RS-GIS Monitoring of Afghanistan-Kazakhstan-Pakistan Cities Unsustainable Development

Afghanistan-Kazakhstan-Pakistan cities have similar unsustainable development with intensive urbanization, overexploitation of natural resources, groundwater uncontrolled extractions, intensive construction activities by destroying landscapes. Several cities from these countries are under comparison investigations: currently Kabul from Afghanistan, Almaty from Kazakhstan, and next target to add Pakistan cities. Kabul and Almaty are in the similar locations: valley area, surrounded by the mountains. Both cities have poorly managed housing construction in the very densely populated areas, which are under high risks of the big earthquake activities. Both cities destroy the surrounding mountains slope areas with elimination of the trees? Destroying the natural water movement water, watershed systems with devasting expansion of dangerous building constructions in the very dense overpopulated areas. Soil erosion, landslides in the mountainous areas are getting more intensive in both cities. Rapid cities populations increase water consumption, including groundwater extraction, which induce the ground subsidence. Kabul city was investigated by the spatial-temporal evolution of ground deformation phenomena and its main governing processes by using C-Band Sentinel-1 derived Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) timeseries from both ascending and descending orbits to extract the two-dimensional (2D) surface displacement field. Four subsidence bowls were distinguished with highly variable spatial extents and deformation magnitudes over four separate aquifer basins, with the maximum value of -5.3 cm/year observed in the Upper Kabul aquifer basin, which potentially caused the land subsidence in Kabul and could be intensified during the earthquakes. The Kabul city research methods are under adaptation for Almaty city ground subsidence investigation. The RS-GIS based FEMA HAZUS tool for earthquake, flood events with financial estimations, construction damage impacts, planning scenarios programs are under our learning activities for adaptation also.