Case Studies

Introduction

Countries across the world have been witnessing unprecedented growth in economic activities. There are various factors responsible for such phenomenal growth in economic activities. Of them, the most significant factor which has triggered unprecedented growth in economic activities is globalization. There is no doubt in the fact that there is an array of advantages of globalization from the perspective of improvement in the status of human living. It is obvious that human race has always been in the pursuit of improvement in their lives. Therefore, people move to those places which are capable of providing better opportunities. And there is nothing wrong in moving towards better opportunities. However, there are negative consequences of this kind of movement if it is not monitored and controlled. At this point of discussion, it needs to be mentioned explicitly that space is finite, and therefore, the space should be utilized using some scientific principles. Otherwise, it may create a chaotic situation, and may become the reason for inclusion of randomness in the functionality of the human system. However, mostly no scientific principles are followed to use the space more optimally. One of the most common scenarios of such randomness and chaos can be observed in the urban spaces. Most of the urban regions across the world do not follow any scientific principle to utilize their space optimally. Hence, the consequence of such randomness is now very clear today; the urban systems are vulnerable to random development. Consequently, there are now serious threats to the idea of sustainable urban development. There are different urban events which are hugely affected by such randomness in the working of cities, or say in the urban system. There is an absolute necessity to understand the reasons responsible for creating such randomness in the urban system. It also needs to be understood that randomness breeds uncertainty in the behavior of an urban system. That further may create circumstances in the urban systems which may became the primary reason responsible for generation of uncertain elements. Therefore, there is a need to monitor the urban system more accurately and precisely. Accurate monitoring of urban system may succeed in identifying the factors which are responsible for making the urban system random and inconsistent. But that would not be possible unless we understand how different attributes or say, different urban events function in the urban system. Furthermore, there is an absolute necessity to understand the factors which are responsible for influencing the behavior of these urban events. After indentifying the factors which influence the behavior of different urban events of the urban system, we may attempt to understand the relationship between these factors. And this understanding about the relationship between these factors of the urban system would be instrumental in developing a strong understanding about the working of the urban system. In addition, we will become aware about the factors which can make an urban system random, inconsistent, and thereby, instable. For example, in the current context, the way there has been unprecedented growth in the demand from the urban centres, we need to understand how this may affect different urban events of the urban system. In addition, there is a need of proper tools and techniques which can be effective in monitoring urban system accurately and precisely.

Therefore, this chapter explains the significance of utility of geospatial technology in the investigations pertaining to urban systems. There are two events chosen for discussion in this chapter. The reason behind choosing these events is to understand how different urban events behave in the domain of urban system. In addition, it is aimed to explain the utility of geospatial technology in assessing these events. The urban events which are chosen in the present chapter is: first, assessment of urban traffic characteristics, and the second is to assess the spatio-temporal variation in landscape pattern of the study area. For assessment of landscape pattern, different landscape indices are employed.