Quantitative analysis of urban sprawl in Al-Baydah city - Libya, using GIS and remote sensing techniques.

Determining the spatio-temporal manners of urban sprawl is considered one of the most influential challenges in evaluating the present and future directions of the urban expansion issue. Random growth is considered as a kind of meeting the needs of the human being and expressing the achievement of its basic requirements when the state is unable to solve them. This paper aims to assess the sprawl and growth dynamics between 2010 and 2020 in Al-Baydah City, Libya using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Three Landsat TM, ETM+, and OLI images dated 2010, 2015, and 2020 were used to generate urban maps of the research area. The chi-square test and urban expansion intensity index (UEI) were used to assess urban growth patterns in the study zone. The results of the study confirmed that urban growth in the city has increased from 17.7 km2 in 2010 to 35.9 km2 in 2020, indicating that the city's expanding intensity index has risen as well. The results displayed that Al-Baydah city has unbalanced urban growth and its urban development had a high freedom degree during the period from 2010 to 2020.