Spatial Configuration of Carbon Emission in Suburban Area Based on Trend Analysis: A Case Study of Pathumthani Province

Sustainable development has become a key challenge for urban analysts and policy planners to achieve sustainable development. Energy and carbon emission issues from urban metabolism could be undermined towards the urban environmental quality which causes an incremental impact on society. Predicting the slow-onset impacts of environmental degradation requires several urban datasets which has been challenging in the practical analytical process due to data availability and analysis methodology. However, the emergence of open data in the current situation can leverage data users to access, explore the urban situation and apply for multi-scenario analyses. Therefore, this study aims to estimate carbon emissions in suburban areas (Pathumthani province, Thailand) based on open-source-spatial-related data. There are three objectives of this study which include: (1) to collect and construct a spatial database that is necessitate in calculating carbon emission per capita, (2) to quantify spatial carbon emission based on spatial population database by using trend analysis, and (3) to state future challenges of carbon emission in suburban area. Pathum Thani was selected as an extension area of the Bangkok Metropolitan Area with diverse types of land use planning (e.g., residential, industrial, and educational areas). Toward the data gathering process, this study applies secondary data and satellite data incorporated with a parameter of carbon emission for the determination procedure. Spatial trend analysis based on Geographic Information System (GIS) was applied in this study. After the spatial calculation step, the validation process was performed by checking satellite land-use changes based on the analytical time frame. The crucial result showed that the quantity of carbon emission in Pathum Thani province is gradually increasing due to demography changes and the varying land classification. The contribution of this study can be represented as an effort to construct an urban database based on the open-data source, which can draw attention among all stakeholders of urban development to propose the proper urban planning to reach the successfulness of sustainable urban development.