Historical Urban Land Use Transformation in Virtual Geo-Library

Abstract

As countries become increasingly urbanized, understanding how urban areas are changing within the landscape becomes increasingly important. Urbanized areas are often the strongest indicators of human interaction with the environment, and understanding how urban areas develop through remotely sensed data allows for more sustainable practices. A Landsat satellite sensor which is a remote sensing platform, with its ability to analyze global data, rapidly present itself as being an invaluable tool for studying the growth of urban areas. In this study, we present the virtual geo-library as the geovisualization tools to provide the analytical studies of the urbanization process in Malang City, East Java, Indonesia, using images derived from Landsat sensor family (1989 to 2014). We provide a dynamic geovisualization through virtual geo-library, where users could understand and get valuable scientific information (e.g., urban area changes and land use transformation in higher land). This system is also equipped with the tools to enable users to create automatic cartographic maps and print the results out as a digital pdf format file.

Keywords

• urbanization
• GIS
• virtual geo-library
• land use transformation
• Indonesia