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Keywords
Alexandria, urban growth, satellite images
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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to find out the
size and trend of urban growth in
Alexandria-Egypt using satellite
images. Two Landsat (TM) images,
acquired in 1984 and 1993, were used
to monitor urban growth in Alexandria.
The images were georeferenced
(rectified and registered). The
georeferenced images were classified
using a user-defined land use scheme.
Two land-use maps were produced for
each date. The georeferenced,
classified images were compared pixel
by pixel to locate and quantify changes
of urban land use during the 1984 to
1993 period. This process of multi-
temporal change detection results in a
map of change: firstly of land use
within the specified period and
secondly with structural indication of
the boundaries, size and extension of
urban growth itself. The satellite
images were rectified, classified,
analyzed and compared using Imagine
ERDAS. The results of the study
indicate the western direction of urban
expansion in the city and the need to
plan this growth. On the other hand,
the eastern and southeastern areas face
a problem of urban sprawl over the
cultivated lands; these valuable lands
are in need of protection by preparing
plans to direct the continuos urban
growth to the suitable lands. In relation
to urban remote sensing applications,
the results obtained from this
application of Landsat images data
Monitoring Urban Growth In Alexandria-
Egypt Using Satellite Images
Loutfy Kamal Abdou Azaz
Postgraduate Researcher, APL
indicate that the use of this type of high
resolution satellite data are very useful
for mapping land use and change
detection analysis. The study shows the
need for land use classification for
Egypt and the Middle East.
Study Area
Alexandria is the chief port of Egypt
and is located in the north and occupies
a T-shaped peninsula and strip of land
separating the Mediterranean from
Lake Maryout. (Figure.1). The city was
founded in 331 BC by Alexander the
Great and was the capital of Egypt for
over 1000 years. Alexandria witnessed
a continuous urban growth from the
beginning of the Mohammed Ali era
(1805) up to the present time. In 1905,
Alexandria’s 370 thousand inhabitants
lived in an area of about 4 km2
between the two harbours. Since that
time the city has expanded rapidly,
eastwards and westwards, beyond its
medieval walls. It presently occupies
an area of about 300 km2 and has a
ten-fold increase in population at 4
million, with a density exceeding 1,200
per km2 (Shouk, 2000). Population is
projected to become 5.4 millions by
2015 (United Nations, 1997)
(Figure.2). Because of this, Alexandria
is the second largest urban governorate
in Egypt. At an international level, the
city was ranked 62 in 1996 and it is
predicted to become rank 54 by 2015
(United Nations, 1997). This enormous
urban growth requires precise detection
Monitoring Urban Growth In Alexandria-Egypt Using Satellite Image▐
with good management, prediction and
planning.
Objectives
The main objectives of this study are: -
1- To define the boundaries of urban
growth, which will give a clear
vision of the current situation for
urban growth in Alexandria.
Mapping will show where urban
expansion has occurred and the
size and trend of that growth
within the period of study.
2- To produce an urban change map
that will show the changes of land
use in the city within that period.
3- To produce up to date satellite
image based land use maps.
Geo-referencing
Remotely sensed images of Alexandria
for 1984 and 1993 were obtained from
the Center for Remote Sensing
University, USA. The 1984 image was
rectified to Transverse Mercator
Projection, Ellipsoid, Helmert 1906
using 43-ground control points with a
root mean square error <0.3 pixel The
Egyptian-series topographic maps, of
scale 1:50,000 (EGSA 1997) were used
to establish ground control points. A
transformation matrix was computed
and tested and the pixels were
resampled to conform to the new grid.
A new image was created with the new
coordinate information in the header.
The 1993 image was registered to 1984
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image so that they can conform one
with the other. Registration is
important when images need to be
compared pixel by pixel (ERDAS
1997) in a change detection phase.

