Modeling Urban Growth Patterns

A cellular automaton consists of a regular finite grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states. A set of rules defining the state of neighboring cells is defined relative to the specified cell. An initial state is selected by assigning a state for each cell and a new generation is created, according to some fixed rules that determine the new state of each cell in terms of the current state of the cell and the states of the cells in its neighborhood. The cellular automata concept has been combined with Markov series to yield a multi-criteria dynamic planning tool. This model has been used to predict land development trends in Ahvaz City, the capital city in Khoozestan Province. To this end, land use trends have been modeled for 2006. After fine-tuning the model to an accuracy level of 85 percent, urban growth was predicted for 2020 when the city will show a sporadic urban sprawl.