RS & GIS Based urban land use change and site suitability analysis for future urban expansion of parwanoo planning area, Solan, Himachal Pradesh (India)

Rapid urbanization in the world is quite alarming, especially in developing countries such as India. In the present study historical change in urban area was analyzed using multi-temporal satellite images of 1980, 2000, 2010 and 2013 respectively to identify the areas where the increase or decrease has taken place over the period of last 33 years. High resolution satellite data of CARTOSAT 1 and 2 was used for base map and Digital Elevation Model generation. The goal of this study is to find potential sites in hilly terrain for urban development using site suitability analysis technique by multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach. To perform site suitability analysis, AHP technique was used for urban development in the study area. Criteria map like slope, aspect, elevation, road proximity; land use/cover and lithology were used to find new sites for urban expansion. The generated thematic layers (slope, aspect, elevation etc.) from criteria were standardized using pair-wise comparison matrix known as analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Weight for every criteria/parameter was assigned by comparing them with each other according to their importance. Final site suitability map was prepared with the help of these weights and criteria for urban expansion.