Journal of Environmental Protection, 2011, 2, 1274-1283
doi:10.4236/jep.2011.29147 Published Online November 2011 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jep)
Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on
Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity
Delhi
Manju Mohan1*, Subhan K. Pathan2, Kolli Narendrareddy1, Anurag Kandya1, Sucheta Pandey3
1Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India; 2Indian Space Research Organisation, Space
Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, India; 3Centre of Studies in Resource Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mum-
bai, India.
Received July 12th, 2011; revised September 6th, 2011; accepted October 11th, 2011.
ABSTRACT
The rapid expansion of urban areas due to rise in population and economic growth is increasing additional demand on
natural resources thereby causing land-use changes especially in megacities. Therefore, serious problems associated
with rapid develo pment such as additional infra structure, informal settlements, environmental pollution, destruction of
ecological structure and scarcity of natural resources has been studied carefully using remote sensing and GIS tech-
nologies for a rapidly grown megacity namely, Delhi. The present work evaluates the land use/land cover (LULC)
changes and urban expansion in Mega city Delh i and highlights the major impact of rapid urban ization and popula tion
growth on the land cover changes which needs immediate attention. The results indicate that the city is expanding to-
wards its peripheral region with the conversion of rural regions in to urban expansions. Built-up area of Delhi wit-
nessed an overall increment from 540.7 km² to 791.96 km² or 16.86% of the total city area (1490 km² ) du ring the study
period 1997 to 2008 which mainly ca me from agriculture land, waste land, scrub-land, sandy areas and water bodies.
The increment in forest cover of 0.5 % is very small when considering the increment in built up catego ry to 17%. To tal
area of waterbodies has reduced by 52.9% in a ten year period (58.26 km² in 1997 to 27.43 km² in 2008) with sh allow
waterbodies now having a dismal presence. LULC changes are studied with the urban growth parameters such as
population, vehicles, gross state domestic product etc. The results lay emphasis on the concepts of urban planning to be
applied such that more consideration is towards the preservation and management of natural land use classes which
will increase the quality of life in an urban environment.
Keywords: Satellite Imagery, Landuse-L and c over Dist ri b ut ion, Urban Planning, Built-Up Areas, Urban Growth
Parameters, Change Detection
1. Introduction
Urbanization is a gift to the human society if it is con-
trolled, coordinated and planed. However, unplanned ur-
banization is a curse. In 2008 more than half of the world’s
population were urban dwellers and the urban population
is expected to reach 81% by 2030 [1]. Due to the ace-
leration of the global urbanization in both intensity and
area, there is a growing interest in understanding its im-
plications with respect to a broad set of environmental
factors including loss of arable land [2], habitat destru-
ction [3], decline in natural vegetation cover and climate
at local, regional, and global scales [4]. The conversion
of rural areas into urban areas through development is
currently occurring at an unprecedented rate in recent
human history and is having a marked effect on the na-
tural functioning of ecosystems [5]. Since ecosystems in
urban areas are strongly influenced by anthropogenic
activities, considerably more attention is currently being
directed towards monitoring changes in urban land use/
land cover (LULC) [6]. Such studies are particularly im-
portant because the spatial characteristics of LULC are
useful for understanding the various impacts of human
activity on the overall ecological condition of the urban
environment [7]. LULC change due to human activities
is currently proceeding more quickly in developing coun-
tries than in the developed world, and it has been pro-
jected that by the year 2020, most of the world’s mega

Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi1275
cities will be in developing countries [8]. In developing
countries, where urbanisation rates are high, urban sprawl
is a significant contributor of the land use change. Sprawl
generally infers to some type of uncoordinated develop-
ment with impacts such as loss of agricultural land, open
space and ecologically sensitive habitats in and around
urban areas due to lack of integrated and holistic ap-
proaches in regional planning [9].
In the fast developing countries like India, there is a
mass migration of people from rural to urban and also
from smaller to bigger urban areas and then to metropo-
lises like Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai etc. The process of
urbanization in India gained momentum with the start of
industrial revolution way back in 1970s followed by
globalization in 1990s. Forests were cleared, grasslands
ploughed or razed, wetlands drained and croplands en-
croached upon under the influence of expanding cities,
yet never as fast as in the last decade [10]. In 1991, there
were 23 metropolitan cities in India, which increased to
35 in 2001 [11].Some of the prominent ones are Delhi
(13.82 million), Mumbai (11.90 million) and Chennai
(4.21 million) with Delhi being the most populated
megacity (competing with Mumbai) in the country in
terms of human population and vehicular traffic density.
