Abstract
Urbanization process is one of the drivers of environmental and social changes across the globe entailing many environmental problems. Long term land-use change geosimulation models are useful tools to represent the complex human–environment interactions and evaluate the impacts of urbanization on the environment. However, many modelling approaches are not always fit to fully address this process at global scale and the issues of distortions related to Earths’ curvature. Thus, the goal of this research study is to model and examine the long term global urban land-use change using spherical cellular automata approach. The developed model is implemented to simulate urban land-use change across 235 world countries and using two scenarios considering zero-migration and constant-fertility. The simulation results indicate that, between 2015 and 2095, the total global urban extent will double in size with the most extensive change in urban areas occurring in Africa and Asia. The proposed spherical model can be used to assist global urbanization policy making and environmental impact assessments.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the support of this study by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant program and the Simon Fraser University Graduate Dean's Entrance Scholarship (GDES). This research was enabled in part by support provided by Compute Canada and WestGrid high performance com** facilities. The authors also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive feedback.
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This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant [RGPIN-2017-03939] awarded to the second author.
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Addae, B., Dragićević, S. Modelling global urban land-use change process using spherical cellular automata. GeoJournal 88, 2737–2754 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10776-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10776-4