Simulating Urban Sprawl in China Based on the Artificial Neural Network-Cellular Automata-Markov Model

Xueru Zhang, Jie Zhou and Wei Song
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Xueru Zhang: School of Public Administration, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang 050061, China
Jie Zhou: Six 0 Six Teams of Sichuan Metallurgical Geological Prospecting Bureau, Chengdu 611730, China
Wei Song: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: In recent years, China’s urbanization rate has been increasing rapidly, reaching 59.58% in 2018. Urbanization drives rural-to-urban migration, and inevitably promotes urban sprawl. With the development of remote sensing and geographic information technologies, the monitoring technology for urban sprawl has been constantly innovated. In particular, the emergence of night light data has greatly promoted monitoring research of large-scale and long-time-series urban sprawl. In this paper, the urban sprawl in China in 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017 was identified via night light data, and the Artificial Neural Network-Cellular Automata-Markov (ANN-CA-Markov) model was developed to simulate the future urban sprawl in China. The results show that the suitability of urban sprawl based on the ANN model is as high as 0.864, indicating that the ANN model is very suitable for the simulation of urban sprawl. The Kappa coefficient of simulation results was 0.78, indicating that the ANN-CA-Markov model has a high simulation accuracy on urban sprawl. In the future, the hotspot areas of urban sprawl in China will change over time. Although the urban sprawl in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River delta, and the Pearl River delta will still be considerable, the urban sprawl in the Chengdu-Chongqing city cluster, the Guanzhong Plain city cluster, the central plains city cluster, and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River will be more prominent. Overall, China’s urban sprawl will be concentrated in the east of Hu’s line in the future.

Keywords: land use change; urban sprawl; simulation; ANN-CA-Markov model; night light data; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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