Urban change detection by means of multitemporal satellite imagery — The case of the Indian mega-city Hyderabad

This paper describes the temporal urban monitoring of a large Indian agglomeration by comparing satellite images. The emerging megacity of Hyderabad (India) serves as an example of a rapidly growing agglomeration on the Indian subcontinent with one of the most extremely increasing number of inhabitants during the past decades. The strength of satellite remote sensing is to structure and classify such large and complex urban areas as well as evaluating their spatial development by change detection studies. Since there are hardly or only very few GIS based map bases for these large cities available in India, the satellite-based remote sensing represents a chance to structure and map such expanded urban residential areas at least approximately into different land coverage or land use classes.