Delhi is one of the many megacities struggling with
rapid urbanization and gigantic levels of pollution from
industrial, residential and transportation sources [12].
According to Census of India 2001, the population of
Delhi has increased by 47.02% in the decade 1991-2001
(from 9.4 million in 1991 to 13.82 million in 2001). The
up rise in the population of Delhi is mainly due to the
migration of people to the capital in search of better liv-
ing standard. The population of Delhi has reached to 21.7
million in 2009 (increased by 57% from 2001-2008).
After independence, when Delhi witnessed a large influx
of migrants, within a very short time the population of
Delhi was approximately doubled. To house such a large
migrating population, city has expanded in a very un-
planned and uncontrolled manner [10]. Such types of
unplanned expansions have a direct impact on quality of
urban environment affecting the efficiency of the people
and their productivity in the overall socio-economic de-
velopment [13]. In the light of its past experiences and
current trends of development, emerging future of Delhi
is one of the most important issue gaining focus from the
authorities to improve the overall quality of life. Land
use which is highly dynamic entity in nature is one of the
key parameters to quantify development. The dynamic
land use database has a vital application to many diverse
fields like Environment, Forestry, Hydrology, Agricul-
ture, Geology, Urban sprawl, etc., [14].
Several studies have demonstrated applicability of Re-
mote sensing (RS) in the area of urban planning, impor-
tant RS research has been conducted to date, particularly
in urban change analysis and the modeling of growth
[9,15-17], LULC evaluation [2,18-21], and urban heat-
island research [19,22-24]. In particular, RS-based multi-
temporal land use change data provide information that
can be used for assessing the structural variation of
LULC pattern. In addition, accurate and comprehensive
land use change statistics are useful for devising sus-
tainable urban and environmental planning strategies
[3,25]. It is therefore very important to estimate the rate,
pattern and type of LULC changes in order to predict
future changes in urban development [18]. Thus this
study will attempt to identify the spatio-temporal pattern
of LULC changes which occurred in Delhi using satellite
images periodically from 1997 to 2008 in conjunction
with the various master plans from 1962-2021 along with
various socio-economic factors such as population, road
density, vehicle population, Gross State Domestic Prod-
uct (GSDP)”etc. to understand the dynamical pattern of
urbanization and identify key features for sustainable
environmental management of Delhi.
2. Study Area
The present study has been carried out on Delhi, the ca-
pital city of India located between the 28º24′17″ and
28º53′00″N latitudes and 76°45′30″ and 77º21′30″E lon-
gitudes. Delhi, the National capital Territory situated
near the western bank of river Yamuna which spreads
over an area of around 1,490 km² is surrounded by the
Himalayas in the North and the Aravali ranges in South -
West. The hottest months are May and June with tem-
peratures touching 48˚C, whereas, the lowest falls to
about 5˚C at the end of December-January. The monsoon
season lasts from July to September with maximum
rainfall in the month of July (around 300 mm).The total
population of Delhi was nearly 0.4 million in 1901,
which increased slowly and reached 1.74 million in 1951
(4.35 times in half century) and reached13.78 million in
2001 [11] implying about 34.45 times increase in one
century.
3. Methodology
In the present study, multi-spectral data acquired from
the LISS-III images of IRS (Indian Remote Sensing)
satellite of the years 1997, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005 and
2008 have been utilized for the LULC change detection.
Topographic sheets of the study area, obtained from the
Survey of India were used for the ground reference.
Geometric correction was performed on all the satellite
images using the topographic maps of Survey of India of
Delhi (1:50000). The images were geo-referenced by
using well scattered ground control points.The satellite
data was enhanced before classification using median

Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi 1276
filter in ERDAS Imagine 9.2 for the better quality of the
image and to achieve better classification accuracy. All
images were geometrically corrected and enhanced using
the same method. Based on the fieldwork, a ground truth
map was prepared for locating training pixels on the im-
age and around 100 reference data points were collected
using a global positioning system (GPS). This GPS in-
formation was then overlaid with the satellite image in
ERDAS to select the training areas and for accuracy as-
sessment.
