SPATIAL PATTERN ANALYSIS IN GEOSPATIAL APPROACH REFERENCE TO KADUWELA MUNICIPAL COUNCIL, SRI LANKA

Abstract

Cities play a significant role in our lives, providing a place for fulfilling social, economic, and physical needs for more than half of the population in the entire world. The city is a dynamic entity with complex activities, and it faces gradual physical changes or urban growth. Urban growth occurs in a planned or unplanned way. Unplanned urban growth or urban sprawl aggravated huge urban problems in cities and the fringe. Identification of urban growth pattern is significant and measuring and predicting the urban growth in a methodical way is an essential for the decision-making process. Measuring the urban growth pattern is essential and ArcGIS 10 provides an impressive analytical tool for geographic pattern analysis that helps to understand
the geographical phenomenon using spatial autocorrelation. Spatial autocorrelation can be applied to detect the pattern of urban areas at a specific time. This study used those tools to analyse spatial pattern in the Sri Lankan urban area. Results show type of spatial pattern of the area.