Images Classification

The selection of the appropriate land

use/cover scheme was not an easy
exercise. A number of classification
schemes have been developed by
specialists who have inventoried a
geographic region. The U.S.
Geological Survey Land Use/Land
Cover Classification System was
developed by Anderson and others and Figure 1. Area of study
is a resource oriented (land cover). In
contrast, the Standard Land Use
Coding (SLUC) Manual or the
Michigan Land Use Classification
System are human oriented (land use) 6000000
(Jensen, 1996). These schemes use
hierarchical class systems as shown on 5000000
Table 1. For the Alexandria study, 4000000
none of these was used because most of
the specified classes could not be 3000000
applied in the area of study (with its
different environmental criteria). 2000000
Future work will endeavor to develop a 1000000
land use scheme, which can be applied
to Egypt and hopefully to the Middle 0
East as a region. Another problem was
07

17

27

37

47

60

76

86

96

15
the spatial resolution of remotely
19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

sensed data, which in Alexandria
prevents detailed classification. Five
classes were therefore chosen for
application: - (1) Water bodies
including, The Mediterranean Sea and
Maryout lake. (2) Green land,
including all agricultural lands
regardless of type of crops and their
level of intensity, this class includes
also “ urban green lands” such as parks
and sporting clubs. (3) Fish farms and
Salinas. (4) Urban Fabric, including all
buildings and built-up areas regardless
of use or pattern. (5) Desert/Sand,
including the western desert and the
coastal sands.
A supervised classification approach
was applied initially relating to the
20
Figure 2. Population growth in Alexandria (1907-2015)
analyst’s experience of the study area,
but this failed to provide adequate
separation between the target classes
because of the small spectral variation
between important classes.
The ISODATA clustering algorithm is
an Iterative Self-Organizing Data
Analysis technique that is widely used
in unsupervised classification. It is
iterative in that it performs the
classification and recalculates statistics.
It uses minimum spectral distance to
assign a cluster for each candidate
pixel (ERDAS, 1997). Unsupervised
classification using the ISODATA
Method was performed using five
classes. Unfortunately, the result was
not acceptable because of overlapping
between urban fabric and Green land
classes in some parts. Because of this,
another unsupervised classification was
performed using a larger number of
classes (16). The maximum iteration
(maximum times that the ISODATA
utility should recluster the data) was 10
and the convergence threshold
(maximum percentage of pixels whose
cluster assignments can go unchanged
between iterations) was 0.950.

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Topographic maps of the study area Level I Level II

helped in combining and recoding the
classes reduced the number of classes
from 16 to 5. Figure 3 and Figure 4
indicate the land use categories
(classes) in Alexandria (1984, 1993).
Accuracy assessment for the
classification was made using
Egyptian-series topographic maps of
scale 1:50,000 (EGSA, 1997). 55
samples were taken randomly from
each class according to a rule of thumb
presented by Congalton (Douglas,
2000) which defines a minimum of 50
samples to be collected for each land
cover class in the error matrix. The
error matrix shown in table 2 reveals an
overall accuracy of 88% in image
classification for 1993 image. The K
(hat) coefficient (Jensen, 1996) was
calculated to obtain the accuracy,
which includes omissions and
commission.
Change Detection
1. Urban or built-up land 11. Residential.
12. Commercial and services.
13. Industrial.
14. Transportation, communications, and
utilities.
15. Industrial and commercial complexes.
16. Mixed urban or built-up land.
17. Other urban or built-up land.
2. Agricultural land 21. Cropland and pasture.
22. Orchards, groves, vineyards,
nurseries, and ornamental areas.
23. Confined feeding operations.
24. Other agricultural land.
3. Rangeland 31. Herbaceous rangeland.
32. Shrub and brush rangeland.

