center area. | en_US |
