Using FUTURES in GRASS for Modelling Urban Growth

Using FUTURES in GRASS for Modelling Urban Growth

Introduction

Purpose

The aim of this tutorial is to demonstrate the use of FUTURES (Future Urban-Regional Environment Simulation) for urban spatial growth analysis. While most urban growth models are focused on cell-level conversions and object-based representation, FUTURES uses patch-based, stochastic, multi-level land change modelling framework to provide urban-rural land development models. FUTURES is an open source urban growth model that is designed to address regional-scale ecological and environmental impacts of urbanization and captures the spatial structure of development. This is done through regional projections of landscape patterns and then FUTURES creates submodels that integrate nonstationary drivers of land change. In this tutorial, the submodel that will be used is site suitability (POTENTIAL submodel). The POTENTIAL submodel uses a set of coefficients that relate a selection of site suitability factors to the probability of a place becoming developed. The model does this through multilevel logistic regression through a hierarchy of characteristics based on land use systems and the divergent relationships between predictor and response variables to obtain the coefficients.