Impervious surface estimation using remote sensing images and gis : how accurate is the estimate at subdivision level?

Impervious surface has long been accepted as a key environmental indicator linking development to its impacts on water. Many have suggested that there is a direct correlation between degree of imperviousness and both quantity and quality of water. Quantifying the amount of impervious surface, however, remains difficult and tedious especially in urban areas. Lately more efforts have been focused on the application of remote sensing and GIS technologies in assessing the amount of impervious surface and many have reported promising results at various pixel levels. This paper discusses an attempt at estimating the amount of impervious surface at subdivision level using remote sensing images and GIS techniques. Using Landsat ETM+ images and GIS techniques, a regression tree model is first developed for estimating pixel imperviousness. GIS zonal functions are then used to estimate the amount of impervious surface for a sample of subdivisions. The accuracy of the model is evaluated by comparing the model-predicted imperviousness to digitized imperviousness at the subdivision level. The paper then concludes with a discussion on the convenience and accuracy of using the method to estimate imperviousness for large areas

Are the neighborhood commercial areas of Iskandar Malaysia centrally located for low carbon travel?

Recent developments in Malaysia show that the amount of CO2 increases every year which is mainly contributed by transportation sectors (World Bank, 2008). The amount of travel-induced carbon emission can be reduced by minimizing unnecessary extra travel coverage that can result from inefficient location of oft-frequented places such as the commercial centres. Thus, this paper discusses on the centrality assessment of the commercial areas within selected neighborhoods in Iskandar Malaysia. It looks at the distribution of commercial areas within the neighborhoods and evaluating the centrality of street networks in relation to these commercial areas. The selected neighborhoods are representative of existing neighborhoods within Iskandar Malaysia built across five decades from 1970s to 2010s. According to Bevelas (1948), centrality in communication network is basically represented by a point to some extend that the point has the shortest path to the other point that is in the network. Centrality measures indicate that some of the nodes contained in an urban network are more significant especially the nodes that are located at the center of the network rather than the rest (Porta, Crucitti and Latora, 2006)

The lingering problem of urban poverty

The first priority of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is poverty reduction. All member states of the United Nations were saddled with the mandate of implementing sound policies that will halve absolute poverty by the year 2015. Several studies show that the application of the communitydriven development (CDD) model will help developing countries in Africa and Asia to reduce the prevalence of poverty and improve the quality of life of their citizens. The last few decades have witnessed increasing debates from development experts, academics, donor agencies and policy makers calling for the adoption of the CDD as a sure model in planning for socio-economic and environmental development. The focus of the CCD project is to reduce community level poverty through the implementation of projects that meets their felt needs. This paper utilizes both descriptive and inferential methods to analyze the quality of life of households in participating and nonparticipating settlements in a World Bank CCD poverty reduction project in Kebbi State, Nigeria. The analysis makes use of survey data from 704 households in the study area to show the impact of the CDD approach on the quality of life of participants in settlements. The data analysis revealed that poor households in participating and non-participating communities have less education and assets compared to their well to do counterparts. The paper concludes that, promoting community assistance, traditional thrift system and job creation by government will have positive impact on quality of life and poverty reduction programmes

Urban tourism in developing countries: in the case of Melaka (Malacca) City, Malaysia

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is an economical small-scale technology that has the potential to augment safe water supply with least disturbance to the environment, especially in the drier regions. In Nigeria, less than half of the population has reasonable access to reliable water supply. This study in northeastern Nigeria determined the rate of water consumption and current water sources before estimating the amount of rainwater that can potentially be harvested. A survey on 200 households in four villages namely, Gayama, Akate, Sidi and Sabongari established that more than half of them rely on sources that are susceptible to drought, i. e. shallow hand-dug wells and natural water bodies, while only 3% harvest rainwater. Taraba and Gombe states where the villages are located have a mean annual rainfall of 1,064 mm and 915 mm respectively. Annual RWH potential per household was estimated to be 63. 35 m 3 for Taraba state and 54. 47 m 3 for Gombe state. The amount could meet the water demand for the village of Gayama although the other three villages would have to supplement their rainwater with other sources. There is therefore sufficient rainwater to supplement the need of the rural communities if the existing mechanism and low involvement of the villagers in RWH activities could be improved

