Spatial Monitoring of Urban Expansion Using Satellite Remote Sensing Images: A Case Study of Rabak City, Sudan

Abstract

 Rabak, after became the capital city of the White Nile state, faced urbanization challenges and lacks reliable data for urban planning. This study is aimed to assess, monitor, and mapping urban land cover using multitemporal Landsat satellite images. Three deferent land use/cover maps were produced; for the time periods 1987 to 2019 (1987, 1997, and 2019), this periods were used to evaluate and analyze urban expansion. Supervised classification technique followed by the post classification comparison change detection approach was used to analyze images. The results showed that; over the past 33 years, the urban area has increased rapidly in Rabak. Urban area were increased significantly in the first 10 years of the study period (from 1987 to 1997), during this period the average annual rate of increase reached 5.60%. The urban area changed from 61593 km² in 1987, to 96144 km² in 1997, and became 10100 km² in 2019.

Urban expansion in Rabak generally occurred all around the city, and as a result, this sprawl led to the expansion of urban areas into other types of land use/cover classes, particularly bare land which decreased by 31.9% through the study time period (1987 to 2019). The spatial analysis of urban expansion and trends of urban growth in Rabak could provide the required input data for the urban planning and modeling of the city.