Coupling SLEUTH model and population projection to simulate urban growth of the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area

Abstract:

This study used two modelling approaches to predict future urban landscapes for the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. In the first approach, we implemented traditional SLEUTH urban simulation model by using publicly available and locally-developed land cover and transportation data. Historical land cover data from 1992, 2001, 2006, and 2011 were used to calibrate the SLEUTH model and predict urban growth from 2011 to 2070. The SLEUTH model achieved 94.8% overall accuracy for validation year 2014. For the second modelling approach, we used a future population projection for 2050, aided by a strong population-imperviousness statistical relationship (R² ~ 0.95), to predict impervious surface density for each county. These population-predicted impervious surface density values were compared to SLEUTH model output, at the county spatial scale. R² of 0.84 suggested general agreement of overall pattern, although SLEUTH generated higher impervious surface density values for 36 out of 40 counties. For population-predicted impervious surface density, we further developed a lookup table approach to integrate SLEUTH output and generated a spatially explicit urban map for 2050. This lookup table approach has high potential to integrate population-predicted and SLEUTH-predicted urban landscape, especially when future population can be predicted with reasonable accuracy.