Sensitivity of slum size distributions as a function of spatial parameters for slum classification

Abstract

In a recent work it was shown that the size distribution of slums, derived from remote sensing data, seems to be similar. Furthermore, the results seem to be independent of city, country and continent. However, the dependence on the definition of slums, i.e. the distance between two slums at which they are regarded independent of each other, has not been investigated so far. The present work analyzes the influence of the separating distance on the slum size distributions for six cities (three in South America and three in Southeast Asia) showing that the mean of the slum sizes is close to 10 4 m 2 and nearly independent from the separation. However, in future works, not only the distance but the type of land use between slums should be considered in identifying slums from remote sensing data.