MEASURING IMPACTS OF DELHI- MEERUT EXPRESSWAY ON LAND USE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the newly constructed Delhi- Meerut Expressway on the surrounding land use characteristics through spatial analysis, and also to examine if the expressway has reduced the time of travel between Delhi and Meerut. Delhi- Meerut Expressway was announced in early 2013 and completed in late 2021. It starts from the Nizamuddin bridge located in Delhi and terminates at the Partapur area of Meerut city located in Western Uttar Pradesh. For this study, the Delhi- Meerut expressway is selected as a case expressway and its radius of 2000-m buffer zone as the study area. To analyze the change in the characteristics before and after construction, LANDSAT 8-9 OLI data for April 2013 and February 2022 were collected. Remote sensing technology was applied to classify the land use map with seven different types of land use. Geographic information system tools such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) were also used for analyzing variation in vegetation, built-up, and water-related features respectively along the Delhi-Meerut expressway. Supervised classification of the expressway corridor was carried out for land cover classification findings. According to the initial findings of the study, a major increase in the built-up area has taken place between Delhi and Ghaziabad while the least amount of land use development has taken place between Dasna and Partapur, Meerut which was mostly agricultural and barren land before the development of the expressway. It can be clearly seen in the early phase of construction that most of the area surrounding the expressway was agricultural land or barren land, which is now observed with built structures. Similarly, land use classification for newly built structures was done at six different locations.