Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecological Modelling
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolmodel

Land-use Simulation and Decision-Support system (LandSDS): Seamlessly T

integrating system dynamics, agent-based model, and cellular automata
Dongya Liua, Xinqi Zhenga,*, Hongbin Wangb
a
School of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China
b
Institute of Network Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This article aims to construct a Land-use Simulation and Decision-Support system (LandSDS) to comprehensively
Land-use simulation explore the interference and impact of natural environment, individual choice, and national macro-policies on
Decision support land use and cover change. LandSDS takes full advantage of system dynamics (SD) model, agent-based model
System dynamics model (ABM), cellular automata (CA) model, and Geographic Information System (GIS): (1) On the one hand, SD model
Agent-based model
controls land-use area change on macro level. On the other hand, by passing the parameters values from SD
Cellular automata model
model to CA model, the iterations of CA model are controlled macroscopically, and at the same time, the
transition rules in the CA model are affected microscopically by SD model; (2) By simulating the complex
selection behaviors of different agents, ABM enforces or participates in the cells’ transformation behaviors in CA
model on the micro evolution scale; (3) Taking CA model as a breakthrough point, the micro-cell unit is used to
realize the data exchange and communication between SD-ABM-CA by integrating CA with SD and CA with
ABM; and (4) Using GIS’s powerful spatial computing and data processing capabilities, the simulation results are
further analyzed and processed to obtain more effective information. LandSDS can solve the top-down data
analysis and graphic visualization problems caused by target data or policy mutations, and can also handle the
data and graphic visualization problems caused by the temporal and spatial changes of cell units. The system
solves the analysis methods and technical problems about the top-down and bottom-up seamless integration of
the spatial and temporal models. Beijing urban expansion was taken as an example to demonstrate the avail-
ability of the system.

1. Introduction
Due to the rapid population growth, especially in developing
countries, urban expansion has become an increasingly serious problem
(He et al., 2006). In cities, the main factors driving land-use change are
derived from human activities. A lot of evidence has shown that human
behavior, especially excessive cultivation and urbanization, has caused
many problems, such as environmental problems, food security, and
loss of biodiversity, which have become more and more serious (Fang
et al., 2019; Hu et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2015). How to achieve the
harmonious development between human activities and urban sus-
tainability has become an important and severe problem. Therefore, it
is very necessary to construct a system for simulating land-use change
to provide constructive opinions and suggestions for the government
and explore urban growth and sustainable development issues.
Land use and cover change models are the main tools for studying
land-use problems, and are also the key content for land-use research,
which can help people better understand and explore the land system’s
dynamic characteristics and laws. Among the existing research results,
there are many macro and micro models used to explore land-use
change, for example, Markov model (Arsanjani et al., 2013; Gong et al.,
2015), system dynamics (SD) model (Han et al., 2009), and cellular
automata (CA) model (Singh et al., 2018; Vaz and Arsanjani, 2015).
These models have advantages in some respects, and can solve some
specific problems. And there are also some coupled models that in-
tegrate some of these models (Clarke and Gaydos, 1998; Liu et al.,
2015; Munshi et al., 2014). Among these coupled models, there mainly
exist the following two problems: (1) The unidirectionality of the
feedback mechanism. In the multi-dimensional integrated model, it is
loose coupling between top-down and bottom-up models. In fact, it is
always the coupled model based on function and application, which
realizes the one-way communication from macro to micro. These cou-
pled models are unable to feedback the influence of micro-evolution
results on the macro change, and do not form the real-time and

