Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences: Home

Abstract:
Access to updated and accurate information is one the main tools for developing programs and urban projects. But one of the main obstacles to urban studies is the lack of data and up- to- date information. Since population censuses are done every ten years, urban Planners and researchers are usually confronted with the problem of insufficient information. Naturally then, searching for proper techniques of determining the population of urban areas will be of great help to careful studies and planning there. Actually, a variety of methods and techniques to estimate the population of both urban and rural areas have been developed. Each of these methods has their own advantages and disadvantages. These methods nevertheless, are still used by a number of experts. Though just about of the methods which seems to be enjoying a higher credibility than the others is estimation the population of urban areas using remote sensing data. In general, the methods used in this field are divided into two categories: surface interpolation methods and /or statistical modeling methods. Depending on whether they make use of marginal information the former are themselves subdivided into two further groups. Statistical modeling , too, is divided into five categories , basing itself on a number of factors such as the relationship between the population and the relationship between the population and the area of a city, land functional use , descriptive as well as extender units , pixel specifications of a given picture and finally physical, economic and /or social chrematistics. This paper aims to put to test the efficiency of the surface interpolation methods in order to estimate the population of Iran?s urban areas. For this purpose, Birjand as city in the south khorasan Province was selected as sample for the pilot study to be conducted using aerial photos and satellite ones available- to manipulate statistical estimate and censuses of the city population. Finally comparing and contrasting the results with those of 1996 and 2006, respectively. The results obtained were indicative of an acceptable level of accuracy (according to these data the average overlap of total data in this city is about %68), with the possibility of the final results to replace full census or population sampling which are both time and cost consuming.

Keywords: urban planning, population, remote sensing, census, Birjand

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