Agent-based approaches to land use change in eastern China

The agent-based model provides for an extremely flexible representation of heterogeneous decision makers, who are potentially influenced by interactions with other agents and with their natural environment. CORMAS software, which is a programming environment dedicated to creating multi-agent systems, with a focus on the domain of natural resources management, is used for modeling of land use change of Changshu in eastern China. Decision behaviors of different actors, for example, land surveyor, planning persons, land development and investment persons, are considered in this model, and gave different quantity weight. Planning persons is given 0.6 weight, land surveyor 0.3, land development and investment persons 0.1, according to the inquiry from local authority. Land use change process which is affected by spatial entity objects (natural system) and different decision persons (human system) is simulated. The simulated results really reflected the dynamic change process of land use of Changshu, in eastern China by continuously adjusting and optimizing the model parameters. On the basis of this, the future dynamic trend of the land use change can be predicted, and decision reference can be provided for some department.