Entropy of the Land Parcel Mosaic as a Measure of the Degree of Urbanization

Entropy

Agnieszka Bitner¹  Marcin Fialkowski² 

[1] Department of Agricultural Land Surveying, Cadaster and Photogrammetry, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Balicka 253A, 30-198 Krakow, Poland;Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kasprzaka 44/52, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland;

关键词: urbanization;    land parcel;    land division pattern;    city growth;    spatial analysis;    Shannon entropy;   

DOI  :  10.3390/e23050543

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Quantifying the urbanization level is an essential yet challenging task in urban studies because of the high complexity of this phenomenon. The urbanization degree has been estimated using a variety of social, economic, and spatial measures. Among the spatial characteristics, the Shannon entropy of the landscape pattern has recently been intensively explored as one of the most effective urbanization indexes. Here, we introduce a new measure of the spatial entropy of land that characterizes its parcel mosaic, the structure resulting from the division of land into cadastral parcels. We calculate the entropies of the parcel areas’ distribution function in different portions of the urban systems. We have established that the Shannon and Renyi entropies $R_0$ and $R_{1/2}$ are most effective at differentiating the degree of a spatial organization of the land. Our studies are based on 30 urban systems located in the USA, Australia, and Poland, and three desert areas from Australia. In all the cities, the entropies behave the same as functions of the distance from the center. They attain the lowest values in the city core and reach substantially higher values in suburban areas. Thus, the parcel mosaic entropies provide a spatial characterization of land to measure its urbanization level effectively.

【 授权许可】

Unknown