Guy Engelen, VITO-Flemish Institute for Technological Research Expertise Centre for Integrated Environmental Studies, Mol, Belgium, Carlo Lavalle
Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Land Management Unit,
Italy, Ispra, Italy, Jose I. Barredo, European Commission, DG-Joint Research Centre,
Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Land Management Unit,
Italy, Ispra, Italy
The MOLAND Modelling Framework for Urban and Regional Land use Dynamics (assigned to theme
With over 50 % of the world population living in cities, effective planning and decision making to attain environmental sustainability requires an in depth understanding of the spatial dynamics of urban and regional growth. Since 1997, the EC-JRC-IES in its MURBANDY and MOLAND projects, has developed an Urban Atlas for a growing representative sample of European cities and urbanised regions by implementing the following elements: (1) high resolution spatial databases of land use change over approximately 40 years, (2) urban environmental indicators related to sustainability, and (3) a modelling framework enabling the implementation and use of hybrid Cellular Automata based models representing urban regions of varying sizes and types and ranging from the single city to complex systems and hierarchies of cities. The core of the latter framework enables the configuration of dynamic spatial models operating at both a macro- and a micro-geographical scale. At the macro scale, in particular that of administrative entities such as municipalities, counties or NUT2/NUTS3 regions, the modelling framework integrates several component sub-models, representing the natural, social, and economic sub-systems. At the micro level, represented by cellular entities in the 1ha to 25ha resolution range, a Cellular Automata based model determines the state of individual parcels of land, based on the type of activities in their immediate neighbourhoods as well as institutional, physical and infrastructural factors. Both levels are intimately linked to one another. The approach permits a very detailed representation of the evolving spatial system. The MOLAND Modelling Framework enables its user to configure a complete application in function of the precise problems and needs as well as the data available. To that effect the user decides on the type of economic and demographic sectors represented, the precise set of land uses modelled as well as the type of (macro-level) equations and (micro-level) cellular automata algorithms applied. The land use model is further complemented with a series of built-in user-definable algorithms for calculating spatial indicators encapsulating economic, social and environmental qualities of the modelled spatial system. Like the model itself, these indicators are calculated on a year by year basis for the duration of a simulation and thus generate time series of maps as well as synthetic index values. Dedicated tools are available for interactive design, analysis and evaluation of policy measures and scenarios tried out with the models. Finally and most essentially, the framework is equipped with calibration routines enabling the semi automatic calibration and/or validation of the applications developed. In this presentation, the scientific foundations of the modelling framework will be presented and demonstrated by means of a number of recently developed applications.
 | Conference organized through conf-vienna
(copyright Gunther Maier) |