Potential application of remote sensing in monitoring informal settlements in developing countries where complimentary data does not exist

Abstract

The paper starts off describing some of the most common challenges faced by government in sourcing data on informal settlements. It then goes further providing an overview of past attempts and current practice in the monitoring of informal settlement behaviour, using remote sensing. The paper concludes with the results of a recent case study of the greater Soweto area in South Africa. The case study explored the kind of morphological human settlement attributes that can be observed from QuickBird. These attributes are used to (a) assess their applicability to support existing urban settlement typologies, applied by leading public and private sector institutions in South Africa: (b) propose an urban settlement typology for informal settlements based on morphological attributes with the aim of incorporating this in (c) an automated data extraction and classification procedure that could then be combined with socio-economic data and statistical methods to render planning support and monitor informal settlements. The paper concludes with lessons learned and remaining challenges