Simulating multiple class urban land-use/cover changes by RBFN-based CA model

Land use systems are complex adaptive systems, and they are characterized by emergence, nonlinearity, feedbacks, self organization, path dependence, adaptation, and multiple-scale characteristics. Land use/cover change has been recognized as one of the major drivers of global environmental change. This paper presents a coupled Cellular Automata (CA) and Radial Basis Function Neural (RBFN) Network model, which combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to contribute to the understanding of the complex land use/cover change process. In this model, GIS analysis is used to generate spatial drivers of land use/cover changes, and RBFN is trained to extract model parameters. Through the RBFN-CA model, the conversion probabilities of each cell from its initial land use state to the target type can be generated automatically. Future land use/cover scenarios are projected by using generated parameters in the model training process. This RBFN-CA model is tested based on the comparison of model output and the real data. A BPN-CA model is also built and compared with the RBFN-CA model by using a variety of calibration metrics, including confusion matrix, figure of merit, and landscape metrics. Both the location and landscape metrics based assessment for model simulation indicate that the RBFN-CA model performs better than the BPN-CA model for simulating land use changes in the study area. Therefore the RBFN-CA model is capable of simulating multiple classes of land use/cover changes and can be used as a useful communication environment for stakeholders involved in land use decision-making.