In preparing the LULC map, the most crucial step is
choosing the LULC classification scheme. Generally, a
consideration is that the LULC categories should nor-
mally confirm to the standard categories defined by the
US Geological Survey [26]. Considering the standard
categories as well as the local factors like topography,
land use etc., ten separate LULC classes were defined,
namely: dense built-up, medium dense built-up, less
dense built-up, crop land, fallow land, forest cover, scrub
land, sandy areas, deep water bodies and shallow water
bodies. All satellite images were then studied using
spectral and spatial profiles to make certain the digital
numbers (DNs) of different LULC categories prior to
classification. Training areas were selected from the ref-
erence data and from topo maps. Approximately 100
training sites were used to train the images. A supervised
maximum likelihood classification (MLC) algorithm,
previously demonstrated to obtain the best results from
remotely sensed data if assuming that data follows Gaus-
sian distribution [27], was then applied to each of the
satellite image using ERDAS Imagine. The classified
images were then analysed to compute the areas under
each LULC class as adopted in the LULC scheme. The
overall accuracy was assessed by estimating commission
and omission errors in the error matrix which is a pro-
portion of correctly and wrongly classified pixels [28].
The change detection was then carried out by comparing
the areas under each LULC class of the respective years.
Master plans of Delhi (MPD) 1962, 2001, 2021 pre-
pared by Delhi Development Authority (DDA) [29] were
used in conjunction with socio-economic parameters ob-
tained from various sources for interpretational analysis.
The linear regression analysis was also carried out for
forecasting the total built up area obtained from classi-
fied images along with population and GSDP for the
2021 and 2031, which was then compared with the pro-
jections done by DDA for the MPD-2021. Based on this
analysis, the proposed urbanisation plans are examined
and key parameters are identified for sustainable growth
of the city.
4. Results and Discussions
The detailed classified images depicting the ten different
LULC classes for the years 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2008
are shown in Figure1. It can be seen from Figure 1 that
there is a vast distribution of the less dense areas through-
out the city in 2008 when compared to 1997 especially in
North, North West and South West parts of the city. Me-
dium dense built up areas have spread from the centre of
the city to the South-East region. The total built-up area
has been found to be expanding in the West, North,
North-West, South-West and South parts of the city. The
Central and East Delhi remained almost unchanged be-
cause they already witnessed urbanization earlier; leav-
ing very less scope for further development. As shown in
this figure, there is a significant increase in the less dense
built-up area by 180.09 sq.km (12.08% of the total area)
and moderate increase in medium dense built up area by
72.68 sq.km (4.87% of the total area) while a marginal
decrease of 1.46 sq.km (0.1% of the total area) is re-
flected in the dense built up area. Figure 2 describes the
actual areas of the ten LULC in the years 1997 and 2008
as well as increase or decrease in area of each of these
classes during this period. As revealed in this figure the
area under the less dense built-up category almost dou-
bled from 208 sq.km to 388 sq.km (180 sq.km) during
1997 to 2008 having an overall increment of 12 % in the
total area. Medium dense built-up increased by 72.6
sq.km during this period with an overall increment of
4.87% of the total area. Thus, there is an overall net in-
crease by 251.18 sq.km (16.87 %) in built–up area. On
the other hand there is a decrease in agricultural area by
146.75 sq.km by combining the decrease in crop and
fallow land. There is another significant decrease in
wasteland by 80.62 sq.km by combining scrub-land and
sandy areas. A major decrease from its 1997 values is
observed in waterbodies by 30.83 sq.km which is ob-
tained by combining deep and shallow water bodies. It is
worth mentioning that waterbodies had a total area of
58.26 sq.km in 1997 that got reduced to 27.43 sq.km in
2008 which is about 52.9% decrease in a ten year period.
Shallow waterbodies now have a dismal presence. The
significant change is the decline in area occupied by
shallow water bodies by 78% leaving only 2.83 sq.km in
2008 of 13.11 sq.km in 1998. The net decrease in agri-
cultural land, wasteland and waterbodies together ac-
counts for total decrease of 258.20 sq.km against an in-
crease of 251.18 sq.km of net built-up area. Thus it is
obviously clear that increase in built-up area in the city
has been on the expense of majorly from the agricultural
and waste land together with the shrinking waterbodies.
