| Author: | Shen, Zheyan |
| Title: | How neighbors affect the border development at global scale |
| Advisors: | Zhu, Xiaolin (LSGI) |
| Degree: | M.Sc. |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Subject: | Plant phenology -- Remote sensing Urbanization -- China -- Beijing Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Faculty of Construction and Environment Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics |
| Pages: | 99 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Border regions, served as the gate of a country to its neighbors. The development of border regions are results of policies of each country and cross-border cooperation or confliction. Development of border regions not only affects local economy but also affects the market, politics, and interaction at global scale. Therefore, investigating the pattern of the development of boarder regions and exploring the driving forces is important for understanding the mechanism of the global economy and projecting the future scenarios. However, most current studies are case studies which focused on investigating the border development of individual countries, so we cannot obtain generalized conclusions. In addition, these studies mostly used qualitative approaches or relied on statistical datasets (e.g., census data, yearly book), so no quantitative analysis and spatially explicit information were reported. To address the limitation of current studies, this study investigated border development in border regions (up to 100-km distance from the border lines) of the whole world. In this study, light density (radiance per kilometer) derived from NPP-VIIRS Nighttime Light (NTL) data were used to quantify the development level (mainly urbanization and economic development) in border regions of each country. Gross domestic product (GDP) density (GDP per square kilometer) was used to represent the economic development level of each country. This study aims to answer three important questions: (1) Whether the border development matches the economic development of its country? (2) How does the neighboring countries' economy affect the border development of one country? And (3) Does the cross-border religion difference affect the border development? For the first question, correlation analysis between border light density and country GDP density shows that the border development is only partially driven by the country economy (R=0.63, p < 0.001). For the second question, this study proposed two indices, border relative development index (BRDI) and border relative development tendency (BRDT), to examine whether the border development is towards to the richer neighboring countries or away from it. Results show that different continents have different patterns. African countries more favor to develop border regions towards to the richer neighbors but European countries not. For the third question, three major religion types (Christian, Muslim, and Others) were considered. ANOVA analysis shows that religion difference across the border only affect the border development among rich countries. This study demonstrates the capacity of satellite data for monitoring large-scale economic development. The findings from this study shed lights on the deeper understanding of border development around the whole world and provides tips for developing global-scale economic models. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 991022385340103411.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 4.19 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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