Members’ Publication

The primary objective of this paper is to predict and analyze the future urban growth of Khulna City using the Landsat satellite images of 1989, 1999 and 2009. Khulna City Corporation (KCC) and its surrounding impact areas have been selected as the study area. At the beginning, a fisher supervised classification method has been applied to prepare the base maps with five broad land cover classes. In the next stage, three different models have been implemented to simulate the land cover map of Khulna City of 2009. These are named as ‘Stochastic Markov (St_Markov)’ model, ‘Cellular Automata Markov (CA_Markov)’ model and ‘Multi Layer Perceptron Markov (MLP_Markov)’ model. Then the best-fitted model has been selected based on various Kappa statistics values. This is how the ‘Multi Layer Perceptron Markov (MLP_Markov)’ model has been qualified as the most suitable model for this research. Later, using the MLP_Markov model, the land cover map of 2019 has been predicted. The MLP_Markov model shows that 33.33% of the total study area will be converted into builtup area cover type in 2019.

Purpose – Climate change impacts people’s life directly or indirectly in several ways and displacement is one such indirect effect. This paper aims to bring this fact to light as Bangladesh is going to face severe problems due to displacement of population predicted by researchers. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is an outcome of a thorough study of Bogi village in the southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh. Several factors like demographic condition, natural disasters, land loss and changes in land use pattern, have been taken into consideration. Methods used for data collection were questionnaire survey and focus group discussions in the study area. Findings – The nature and extent of displacement are found by comparing the changes in occupation, location of settlement and permanent migration of family members. Population growth rate decreased in recent years as the annual growth rate for both sexes was 0.89 in between 1991 and 2001 but in recent years from 2001 to 2005 it was 0.63, which is a clear indication that the natural growth is hampered or major proportion of the population is migrating. Originality/value – The paper provides insights into the major reasons for displacement, especially loss of land and occupation caused by cyclone, storm surge and erosion. The assessment of the conditions allows the listing of measures to address the problem.

This study is an attempt to review the pattern of climatic change in south-western coastal region and identify the major threats on the urban built evrironment due to climate change. Different published and unpublished research papers were the sources of identifying adverse effects of climate change in Khulna city. The study found that the average temparture and rainfall is increasing at an alaming rate. Cities are experiencing extreme rainfall and temparature in summer which creates water logging, riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion, unavailability of freash water. Near about 50% of households of 22 wards of khulna city are being water logged every year. Global warming will result in sea level rises of between 0.18 and 0.79 metres, which could increase coastal flooding and saline intrusion into aquifers. Salinity affected soil increase 21% in last three decades in this region. Salinity reduces the use of surface water and arsenic contamination, overextraction and overutilization of ground water make the future uses vulnerable. Some recent studies found that 65 % of warmer areas are in Khulna region. In 2005, agricultural loss due to flood was Tk 3.5 billion in this region but higher frequency of disasters can lead it to Tk 60.5 billion. Moreover the destruction of green spaces, absence of soft landscapes, natural ventilations in buildings, failure to control building construction rules, low rate of vegetation will formulate the future city life intolerable. To cope with these threats, several physical planning measures are essential . Drainage improvement, recovering the water retention pond, khals and canals, efficient use of surface water, erosion control and initiating new design techniques for built environment can be an effective adaptive options to keep the losses minimum.

The choice of residence of households generally involves trade-offs among several factors which offer the household the highest possible utility. Different literatures provide a wide range of relevant hypotheses about residential location choice. In the extreme, these may be summarized into some models: residence location depends on (1) workplace location, (2) local amenities or "quality of life," (3) life-cycle and other personal characteristics (4) return to human capital accumulation, and, (5) real costs of living (access to children’s school, daily shops, health clinics etc). Combinations of these models determine most household location decisions, as is argued in the diverse theoretical papers and demonstrated in the empirical ones. By and large in a city, several planned residential areas are positioned. When a household settle his/her resident in a residential area, at more or less extent workplace location is considered. This paper tried to explore the interaction between workplaces and residential locations in terms of flows on different workplaces, shortest possible routes to workplaces, travel costs, frequent travel modes, vehicle ownerships of the residents and impedance factors to reside the desired residential areas. This paper illustrates that usually people always desire to reside nearer to their workplace (1-3 km) apart from private vehicle owners (private car, motorcycle etc.) and the residents who give priority to the other factors like children’s school, local amenities and environment, inheritant property, house rent/land value etc.