Health benefit modeling and optimization of air pollution control strategies

In recent years, Malaysia is experiencing issues of continuous air pollution and transboundary air pollution. The issues are especially felt in areas that record high economic growth and rapid urbanization such as Iskandar Malaysia, a developing economic-growth corridor in Southeast Asia. This has led to increased rate of Particulate Matter emissions, which further led to increased in the rate of respiratory-related health incidences. Many epidemiological studies have proven that particulate matters in the ambient air are associated with adverse health effects. This will eventually affect the existing and future economy of Iskandar Malaysia, where the exposed population may loss their work days and face increased medical spending as well as reduced in their health. This study focuses on quantifying health and economic benefits from the reduction level of ambient Particulate Matter with a size of 10 micrometers or less in diameter (PM10) by using the Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP), a model which is developed by USEPA. Health impact functions are used to quantify the relationship between a change in the PM10 level and a change in the related health effects among the exposed population. Up to date, there are three air monitoring stations that are located in the Iskandar Malaysia region and are operated by the Department of Environment (DOE). The samples for this research include a continuous monitoring data on the daily mean of PM10 for 2010, the 2010 Malaysian Census Data and the number of PM10 related health cases which are specifically focused in the Iskandar Malaysia region. The final outcome of the modeling compares the co-benefits of air pollution reduction between the baseline scenario and the control scenario for PM10 level in Malaysia. The results of this study are useful in eventually optimizing and improving the existing policies and strategies for controlling air pollution and PM10 emission level in Iskandar Malaysia

The impact of a giant: A spatial analysis of the fate of our neighbourhood sundry shops

Kedai runcit or sundry shops have been a standard feature of our housing estate landscape ever since there were housing estates. These mom-and-pop operations have been selling to their surrounding residents everyday essentials such as groceries, fresh produce, poultry, toiletries, etc. Their reasonable price and close distance have made them popular among residents of the housing estates in which they are located. Lately, though, their popularity has been on the decline due to competition from wholesale markets or hypermarkets which can offer the same items cheaper and conveniently under one roof. Local and foreign-bred hypermarkets such as Giants, Tesco and Carrefour have been invading our towns, big and small, leaving the traditional sundry shops fighting for their business. Many of these small-scale individually-owned shops have since closed their operations permanently or moved them a little further outskirt of town, away from the hypermarket catchment. Just how serious is the impact of these hypermarkets on the operation of the sundry shops has so far not been fully investigated in Malaysia although many studies have been carried out elsewhere. Thus, this paper presents a study that has been carried out by the authors to investigate how serious the impact is in Johor Bahru. A sample of three hypermarkets was chosen for this study. Using GIS, we spatially showed the annual changes in the density of sundry shop licenses issued by the local authority within the catchment of each hypermarket, three years before as well as three years after the inaugural date of the hypermarket. Also using GIS, we corroborated the decline in the number of sundry shops within the surrounding housing estates with the residing addresses of the surveyed customers of the hypermarkets. The results obtained confirmed that the operation of hypermarkets does contribute to the decline in the number of sundry shops and the degree of the decline decreases radially outward from the location of the hypermarkets. The findings from this study suggest that some rethinking needs to be done about the manner in which hypermarket licenses, or sundry shop licenses for that matter, are issued. Even our current policy of allowing a certain percentage of new housing development to be set aside for shoplots may also need to be reviewed

A Structural Equation Model of Improvement in Quality of Life in a Community-Based Development Projects in Nigeria

The lingering problem of poverty has prompted many countries to adopt community-based development strategy towards improving the Quality of Life (QoL) of their citizens. Numerous studies have focused on assessing QoL by measuring the manifested (measured) variables and ignored the significant contribution of some “latent” factors. Using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), this paper investigated the factors that influence improvement in the QoL in a Community-based Poverty Reduction Project (CPRP) in Nigeria. The model indicates that the measured variables cause only 36% (R2 = 0.36) of the reduction in poverty level of the project beneficiaries. This finding implies that there are other “hidden” factors responsible for the improvement in the quality of life.© 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: Quality of Life, Community-based Development Projects, Poverty Reduction, Structural Equation Modellin

Subdivisions in Iskandar Malaysia: do their designs encourage increase in travel carbon emissions?

