Geospatial Assessment of the Physical Expansion in Urban Development in Bwari Area Council, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja

Abstract

Globally, urbanization has become an inevitable occurrence increasing at a faster rate in developing countries, especially in Nigeria. This has called for the present strategies in the monitoring and management of its limited environmental resources. The aim of this research is to monitor the rate of physical expansion in urban development of Bwari Area Council, Abuja using satellite imageries of Landsat TM (1986), Landsat ETM+ (2003) and Landsat OLI (2020) a period of 34 years and predict the future change in the next 30 years (2050) using an integrated Cellular Automata and Markov Chain Model. The Maximum Likelihood Algorithm was applied for the image classification in which five feature classes of Built-up, Vegetation, Bare surface, Rock outcrop and Water body were extracted. Future growth prediction was carried out by applying the Cellular Automata and Markov Chain Model analysis. The result reveals an observable land cover changes of the study area for the three epoch years. It shows a continuous increase in Built up areas between the years 1986, 2003 and 2020. Further analysis also reveals the trends in the urban expansion. In addition, the classification accuracy for the three periods of 1986, 2003 and 2020 of the classified imageries showed an overall accuracy of 95.8%, 99.9% and 99% respectively while the kappa statistics for the selected images were given as 0.89, 0.99 and 0.98 respectively. The information retrieved from this research will serve as a veritable tool for decision makers such as the government, city planners, and relevant authorities to effectively plan towards the formulation of sustainable future urban development.