The Inter-relationships Between LST, NDVI, NDBI in Remote Sensing to Achieve Drought Resilience in Ninh Thuan, Vietnam

Abstract

The challenges of rapid urbanisation are multi-faceted. During the past few decades, many different concepts about the urban sustainability under the threats of climate change (CC) have been studied. Resilience is among the most recent concepts, used for the first time in the 2000s and has ever since attracted greater attention and interests from both academia and urban authorities, and has subsequently applied in urban planning. In order to develop and manage cities to be resilient, many studies show that the Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) could be useful to architects, urban planners and municipalities in the urban planning process. This study selected the case of capital city Phan Rang-Thap Cham, the most urbanized area of Ninh Thuan province, in the center of Vietnam; it has been known as one of the coastal cities that are affected by CC, drought, storms, floods and sea level rise. Among those phenomena, drought—the most serious hazard was picked up for exploration recently. We utilized RS and GIS to examine city’s Land Use and Land Cover (LULC), then extract the most relevant drought-induced factors in the years of 1991, 1997 and 2019, such as: Land Surface Temperature (LST), Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Normalised Difference Built-up Index (NDBI). The study results show inter-relationships and transformations of the three indicators in Ninh Thuan context, where urban land temperature and Urban Heat Island (UHI) are raised by built-up areas and in contrast, reduced by vegetated areas. As a result, urban green spaces would be a driver to mitigate urban heat and moving toward drought resilience.