This study looks into the travel impact of distribution of housing densities within a subdivision on local travel patterns within neighbourhoods of Iskandar Malaysia. The goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between these distributions of housing densities and travel carbon emission in Iskandar Malaysia. It attempts to show how the location of various housing densities (high density, medium density and low density) with respect to commercial centres affects the residents’ travels, thus affecting carbon emission too. This study involves over three hundred subdivisions in Iskandar Malaysia. The housing densities were determined through ArcGis software while CommunityViz software was used to determine the amount of travel carbon emission. The findings indicate that most of Iskandar Malaysia’s subdivisions do not meet the preferred design standards for carbon reduction and can contribute to higher carbon emission. The design of these subdivisions focuses more on its aesthetic aspects rather than being functional and sustainable. However, this is only looking at the travel minimisation aspect of the design though it is not a minimal aspect itself

Manual Saliran Mesra Alam (MSMA): Should urban planners be aware of it?

It has been more than seven years since Manual Saliran Mesra Alam or MSMA was first implemented by the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID). Its control-at-source concept to guarantee zero development impact in both quantity and quality of runoff has revolutionized urban stormwater management in Malaysia. As highlighted in the manual, a succesful implementation of its principles and techniques though calls for involvement of various professionals including engineers, urban planners, environmental scientists, landscape architects and other professionals. Apart from civil engineers, not much is known about the other professionals involvement or awareness of MSMA. In light of this, this paper discusses the findings of a survey carried out to assess the levels of awareness, understanding and involvement of urban planning professionals in the implementation of MSMA. Questionnaires designed to assess the levels of awareness, understanding and involvement of the urban planning professionals in MSMA were distributed to randomly-selected urban planning professionals from government agencies and private firms. The study distributed a total of 150 questionnaire sets from which 92 were returned, giving a response rate of about 61%. The responses were then tabulated and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software and MS Excel spreadsheet. The tabulated results revealed that majority of the respondents were aware of MSMA and many claimed that they understood MSMA. However, upon further probing many of those who claimed to understand MSMA failed to correctly answer some basic questions about it. While some respondents may have been involved in the works that required using MSMA guidelines, their involvement were however superficial at best. Overall, majority of the respondents agreed that there was a general lack of awareness and understanding of MSMA among planning professionals, and they attributed this to a variety of reasons

Mapping poverty hot spots in Peninsular Malaysia using spatial autocorrelation analysis

In September 2000 The Millennium Summit adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty with a deadline of 2015. Eight Millennium Development Goals were formulated of which the eradication of poverty given top priority. However, Malaysia’s participation with the UN in dealing with poverty, precede this when it committed itself with the United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997–2006) programme, which was then reinforced when the Millennium Declaration was made in 2000. Nationally, poverty eradication as well as bridging the inequality gap among the major ethnic groups and states has been the main development goal in Malaysia’s development agenda since independence. In this regards, the principle of “growth with equity” has been the central theme in all Malaysia’s development policies and efforts since independence. Although Malaysia has made significant achievements in reducing the incidence of aggregate poverty across the country from 8.9% in 1995 down to 1.7% in 2012, there still exist pockets of poverty in the rural areas, in certain states/regions and among ethnic groups, as well as in some urban areas. This shows that formulating planning and policy implementation to eradicate poverty now needs to be more spatially focused for the implementation to be more effective. Recognising the incidence of poverty through standard statistical data tables alone is no longer adequate in formulating planning and policy implementation. Through spatial autocorrelation analysis the pattern of distribution of poverty in space over a period of time can easily be visualised and hotspots of incidence of poverty identified. This paper attempts to show how this analysis can assist in focusing efforts to eradicate poverty in Malaysia