INTEGRATION OF LANDSAT THEMATIC MAPPER AND CENSUS-DATA FOR QUALITY-OF-LIFE ASSESSMENT

The quality of life (QOL) of the Athens-Clarke County of Georgia was a ssessed by integrating environmental variables extracted from Landsat thematic mapper data with socioeconomic variables obtained from the U. S. Census data. The environmental variables extracted are (1) land use /cover particularly percentage of urban use; (2) normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI); and (3) apparent surface temperatures. The s ocioeconomic variables front the census data are (1) population densit y, (2) per capita income, (3) median home value, and (4) percentage of college graduates. NDVI, which shows strong negative correlation with ''per cent of urban use'' and ''surface temperatures,'' is in turn st rongly correlated with per capita income, population density, and medi an home value. The environmental and socioeconomic variables are integ rated by means of two approaches: (1) principal components analysis an d (2) geographical-information-system overlay of ranked data layers. T hese two approaches constitute respectively an objective and a subject ive assessment of the QOL of the study area. The results of these anal yses indicate that satellite image data can complement census data in providing QOL assessment with an environmental perspective. (C) Elsevi er Science Inc., 1997.