Towards Modeling Urban Growth with Using Cellular Automata (CA) and GIS

The study of changing urban structure is one of the important global issues particularly with the new paradigms on sustainable development. Thus, modeling and simulating urban growth can be high useful for exploring the interaction between built environment and natural environment to help urban planning regarding decision-making complexity. This goal would be achieved through the integration remote sensing (RS) data, GIS and simulator toolkits. Cellular automata (CA) provide an efficient tool for this purpose. This article briefly illustrates the significance of modeling urban growth and describes related modeling approaches with emphasis on CA. CA integration with GIS can provide effective ways of exploring the process of urban development as well as offering a means of evaluating the environmental and social consequences of various planning scenarios