Modeling Colombo's land uses with Metronamica: a demonstrative approach

Abstract

The enormous complexity built into cities makes them difficult to understand for any purpose. The ever changing land uses in any city is not an exemption, despite its importance for planners to know at some level of certainty. In order to overcome this difficulty Cellular Automata (CA) models are widely used in the field of urban planning as means of simulating land use changes with adequate bearing on the complexities associated with urban systems. This paper is a demonstrative attempt to model the land use changes in Colombo Metropolitan area in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 2010, within a modeling framework developed with CA based simulation application: Metronamica. Simulation results are assessed and validated using visual comparison and statistical methods. This study is placed in a context where the current planning practices in Sri Lanka are in need of robust methods and versatile techniques to comprehend land uses in rapidly growing urban areas.