Urban Morphology of Unplanned Settlements: The Use of Spatial Metrics in VHR Remotely Sensed Images

Information about unplanned settlements in developing cities is often unavailable, despite their extent, which at times can dominate residential land-use. This research aims to contribute to the development of tools for monitoring such areas, by using spatial metrics as means for the identification of the morphology of unplanned urban settlements in VHR images. The methodology is tested in two case study areas: Dar es Salaam and New Delhi. The methodology builds on using image segmentation and on the assumption that segments representing homogenous urban patches are different in planned and unplanned areas. The morphological aspects (size, density and layout pattern) of planned and unplanned areas are analyzed using spatial metrics on segmented images. A final set of metrics has been used to build an unplanned settlement index’. Comparison between results and land use data showed that the index can assist in the identification of unplanned settlements.