Application of Remote Sensing in Urban Area

The urban heat island (UHI) effect has caught the great attention with the fast urbanization processes. Kolkata Metropolitan Area in India is one of the regions experiencing rapid urbanization that has resulted in UHI which will influence the regional climate, environment and socio-economic development. Two distinct Land sat ETM+ images (year of 2000 and 2010) are analyzed to delineate the UHI and its effectiveness on environment by converting the gray-scale values of band 6.1 into kinetic land surface temperature with considering the emissivity factor of land use / land cover. This analysis showed that UHI is representing the higher value of Normalized difference Built-up Index (NDBI), the temperature of which is located within the CBD region of Kolkata and also with the scattered pattern along Hugli River due to the industrial location. In order to validate the relationship between Urban Heat Island and Built-up index, several indices also are used for the correlation study like Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Moisture Stress Index (MSI), and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) etc.