Detection of Urban Changes and Statistical Site Suitability Analysis in Tiruchencode Taluk Using Geoinformatic Techniques

Unplanned city growth is an indicator of rapid industrialization, which usually reduces the quality of the environmental health of a region-sometimes disastrously. Monitoring provides the planners and decision-makers with required information about the current state of development and the nature of changes that have occurred. The vegetation, urban sprawl, water bodies and road networks are taken as the key features to map the changes in Tiruchengode taluk, Namakkal, Tamil Nadu. The satellite images obtained in the two different periods such as LANDSAT 7 (1999) and LANDSAT 8 (2013) were used in the present study along with the town and country planning map (1994) and topo-sheets (1972) as ancillary data. Change detection is an important tool in many remote sensing applications. Using such tools we can compare satellite data from different times to assess damage from natural disasters, understand the ways in which humans alter the land, and characterize climatic and seasonal changes to the landscape. Mapping of the urban changes in the study area have been interpreted in view of developing urban land with different classes. The identification of suitable region for urban development is also quite important for planners to do sustainable development. So current study attempts to identify the suitable site for urban development in Tiruchengode taluk, Namakkal using integrated GIS and multi influence factor (MIF) techniques.