Urban Generator: The SLEUTH Model

Tweet

Sanna Iltanen from the EDGE Laboratory for Architecture and Urban Research (Tampere University of Technology) who is currently a visitor at our lab gave a talk the other day entitled "Experiments with SLEUTH-model". She discussed the SLEUTH model, the input data needed to initialize the model, its calibration and explored some simulation results from different land-use policies in the Helsinki and Turku city regions of Finland.

The SLEUTH model is a tightly coupled, modified cellular automaton model of urban growth (and other land class change) which has been applied to over 100 cities and regions over the last decade (click here to see some of them). For example, it has been used to explore future land use patterns under different policy scenarios in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area.

The name SLEUTH was derived from the simple image input requirements of the models: Slope, Land cover, Exclusion, Urbanization, Transportation, and Hillshade.NASA have also used the model to look at the growth of Washington. The model was applied to 23,700 square kilometers (9151 sq. miles) of the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. The initial aim was to simulate the impact of future policy scenarios on the area and Chesapeake Bay watershed.

You can download her Sanna's talk from here, thanks go to gisagents.blogspot.com for the info and background on the SLEUTH model.