Urban sprawl of Kota city: A case study of urban heat island linked with electric consumption

Abstract

During summer, the demand for electric energy consumption significantly changes in urban heat islands (UHI). The paper illustrates the impact on the electric power consumption of urban heat islands for Kota city (Rajasthan). Air temperature of urban area is often higher than rural area because of the heat trapped by virtue of properties possessed by construction materials and urban geometry of buildings, as well as by air-conditioning systems. Studies reveal that urbanization has also great impacts on human health prominently related to skin and dehydration. Landsat temporal images were used to get the land surface temperature (LST) and normalized difference built-up indices (NDBI) for 2000, 2009, and 2020. The proposed method applies to geographic information system (GIS) environment for storing, analyzing, and change detection in the urban thermal environment and associated energy consumption. Sampling stations were taken into consideration with UHI linked with electric consumption for Kota city. Data of LST (from Landsat images), building electricity consumption data (from grid substations), and built-up area data (from NDBI index) was collected, after that with the help of GIS, maps were developed. A strong correlation is been observed for highly urbanized areas with a significant rise in localized temperatures of those areas. For the communities studied, the results also indicate that electrical energy consumption also affected by urban heat islands. The result of the indices shows a positive correlation between LST & NDBI and furthermore, this concludes that the electric consumption of the UHI is influenced by LST and NDBI.