'World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society (WSEAS)'
Abstract
In this paper, the main goal is to understand the relationship between urban growth and physical factors in order to determine the potential area for future urban expansion. A policy is suggested that could effectively sustain the archaeological sites and to balance the land use between urban and non-urban areas in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Remote sensing is used to analyze land use maps of Siem Reap from 1993 to 2011. Results show that urban-built up area increased significantly which causes the forest land to reduce in the Siem Reap archaeological sites. In addition, Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to analyze urban growth in potential suitable sites. Geo-processing and logical functions are applied to detect and quantify the land use changes, especially urban changes. The percentage of urban area in each year is compared with the population density and road buffers by using Pearson correlation. It is shown that the increasing in urban area is related with population density and road network factors