Abstract:
Urbanization causes population growth and physical expansion of built-up area in cities and its suburb. It puts immense pressure on natural resources, conversation of agricultural land and degradation of water, air qualities and have profound impact on human lifestyle and health. Since last two decades, Sri Lanka is experiencing speedy urbanization. The urban population of Sri Lanka is expected to reach 60% by 2030 from 14% in 2010. This rapid increase in urban population may cause serious socio-economic disparities. In-order to plan for a sustainable urban future in Sri Lanka, planners are in need of new tools that can be capable to monitor and predict the urban growth under various scenarios. In this paper, we attempted to characterize the urban growth characteristics of Matara city using Geoinformatics and SLEUTH model. SLEUTH is a well-known urban growth model based on cellular automata. Multi-temporal remote sensing datasets from 1980-2010 have been used quantify the urban growth of Matara. SLEUTH model is calibrated using the data sets prepared from aerial photographs, Landsat sensor data and topographical data from Survey department. The derived calibration coefficient are used to project the growth of Matara by 2030 to understand and analyze the areas that are likely to be urbanized by 2030. The model results showing that out of 66 Grama Niladari Divisions 29 (in Matara Divisional Secretariat Division) will be urbanized with a probability ranging from 80% to 90%.
