Modelling urban development with cellular automata incorporating fuzzy-set approaches

Abstract

This is the first part of a two-paper series on the development and application of a cellular automata model of urban development using geographic information systems (GIS) and fuzzy-set approaches. Under the paradigm of fuzzy-set theory, a cellular automata model of urban development was developed based on an understanding of the logistic trend of urban development processes. The model assigns membership of urban areas to multiple states of urban development using a fuzzy membership function. The transition rules based on linguistic variables are applied to represent the non-deterministic nature of urban development controls. By implementing the model in a raster based GIS format, experimental scenarios of development of a virtual city under realistic conditions are presented. Experimental application of the model to an artificial city produced realistic results and demonstrated the model was theoretically feasible and valid. Further work is needed to calibrate the model when applying it to simulate actual urban development. In the second part of the two-paper series, spatio-temporal simulations of urban development in Sydney, Australia, from 1971 to 1996 will be demonstrated and discussed.