An integrated land use change model to simulate and predict the future of greater Cairo metropolitan region

Abstract

ABSTRACTAny urban land-use system is a non-linear, complex and dynamic phenomenon. Dynamic change within a land-use system will be affected by social, cultural, economic, political and natural factors. In many developing countries, like Egypt, uncontrolled urban sprawl and land-use change (US-LUCs), has resulted in an unsustainable urbanization model. This paper employs an integrated model to monitor and analyse the cause of US-LUCs, within a metropolitan region, as a means of projecting future change that can act as a stimulus and catalyst for action. This integrated model is built by combining Markov Chain, Cellular Automata and Logistic Regression. It has been designed to address the weakness of these existing models working on their own, thereby improving the quality of spatio-temporal simulations and predictions of US-LUCs. This integrated model is applied to the monitoring, evaluation and prediction of US-LUCs in the Greater Cairo Metropolitan Region (GCMR) up to 2035.