The suitability of GIS methods for analyzing urban sprawl, and the influence of scale

Abstract

There is a lot of confusion about the concept of urban sprawl. Many different definitions, and ambiguity of how to analyze, measure and monitor urban sprawl do exist. Most of the research that measures and analyzes urban sprawl with a Geographical Information System (GIS), has measured the urban sprawl only at one spatial scale. But does the scale not always affect measurements? Therefore this study researches the suitability of the most widely used GIS methodologies that are used within the literature to analyze urban sprawl, and the effect, influence, of scale on these methodologies.