Applying SLEUTH for Simulating and Assessing Urban Growth Scenarios on a Case Study of Beijing

Urbanization has brought great challenges to the sustainable development of cities, especially in developing countries. Simulation of urban expansion thus captures increasing interests in research. SLEUTH model, a cellular automata-based dynamic model, is a powerful tool for simulating complex urban expansion and description of urban spatial dynamics. For further study of the dynamics change of urban expansion, this article explores the combined application of geographical information systems (GIS), satellite remote sensing (RS) and SLEUTH to the analysis and modeling different policy scenarios of urban growth in Beijing, a typical dynamic spatial complex system in northern China. Four different urban land use polices were interpreted into the model to reveal urban development mechanism and to decide on the optimal planning scenario. The result indicated that SLEUTH applied on city dynamics geospatial change can effectively simulate the city´s expansion and provide useful information for the city´s future planning and development.