The selection of an appropriate change Table 1: Some classes from Anderson land-use and land-cover classification system for use
detection algorithm is very important with remote sensing data.(Thelin, 2000)
(Jensen, 1996). Many algorithms can
be used to perform change detection.
At least seven change detection
algorithms are commonly used (Jensen,
1996) but these techniques have
disadvantages such as (1) Parts do not
provide quantitative information on the
size of land use change from one land
cover category to another, (2) The
analyst cannot label the change classes
in parts (3) Some need a number of
complex steps to perform change
detection.

In this study, two remotely sensed

images (1984,1993) were rectified,
registered and classified into five
classes. The Image Algebra Change
Detection algorithm was used with
small modification; in the usual
method, the amount of change between
two images was identified by band
ratioing or image differencing (Jensen,

Figure 3. Land use categories in Alexandria (1984)

Monitoring Urban Growth In Alexandria-Egypt Using Satellite Image▐

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subtracting the rectified imagery of one
set of data from that of another. In the
modified method, the rectified and
classified images were subtracted. The
subtraction results in positive and
negative values in areas of radiance
change and zero values in areas of no
change (Jensen, 1996).

The subtraction was done using Model

Maker in Imagine 8.3 and the output
(change map) was tested and proved
using a Change Detection option in
Imagine 8.4 and the result was the
same. Figure 5 shows the change map
for the area of study.

Results and Discussion

Table 3 and figure 6 show the size and
percentage of land use change in
Alexandria area. Generally, the
changes can be divided into two
categories; (1) Increased change
(positive) which includes urban fabric
and fish farms / saline and (2)
Decreased change (negative) which
includes green lands, desert and water
bodies. The summary of these changes
has been put in a form of “ from-to” as
Figure 4. Land use categories in Alexandria (1993) shown in table 4.

1996). Image differencing involves

Overall accuracy = 242/275 = 88%

The K (hat) coefficient indicates an overall adjusted classification accuracy of 85% for the 1993 image.

Monitoring Urban Growth In Alexandria-Egypt Using Satellite Image▐

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Classification Green Fish farms/sa Urban Sand/ Water bodies Accuracy Row
land fabric desert total
Green land 47 0 7 2 0 85.5 56
Fish farms/sa 3 46 0 0 2 83.6 51
Urban fabric 5 0 48 3 0 87.3 56
Sand/ desert 0 0 0 48 0 87.3 48
Water bodies 0 9 0 2 53 96.4 64
Column total 55 55 55 55 55 275
Table (2) The accuracy assessment of land use unsupervised classification for Alexandria remotely sensed images

Based upon the analyst’s experience of

the area of study, the areas of change
between 1984 and 1993 (Figure.3,
Figure 4 and Figure 5) may be
summarized as follows: -

1- The New Dekhila Port,

established in the west of the city,
covers a great area of the land and
areas of the sea.
2- Sidi Kerir oil refinery station was
developed about 22 Kilometers
west of the city, and occupies a
large area of the sandy coastal
strip.
3- A great part of Maryout Lake has
been drained for development to
accommodate urban expansion
demands. A big fish farm was also
developed in the far end of the
lake. Expansion of saline areas has
also been developed in different
parts of the lake to produce salt.
4- Most of urban expansion goes
toward the western parts of the
city; meanwhile, part of the
agricultural land in the east and
the south east of the city has been Figure 5. Land use change in Alexandria (1984-1993)
lost for increased urbanization.
5- A wide area of the desert and the Class 1984 1993 Size of % of change
coastal plain has been developed (Hectare) (Hectare) change(-/+)
as a new location for urban Urban fabric 61964.3 79768.8 + 17804.5 28.7
housing. Green lands 128770 127105 - 1665 1.3
Fish 12685.3 16306.8 + 3621.5 28.5
Conclusions and Future Work farm/Saline
Desert 313878 297738.5 - 16139.5 5.1
The results of this study show the trend Water bodies 175441 171451.5 - 3989.5 2.3
and size of urban growth in
Alexandria; most of the new urban Table 3. The size of land use classes and the change in Alexandria area (1984-1993)
development in the city goes towards

