While several studies examined land use and land cover changes in the central and western parts of Saudi Arabia, this study is the first to use remote sensing data to examine the decadal land cover changes in Saudi Arabia’s eastern coastal city of Al-Khobar between 1990 and 2013. Specifically, it utilized ISODATA classification method to classify Landsat TM, ETM+, and OLI data collected from 1990, 2001, and 2013 and then detected changes in the land cover within the study area. It then measured urban sprawl by calculating the relative Shannon’s entropy index values for the three years. With overall classification accuracies greater than 85%, the results show that urban built-up areas increased by 117% between 1990 and 2001 and 43.51% from 2001 to 2013. Vegetation increased by 110% from 1990 to 2001 and by 52% between 2001 and 2013. The entropy index values of 0.700 (1990), 0.779 (2001), and 0.840 (2013) indicates a high rate of urban sprawl and the city dispersing near the outskirts and towards the neighboring cities of Dhahran and Dammam. Future studies should examine the current challenges faced by the city’s residents due to urban expansion and attempt to find ways to resolve them in the near future.

Detection of Land Use/Land Cover Changes and Urban Sprawl in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia: An Analysis of Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Data

Exploring spatiotemporal patterns of electric power consumption in countries along the Belt and Road

Results from numerous cost studies have generated conflicting results on public transit production technologies. Because prior studies have employed various sub-samples of public transit properties, the diverse results may either reflect alternative technologies or sampling differences. Based on a panel of nearly all transit systems reporting for Section 15 (US National Transit Data) purposes from 1986 to 1994, this paper explores whether public transit production technology differs by size and operating characteristics of the system. The results indicate that US transit properties are heterogeneous with different production technologies, which implies that transit cost analyses based upon a set of heterogeneous systems will generate incorrect inferences on public transit cost and production structures.

Cost structures of public transit systems: a panel data analysis

Suitability of human settlements in mountainous areas from the perspective of ventilation: A case study of the main urban area of Chongqing

Effects of air pollution on respiratory hospital admissions in İstanbul, Turkey, 2013 to 2015.

Explaining historical urban development using the locations of mosques: A GIS/spatial statistics-based approach

Examining the cost structure of urban bus transit industry: does urban geography help? ☆

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is a common phenomenon in many cities across the world that has significant socioeconomic and environmental ramifications. Recognizing the significance of taking measures to mitigate the UHI effect, a vast body of research has been published, over the past few decades, on this topic. Existing research covers various climatic contexts and has significantly improved our understanding of the dynamics of the UHI. However, there is a lack of research on the potential linkages between the physical form of urban streets and the UHI effect. The results of such research can be used to develop planning and design strategies for achieving climate-resilient urban development. As a step toward filling this gap, in this study, we use a mixed-methods approach, involving graph theory and spatial statistics to examine the relationship between the UHI effect and selected urban form measures such as street network connectivity, street network centrality, and land-use in Izmir, Turkey. Results show that the UHI effect is more intense in areas with higher levels of street network centrality. On the contrary, higher connectivity of the urban street network is associated with lower levels of the UHI effect.

An analysis of urban form factors driving Urban Heat Island: the case of Izmir

Evaluation of Air Pollution Effects on Asthma Disease: The case of Izmir

Although spatial distance is a very important concept for a wide variety of disciplines including social, natural, and information sciences, the methods used to measure spatial distance are not directly expressed and fully explained. In this study, we calculate and compare Euclidean distances and network distances for 10 randomly selected European cities. On the contrary to the findings reported in past research, we find that there is not a global straight forward relation between the Euclidian distance and network distance. © 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creative commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. Keywords: Euclidean distance; network distance; network analysis

http://ebpj.e-iph.co.uk/index.php/EBProceedings/article/download/137/pdf

K. Mert Cubukcu

Papers

Explaining historical urban development using the locations of mosques: A GIS/spatial statistics-based approach

Examining the cost structure of urban bus transit industry: does urban geography help? ☆

An analysis of urban form factors driving Urban Heat Island: the case of Izmir

Evaluation of Air Pollution Effects on Asthma Disease: The case of Izmir

Are Euclidean Distance and Network Distance Related