The silverlining here is the balance 7.02 sq.km of the
above increasing and decreasing land use classes which
has resulted due to increase in forest cover in the city. In
1997, crop land was the dominant LULC category while
in the year 2008 it was the less dense built-up area. As
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Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi 1277
Figure 1. Land use/Land cover distribution over Delhi for the years (a)1997 (b) 2000 (c) 2004 (d) 2008.
Figure 2. Land Cover changes for different classes from 1997-2008 (Sq.km in Total area).

Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi 1278
the city developed, the built-up category replaced most
of the land classes like sandy areas, fallow landand scrub
land. Spatial patterns of LULC changes from the study
showed that the city is expanding in all directions except
East and Central parts because these areas are already
packed with Dense and medium built up areas from a
long time. Figure 3 represents the areas where major
LULC changes occurred during the study period using
change detection method. Most of the LULC classes like
fallow land, sandy areas and scrub land were converted
into built-up areasnamely Narela, Jaunti, Auchandi, Ba-
wana, Palla, MaidanGarhi etc. in North, North-West and
South-West regions.
Change Dynamics of LULC vis-a-vis Urban
Growth Parameters
The increment in the population growth of Delhi has its
roots way back in mid of 20th century when India was
partitioned after the Independence. Census data indicates
that the population of the city was only 0.4 million with
52.76% of urban population in 1901, increased to 1.74
million with 82.40% of urban population in 1951 (i.e.
increase of 3.3 times from 1901 to 1951). The annual
average exponential growth rate of population of Delhi
was the highest, 7.3%, during 1941-1951 due to large
scale migration when India partitioned in 1947 (Econo-
mic Survey of Delhi, 2007-2008). The population reached
to 13.85 million by 2001 (i.e. increase of 8 times from
1951 to 2001) with an annual average growth of 4.1%.
After the Independence, the city has dramatically changed
in an uncontrolled and unplanned manner to accommo-
date this increased population. To control this encroach-
ment of undesirable expansion, the city development
authorities promulgated the first attempt on comprehen-
sive urban planning for Union Territory of Delhi (UTD),
“The Master Plan for Delhi 1962 (MPD-1962)” [29] for
the projected population of 47 lakhs (1 lakh = 0.1 million)
by 1981. The plan projections were overshot with the
fast pace of population growth by approximately 15
lakhs as the population of Delhi was 62 lakhs in 1981 as
shown in Table 1. The master plan was then modified in
1990 for a projected population of 128 lakhs for the year
2001 and named as MPD-2001 [29]. Keeping this pro-
jected population in mind, authorities planned the urban
expansion up to Rohini in North-West, Narela in North
and Dwarka in South-West. However, population again
overshot by 10 lakhs and became 138 lakhs in 2001.
Figure 3. Major interpreted LULC changes during 1997-2008.
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Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi1279
Table 1. Population Changes in National Capital Territory Delhi (in lakhs) [11,29].
Increase in Population
Addition by Natural Growth Increase due to Migration
Year Total Population
Net Increase Population % Population %
1901 4.06 - - -
1911 4.14 0.08 - -
1921 4.89 0.75 - -
1931 6.36 1.47 - -
1941 9.18 2.82 - -
1951 17.44 8.26 - -
1961 26.59 9.15 - -
1971 40.66 14.07 - -
1981 62.20 21.54 12.0 55.71 9.54 44.29
1991 94.21 32.01 18.9 59.04 13.11 40.96
2001 138.2 43.99 26.66 60.60 17.33 39.40
2011* 182.39 44.19 24.2 54.76 19.99 45.24
2021* 230 47.61 24.0 50.41 23.61 49.59
*projected.
