Land Use/Land Cover classification of an urban area-A case study of Burdwan Municipality, India

This work explains the Land Use/Land Cover classification of urban area (the Burdwan municipality, West Bengal, India) using Geographical Information System and Remote Sensing software. Mapping of the Classification is done with the help of existing Burdwan municipality ward map and IRS-P6 LISS-IV image of January 7,2008, having a resolution of 5m x 5m and a hand held Gramin12 Global Positioning System receiver. Supervised Land UselLand Cover classification algorithm (Maximum likelihood with null class) is run into PCI Geomatica V.1O.1 software. The classification shows 83.01% average accuracy and 76.47% overall accuracy. The output classified map reveals that Burdwan Municipality Area is divided into 35 no of wards having a total area of 25.29 square kilometres. Depending upon United States Geological Survey classification system an urban classification scheme is generated where Burdwan municipality area is divided into 7 major Land Use/Land Cover classes and subclasses. Using the software, ward wise area statistic is calculated. The area statistics of Land Use/Land Cover classes of an area is very important for future development.