Space-Based Application for Effective Forest Analysis and Security Surveillance in the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria

This study focused on employing Space Based Technology to evaluate existing forest reserves and enhance security monitoring within the Federal Capital Territory. Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery was utilised to analyse forest habitats used as hideouts by criminals, assessing the effectiveness of Remote Sensing and GIS for security applications. ERDAS Imagine version 2014 was adopted for classification and Arc GIS 10.4 environments to process, manage and investigate the raster and thematic datasets. The parameters used in this research are: The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), land use/land cover (LU/LC), buffering and digital terrain model (DTM). A value of 0.5 in NDVI indicates a high forest area. Whereas a value of -0.08 represents other types of land cover. The multiple buffer analysis shows that people in the settlements that are about 5 kilometres (km) away from the forest are more likely to be more prone to serious attack than 10 km and 15 km settlements are the least attacked by any form of insecurity. Land use/land cover map provides ranges of classes for operatives. Digital terrain models and coordinate points show terrain and strategic points where security operatives can carry out needful activities. This study shows that Remote Sensing and GIS for forest analysis have proven that space technology can provide useful information for good management of forest reserve and security surveillance. It is expected that this approach will greatly assist security personnel in determining where effort should be focused to minimise criminal activities within the Federal Capital Territory and Nigeria at large.