Monitoring Urban Growth In Alexandria-Egypt Using Satellite Image▐

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From To 350000
Water bodies Urban fabric
Desert / Sand Urban fabric 300000

Water bodies Fish farm / saline 250000

Water bodies Green lands

Hectares
200000
1984
Green lands Urban fabric 1993
Table 4. Summary of land use change in Alexandria area (1984-1993) 150000

100000
the western parts where the big areas of temporal urban mapping model, the
needed land available. However, most Urban Growth Model, was developed 50000

of this urban expansion is not planned by Clark (Clarke, 1998). This model 0
by the government so that, the rest of develops a historical perspective of

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of urban growth in developing integrated, multi-scale, and multi-

countries. In addition, there is
significant expansion in the eastern and
southeastern areas of the city where
cultivated land is, so that a new plan is
needed to direct the growth to the
western parts to protect these areas.
In relation to urban remote sensing
applications, the results obtained from
this application of Landsat (TM)
images data indicate that the use of this
type of high resolution satellite data are
very useful for mapping land use and
change detection analysis especially in
urban areas which face a continuos
growth, the traditional methods can not
cope with this dynamic phenomenon.
This study so far reveals the need for
an Urban Land Use/Cover
Classification scheme, which can be
applied in Egypt and the Middle East
region. The proposed scheme could
help the studies, which use a remotely
sensing data as a main input.
Temporal urban mapping relies on
modern mapping techniques, such as
remote sensing and geographic
information systems (GIS), to capture
information from both historical and
modern records. At the GIS stage, the
outputs of a remote sensing phase and
the different kinds of ancillary data will
be used within a model to predict the
prospective urban growth in the city. A
resolution database. The database
provides the baseline information to
model and predict regional patterns of
urbanization and also highlights the
profound changes to the landscape that
have incrementally developed over
time (USGA, 1998). The model has
successfully predicted urban expansion
at regional scales. In its prototype
phase, the USGS project estimated the
regional impact of urbanization on the
San Francisco Bay area and
Washington-Baltimore region (Clarke,
1998).
A GIS decision support system will be
designed using available models to
manage the predictable urban growth in
the city of Alexandria. There are many
urban models that have been used in
urban applications (Engelen et al,
1997) have developed a fairly generic
simulation shell that is usable in
designing and running constrained
cellular automata simulations
(Timmermans, 1997). It features a
built-in GIS system and a set of tools
allowing the user to develop
interactively his or her application. The
ALLOT (‘A Land Location and
Optimization Technique’) model is a
flexible computer model which has
been designed to develop economically
and environmentally sound alternative
land development patterns in a short
Fi
Figure 6. The increase/decrease for the
different land use classes in Alexandria
(1984-1993)
period of time (Timmermans, 1997).
This model has been successfully
applied in several real world situations
in the USA. These and other models
will be tested and evaluated within the
ongoing study. Information will be
analyzed, to detect the factors and
limitations of urban growth in the city,
and finally, to determine the results and
effects of that growth.
Acknowledgements
The author would thank very much
Prof. Farouk Elbaz and Dr Mary Pax of
Center for Remote Sensing, Boston
University for their great help in
providing the satellite images for the
study.
References
Clarke, K. C. (1998) Clarke Urban
Growth Model, University of
California, Santa Barbara, Department
of Geography,
http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/gig
/model.htm (Feb., 2001)

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“Monitoring Growth in Rapidly
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digital image processing: a remote
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Shouk, Y. H. a. F. A. (2000) Human

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Thelin R. J. G. a. G. P. (2000)
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http://water.wr.usgs.gov/pnsp/circ1131/
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Timmermans H., Ed. (1997) Decision

support systems in urban planning.
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USGS (1998) Temporal Urban

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http://edcwww2.cr.usgs.gov/umap/uma
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Monitoring Urban Growth In Alexandria-Egypt Using Satellite Image▐