Members’ Publication

Changes in land use/land cover (LULC) and land surface temperatures (LST) contribute significantly to the formation and intensity of urban heat islands (UHI) effects. The urban thermal field variance index (UTFVI) can effectively describe any city's UHI (thermal characteristics) effect. This study aims to assess and predict the seasonal (summer and winter) UTFVI scenario to evaluate the thermal characteristics of Sylhet city, Bangladesh. Landsat 4–5 TM and 8 OLI images from 1995 to 2020 were used to assess the previous status of LULC and UTFVI and predict the future changes for 2025 and 2030 using cellular automata and artificial neural network machine learning algorithms. Prediction results indicate a substantial increase in urban built-up areas by 42% and 44% in 2025 and 2035, followed by reductions in green cover (21% and 22%), bare land (20% and 21%) and water bodies (1%). The rapid expansion of built-up areas will lead to 13 km2 and 14 km2 stronger UTFVI zones in the predicted years. The study provides effective strategies for mitigating the UTFVI effects by avoiding dense infrastructural development, increasing plantation and water bodies, rooftop gardening and using white colour roofs in construction. The findings of this study will allow the urban planners, policymakers and local government to ensure an eco-friendly, inclusive and sustainable urban development through functional modification and replacement of the LULC distribution depending on the present and future circumstances.

Flood is one of the most devastating climatic disasters around the world. The physical and infrastructural damage of floods is uncontrollable and challenging to recover. Though the mismanagement of the water system is one cause of flood, some countries face a seasonal natural flood, which is impossible to avoid. The history of flood affection in these countries are long, and people don't have any other choice but to adapt to this circumstance every year. The continuous flood event has several climatic impacts that are not broadly documented and remain in the shadows of severe infrastructural damage. This research aims to identify the effect of monsoon floods on vegetation and land surface temperature (LST). The study area is the northeast part of Bangladesh, a highly flood-prone area. The research incorporates Google Earth Engine (GEE) to manage the satellite image data related to this research which are Sentinel-1 SAR imagery and Landsat-8 imagery. Six years of data from 2015 to 2020 have been taken to continuously monitor the flooded area, vegetation, and LST dynamics. Primary results indicate a yearly increase and decrease of the flooded area with 57.3% highest increase rate in 2019. A continuous increase of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) value and decrease of LST has a changing pattern similarity with flooded area fluctuation over the year. Also, the flooded areas have around 50% less mean EVI value than the non-flooded areas, eventually rising average LST in flooded areas. 10,024 grids of 1 km × 1 km have been used to extensively analyze the relationship of flood and EVI through correlation and linear regression. The final result reveals a clear negative correlation value (less than 0.56 for all the years) of EVI with flooded areas, having the highest R-squared value of 0.4325 in 2017.

Flood is one of the most devastating climatic disasters around the world. The physical and infrastructural damage of floods is uncontrollable and challenging to recover. Though the mismanagement of the water system is one cause of flood, some countries face a seasonal natural flood, which is impossible to avoid. The history of flood affection in these countries are long, and people don't have any other choice but to adapt to this circumstance every year. The continuous flood event has several climatic impacts that are not broadly documented and remain in the shadows of severe infrastructural damage. This research aims to identify the effect of monsoon floods on vegetation and land surface temperature (LST). The study area is the northeast part of Bangladesh, a highly flood-prone area. The research incorporates Google Earth Engine (GEE) to manage the satellite image data related to this research which are Sentinel-1 SAR imagery and Landsat-8 imagery. Six years of data from 2015 to 2020 have been taken to continuously monitor the flooded area, vegetation, and LST dynamics. Primary results indicate a yearly increase and decrease of the flooded area with 57.3% highest increase rate in 2019. A continuous increase of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) value and decrease of LST has a changing pattern similarity with flooded area fluctuation over the year. Also, the flooded areas have around 50% less mean EVI value than the non-flooded areas, eventually rising average LST in flooded areas. 10,024 grids of 1 km × 1 km have been used to extensively analyze the relationship of flood and EVI through correlation and linear regression. The final result reveals a clear negative correlation value (less than 0.56 for all the years) of EVI with flooded areas, having the highest R-squared value of 0.4325 in 2017.

This book encourages Children on 3R’s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle)

There is a resurgent interest in the study of ‘urban commons’ in critical geography scholarship as a way to reimagine cities beyond the pervasive neoliberal framing. Inspired by this body of work, this paper explores the processes through which marginalised groups, despite their many socio-economic limitations, negotiate and transform their sparse urban resources into ‘commons’ to survive in cities. We use qualitative interviews and participant observations to examine two case studies of informal settlements in Dhaka and Khulna city in Bangladesh. The ‘commons identikit’ is used to analyse how informal settlers negotiate survival by enacting particular social relationships among themselves and beyond, ensuring access, use, and exchange of materials and ideas, as well as distributing care, benefits, and responsibility of their commons. By bringing a commons perspective to the pre-existing and emerging local tactics, we highlight the logics and relationality that help these communities make efforts of collective survival and aspire to a better future. We argue that there are significant practical benefits to recognising the self-organising logics of the precariously positioned communities in the city. Furthermore, commoning the city constitutes a major extension of the theorisation of urban informal settlements and the city as urban commons.