A more efficient public transit system means better accessibility and higher opportunities for a better economy. In order to enhance the operation or to provide a better transit service, it is essential to draw a clear picture of the baseline conditions to identify the pros and cons of the existing service. Developing a quantitative spatial database of the service characteristics is deemed necessary for detailed analyses of existing services. A spatial database may help in understanding the geographical extent of the services and identifying the areas that may need special considerations to enhance the services. In this paper, a logical approach is presented to geo-code the spatial data of the public bus services; namely, the stoppage and routes maps (layers). The used geo-data to develop the bus stops and routes’ layers have significant noise. The adopted methodology to filter such noise in data and to develop the spatial database is presented in detail. Analyses and conclusions were presented using the presented geographic information system (GIS) spatial data techniques.

In the advancement of concrete technology internal curing is found to be beneficial in terms of enhancing concrete performance as well as economical and environmental friendly. In early periods numerous research works have been performed in this field of study. The current study presents a state of art review on the previous studies and some suggestions on applying this technology in the context of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is over populated country in the world. Every day a lot of rural people come to urban area for many reasons. Rural people are mostly dependent on urban area because the government always pays a narrow role for rural area. So there is no improvement of the poor people, and they decided to go urban area though they live in the slum. In case of Dhaka the situation is more vulnerable. Now this capital city can not fulfil the basic demands of people due to extreme pressure of population. The most haphazard situation in urban area bears excess manpower in labour market in the same time the rural area loose manpower in agriculture sectors. This extreme pressure of population makes the urban life more difficult. Most of the development becomes meaning less for this imbalance situation. In that case, we are depriving from our rural economy as well as creating new problems in urban areas. For this reason most of the initiatives of Government did not work on. The result is like that there is no proper management system in urban area in the same time unplanned development in rural area. There is a huge gap between expectation and reality. In this situation, the study mainly focused on the real factors of rural-urban migration. The major concentration were identified the characteristics of migrants to understand who are actually migrating, the factors of rural-urban migration to realize why they are migrating and what is the causes and consequences of this migration and what can be the possible solution to manage this situation in proper way. The information collected from field survey and focus group discussion conducted for purpose of origin-destination analysis of the present study reveals that the process of migration in Bangladesh is strongly influenced by both the push and the pull factors, of which the principal push factor is the situation of insufficient job prospects in the villages, while the perception of the higher probability of getting employment and earning higher income in the cities is the predominant pull factor. Most of the migrants are between 16 to 30 age group where unmarried young male is playing a dominating role. This migrants having primary or less than primary level education are mainly engaged as garments worker and rickshaw or curt puller. Beside that other push factors are political threat, natural disaster and fail to repay NGO loans. In the same time higher living standard, political and religious freedom, and better facilities and amenities in urban area are other important pull factors. From the analysis of characteristics, factors and perception of rural-urban migration it is clear that unless the gap between urban and rural areas in terms of the quality of life and living conditions can be systematically narrowed down, the commended solution cannot be achieved. For this it should eestablish planning departments/cells by creating more scope for planner in each city and municipality even upazila/thana level, and ensure participatory urban planning for inclusive development of urban area and integrated development of rural area especially infrastructural development. Government should pay attention to introduce modern technology in rural area and give training on young adult, and create more technology based opportunity in rural area for young people. Disaster planning and risk reduction strategies must account for the new challenges of climate induced disasters. Well coordinated urban management system should implement in urban area incorporate with reduce the dependency on urban area, and so create more satellite town in periphery of the urban area. Moreover decentralization should be ensured to reduce the gap between rural and urban area. Government, planner, policy maker, non government organization and civil society should take proper responsibilities for creating sustainable livelihoods and appropriate social services in the rural areas, as well as appropriate management of urban areas and by this create a self developed Bangladesh.