Using USISM to Monitor Land Use Change and Its Effects on Urban Inundation (A Case Study of Damghan Urban Basin)

Land use change due to human activities is one of the most important issues in regional planning and development. Damghan urban basin has in recent years undergone many changes of the sort, including intensely increased urban population, physical expansion of urban and rural settlements, and disappearance of green spaces converted into residential areas. These changes have resulted in many flooding and inundation events within the urban area. The satellite technology can be exploited to identify such changes and the areas affected. For the purposes of this study, use was made of the ETM+ images of 2003 and the OLI images of 2015 obtained from Landsat to calculate the inundation conditions in Damghan urban basin using the USISM method. The ETM+ results showed a kappa coefficient of 75% and an overall accuracy of 0.67% while those of OLI images were 80% and 0.74%, respectively. The images revealed that green spaces had been converted to residential and commercial sites at a rate of 28% in 12 years. Meanwhile, agricultural land was found to have increased during the same period but barren lands to have decreased.