Identification of Urban Sprawl – A Case Study of Vijayawada City, Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract

At this moment, India is among the countries of low level of urbanization. As a result, most urban settlements are characterized by shortfalls in stock housing and water supply, urban encroachments in fringe area, inadequate sewerage, traffic congestion, pollution, poverty and social unrest making urban governance a difficult task to maintain healthy urban environment. High rate of urban population growth is a cause of concern among India’s urban and town planners for efficient urban planning. Therefore, there is an urgent need to adopt modern technology of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems to collect, to analyze, to model and to link the overall planning process to make planning process more effective and meaningful. Vijayawada is the second largest city in the state of Andhra Pradesh and in the close vicinity of newly constructing Capital, Amaravati of the newly formed state, located on banks of river Krishna is taken as a case study for observation of sprawl using a change detection method. It is found that Shannon’s entropy analysis method effective qualitative measure to identify the sprawl of Vijayawada city.