Urban expansion monitoring in South Asia based on SPOT /VGT and DMSP/OLS data

Based on time series data of SPOT / VGT and DMSP / OLS, the built-up and non-built-up areas of countries in South Asia were extracted via the local support vector machine method. Accuracy assessment showed that Kappa coefficients were above 0.85 were achieved in 1998 and 2013. Based on built-up areas detected, the urban expansion of the eight South Asian countries and their major cities were analyzed from 1998 to 2013. Combining with the country's population and GDP data, the development of the eight countries during the study period were discussed.