In order to accommodate the excess population from
Master Plan projections up to 2001 and beyond till 2008,
the city was expanding beyond its planned urban exten-
sion areas. This had its inevitable implications on deve-
lopment of infrastructure in terms of shelter, including
squatter settlements and other facilities such as potable
water, sewage system, electricity etc. It can be clearly
observed from Figure 1 that the city has swiftly ex-
panded within last decade towards its periphery. It can
also be observed that many areas in the outer zone of the
Delhi have come up under the category of less dense
built up areas/rural settlements during 1997-2008 which
were initially fallow/sandy/scrub lands. As can be noted
from Figure 1, compared to 1997, the expansion of less
dense built up areas/ rural settlements is prominent in
2008.
Keeping in view of the increasing population, Delhi
Development Authority (DDA) has proposed a new plan
recently, “The Master Plan-2021 (MPD-2021)” [29] to
accommodate the growing population. The major part of
North-West and South-West regions and some parts in
South and North-East Delhi have definite plans for deve-
lopment and are going to be urbanized as a part of Mas-
ter plan-2021.
LULC changes and urban expansion of Delhi is gov-
erned mainly by its geographical location and socio-
economic factors. Although population growth is the
primary cause for rapid urbanization, the contribution
from other factors such as economic development and
physical factors should not be neglected. The physical
location of Delhi is main cause of the increasing popula-
tion in the form of migration as it is surrounded by
populous states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The mi-
gration data released by Registrar General of India for
the census 2001 indicates that the total population of
Delhi of 138.50 lakhs includes 82.04 lakhs from within
Delhi and 53.18 lakhs as migrated population from vari-
ous states in which 43.56% and 10.26% of migration is
contributing from Uttar Pradesh and Haryana respec-
tively (Table 1). The population of Delhi is expected to
be more than 18 million by 2011 [11] with an annual
average growth of 4% and with 93% of the urban popu-
lation. It is pointed out that the population of Delhi has
already reached 21.7 million in 2009 [30] which is al-
most more than 4 million than was expected. This in-
creased population had its inevitable implication on in-
crement of built up area. Delhi’s population growth is
more than double, when compared to the national annual
average growth of 1.55%. It is obvious that the increase
in this urban population mainly came from the conver-
sion of rural areas into urban expansions and migration
of people into Delhi.
Figure 4 represents trends of combined land use cate-
gory with different statistics like population, vehicles,
roads and gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi
from 1997-2008. Total built up area and vehicular growth
rate are almost identical while road length has less
growth rate than vehicular population growth. However a
rate of increase in population seems quite similar to the
rate of decrease in water bodies. Population and GSDP
growth rate is also identical; however GSDP growth rate
is significantly higher than the population growth rate

Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi 1280
Figure 4. Change of land use classes with different statistics from 1997-2008.
after 2003. It is interesting to note that there is a constant
increase in total built up area while there is a constant
fall in agriculture land and waste land, however though a
sudden decrease in built up area in 2004 and a sudden
increase in agriculture land and waste land in the same
year seems to be interrelated. In summary, there is an
overall decrease in water bodies, waste land and agricul-
tural land after 2000 and at the same time there is also an
overall increase in the total built up area after 2000 indi-
cating interrelationship between the two that can be ex-
plored in future.
A regression analysis was performed between popula-
tion growth, GSDP and total built-up area to know the
dependency of one over another. A significant positive
relationship was observed between built-up area and
population growth (r2 = 0.86, p = 0.05) while another po-
sitive relationship is also observed between built-up area
and GSDP (r2 = 0.92, p = 0.05). Figure 5 shows year
wise (1997-2008) total built-up area, population and
GSDP where all of these are fitting well to the linear
regression relationships. Further, total built-up area, po-
pulation and GSDP for the years 2021 and 2031 have
been projected using the corresponding liner regression
relationships as shown in Table 2.
These values have been compared with values from
the master plan-2021 and they are found to be quite close.
The total built up area in 2021 according to the master
plan is going to be around 978 km2, this means that 66%
of the total area is going to be the built up area when it is
compared to 53% in 2008. If the population is growing at
the same rate by 2031, the projected values show that
85% of the total area is going to be built up class in order
to accommodate this population growth. This means that
other LU-LC classes will become insignificant except
built up area.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
The present study has assessed LULC changes and the
effect of urbanization on the LULC classes in Mega city
Delhi using RS data in conjunction with Master Plans
and various socio-economic parameters. The results
showed that the LULC classes of Delhi have experienced
rapid changes particularly in built-up category. Built-up
area of Delhi witnessed an overall increment of 17% of
the total area i.e. from 540.5 km2 to 791.6 km2 during the
study period 1997 to 2008 which mainly came from ag-
riculture land and waste land. The increment in forest
cover of 0.5 % is very small when considering the in-
crement in built up category to 17%. More efforts have
to be made in increasing or preserving the green cover.
