Simulation of Urban Land Development and Land Use Change Employing GIS with Cellular Automata

Land-use change can be regarded as changing a certain type of land use into the use of other types, also be seen as a piece of land from "undeveloped state" into a "development state." However, the land itself does not self-developed, so the actual land-use decision-making behavior depends on the choices of land developers. This study, based on the relationship between actor's decision-making behavior and land-use changes, collects GIS data of land uses, land price, population, urban planning and so forth, transforms them into 50 by 50 meters square grid, and then using NetLogo with Cellular Automata (CA) function to simulate the land-use change in Tainan city. The empirical study area is the reconsolidated area of the fifth period in Tainan city, Taiwan. The study period is 1989-2016 years which the period of estimating the land-use changing model is 1989-2006 and the forecasting period is 2007-2016. This study finding shows that it is useful to control the population density and land use intensity when making urban plan planning. Furthermore, the results and processes of LUCC simulation can be employed as assessments before land construction planning and development; it also provides land use planners useful references.