The results also showed significant decrease in crop and
fallow land. It is suggested that urban expansion shall be
diverted towards waste land or sandy areas in place of
productive agricultural lands. The waterbodies had a
total area of 58.26 sq.km in 1997 which got reduced to
27.43 sq.km in 2008 which is about 52.9% decrease in a
ten year period especially shallow water bodies de-
creased by 10.27 sq.km leaving only 2.82 sq.km. There
is an immmidate need to take action in reviving the wa-
terbodies in Delhi as ground water contributes to sub-
stantial quantity of supply in newly developed areas
mainly because of the insufficiency of the Yamuna water
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Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi1281
Figure 5. Forecast for built up are a, population and GSDP of Delhi.
Table 2. Projections of various urban parameter s.
2021
2008 this study projections MPD-2021 projections 2031
Total Built up area (Sq.km) 791.637 1015.85 977.90 1244.35
Population (× 105) 169.55 249.68 225 340.48
GSDP (Cr) ( × 103) 143.912 224.838 --- 267.618
share for Delhi. Authorities have to identify the locations
where ground water recharge can be achieved and those
recharge areas needs to conserved and preserved for the
sustainable management of ground water in Delhi. An-
other implication to preserve water is through strict im-
plementation of use of rain water harvesting. Currently
the annual rain water harvesting potential has assessed to
be around 900 billion liters annually [29], against the
present requirements of nearly 1511billion liters annually.
Even if 50% of rain water harvesting is achieved, it
would easily be close to the present deficiency of 430
billion liters annually. Hence, authorities need to effec-
tively increase public awareness, improve regulations
and implementation. The Yamuna River is found to be
watered down from either side of its banks. Over the
years; encroachments on the river banks, backlog in sani-
tation and waste water management services, have re-
sulted in the dwindling of water flow in the river with
extremely high levels of pollution which is another major
concern to be alerted. One of the contributory factors to
the flow of untreated sewage into river Yamuna is the
slum clusters that have come up unauthorized on both
banks of river Yamuna. The banks of river can be re-
stored by clearing slums and occupied areas. A green
belt or plantations can be formed on both banks which
provide substantial environmental benefits. These planta-
tions also help to control erosion, reduce salinity and
improve water quality. Another tormenting issue of con-
cern is pollution caused by increasing vehicular popula-
tion and industries. Despite of various implications and
initiative measures taken from past years, like imple-
mentation of CNG, EURO-IV, Metro as public transport
etc. the pollution levels have again shown an increasing
trend particularly for Respirable Particulate Matter and
Nitrogen Oxides. Public transportation planning must,
therefore, drive the future policy to aim to make public
transport a mode for personal vehicle owners and users
through a mix of incentives and disincentives. Though
some of these suggestions have been already included in
MPD-2021, authorities have to make concerted efforts
for strict norm for following these regulations. The built-
up area is expected to increase from 53 % in 2008 to 66
% and 85% in 2021 and 2031 respectively to accommo-
date increasing population. This requires a holistic ap-

Dynamics of Urbanization and Its Impact on Land-Use/Land-Cover: A Case Study of Megacity Delhi 1282
proach to urban development in order to appropriately
preserve the areas of various land-use classes. Moreover,
the actual population is turning out to be more than the
projected population for this city e.g., the present popu-
lation has already increased to 21.7 million in 2009 [30]
which is more than 4 million than that of the projected
population of 18 million in 2011 [11]. This requires more
conservative urban planning by the authorities.
6. Acknowledgements
The financial support extended by Indian Space Research
Organization (ISRO) through their RESPOND pro-
gramme for carrying out this study is thankfully acknow-
ledged. Authors pay homage to Dr. S. K. Pathan (second
author) who passed away untimely few days after the
acceptance of this paper. Fellow workers shall always
remember him as a highly dedicated scientist instilling
inspiration to excel as also a noble kind hearted soul.
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