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zxqsd@126.com (X. Zheng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.108924
Received 18 December 2018; Received in revised form 10 December 2019; Accepted 17 December 2019
Available online 07 January 2020
0304-3800/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
D. Liu, et al.
Fig. 1. The LandSDS general structure.
bidirectional communication between sub-models to achieve real in-
teraction and integration; and (2) The lack of research on human-en-
vironment mechanisms. The interaction, impact, and constraints be-
tween human beings and their environment are the important factors
that affect land-use change. In most single or coupled models, there is
lack of human agents’ influence, which does not effectively consider the
interaction between human and land (He et al., 2005; Kazak, 2018;
Yang et al., 2012). Based on the above problems, we aim to construct a
unified basic model that simulates land-use change from macro to
micro, multi-dimension, and multi-angle by screening out several dy-
namic models.
SD model combines system theory, cybernetics, and computer si-
mulation, and can build a causal feedback loop among various factors
to explore the interrelationships and influences, thereby gaining mac-
roscopic meaning and guidance. Since SD model can easily introduce
various macro-driving factors, it makes the scenarios simulation re-
search simple, which is very useful for testing policy recommendations.
SD model has been widely used to solve complicated social and natural
problems (Castellazzi et al., 2010; Guo et al., 2001; Liu et al., 2013).
However, the most obvious shortcoming of SD model is that there is no
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Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924
spatial representation ability, and micro-individual behavior cannot be
considered. Based on this, we introduced another dynamic model – CA
model.
CA model is a “bottom-up” and microscopic model (White et al.,
1997). CA model determines the next state of cell based on the current
cell state, the neighborhood, the transition rule, and so on. Many stu-
dies have shown that the CA model can achieve simulation studies on
macro-scale by the simple evolution of each cell on micro-scale (Chen
et al., 2002; White and Engelen, 1993). Its application in land-use
change and urban development is extensive and in-depth, which is also
a hot spot for CA research (Clarke and Gaydos, 1998; Lauf et al., 2012;
Wu et al., 2010). Meanwhile, CA model has spatial characters, and can
be integrated with Geographic Information System (GIS) well. GIS can
capture, process, and calculate spatial data well, and have strong spatial
storing, managing, and analyzing ability (Zhang and Huang, 2014). GIS
is widely used in the integration research with CA model (Clarke and
Gaydos, 1998; Yeh and Li, 2001). But the CA model cannot simulate the
complex individual behavior, nor is it mobile. So we need to import
ABM to make the coupling model more perfect and comprehensive.
In recent years, ABM has attracted the attention of more and more
D. Liu, et al.
Fig. 2. Data interaction mechanism between SD model and CA model.
scholars. ABM is often employed to study social phenomena (Epstein,
1999; Liu et al., 2007; Tian et al., 2016). The ABM model is another
“bottom-up” model, and is also microscopic. The biggest difference
with CA model is the mobility of ABM. In ABM, the whole system
produces pattern changes in the macro-dimension according to the in-
teraction between different microscopic individuals (Lambin et al.,
2003). ABM can directly capture the interactive properties of nature
and human systems, as well as capture the complex system behaviors
brought by these interactivity. Unlike CA model, which focuses on
transition rules, ABM is well-suited for representing the evolutionary
process between human activities and natural environment. ABM can
map real-world concepts and structures into the models (White and
Engelen, 2000).
Based on the previous temporal-spatial dynamics method (TSDM)
(Liu et al., 2018, 2017) and the geographic system basic model (Zheng,
2012), this study presents a Land-use Simulation and Decision-Support
system (LandSDS), which contains a SD model, an ABM, a CA model,
and a GIS. By integrating the above four model, the system can build a
basic comprehensive model for land-use simulation. The model in-
tegrate the four sub-models’ advantage and make up the weaknesses,
which can simulate land-use change in multiple scales and multiple
perspectives and provide help for the decision-making. Section 2 mainly
introduces the principle of LandSDS, the interaction between sub-
models, and how to build the three sub-models. Section 3 is about the
data use in the paper. Section 4 provides the precision verification of
the system based on the study area, and shows an in-depth discussion
about the system. Section 5 presents conclusions.
2. Methods
2.1. LandSDS
This paper constructed a LandSDS, which deeply integrates SD
model, ABM, CA model, and GIS. In the LandSDS, the SD model controls
the distribution of each element on the macro amount according to its
advantages in time-dimension and macro-dimension. At the same time,
it is convenient to set various reasonable scenarios simulation by
changing the values of some parameters in SD model. ABM influences
the spatial distribution of various elements on the micro-scale, ac-
cording to the simulation for the complex dynamic behaviors of dif-
ferent agents. CA model uses its advantage in the spatial dimension to
determine the micro-pattern by defining the transition rules for the cell.
Based on the above, the system make full use of the spatial computing
power of GIS to make further analysis for the simulation results at the
same time.
As shown in Fig. 1, before the system starts to run, the initial con-
ditions required in SD model, ABM, and CA model are first set, ac-
cording to spatial data, statistical data, policy files, and other ancillary
data. Then, the appropriate indicator parameters (single or multiple)
are selected as the medium for interactive communication between SD
model and CA model. After the setting for initial conditions of the
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Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924
system, the SD model is first run to obtain the values for the selected
indicator parameters, and then the results are fed back to the CA model.
Thirdly, according to different agents’ selection behaviors decided by
various socio-economic factors, the influence of ABM is introduced into
CA model. In CA model, according to the factors, such as the cell state,
and the influence of the neighborhood, the cell state at next moment is
calculated combined with the index parameters transmitted from SD
model and the influence from ABM. When the iterations in CA model
equals the number which is controlled by SD model, the index para-
meters calculated on the spatial-scale in CA model are transmitted to
the SD model to fine-tune the parameter values in SD equations, and the
simulation is pushed to the next moment. The loop is stopped until the
simulation reaches the set time, and the simulation results are exported.
During the simulation process, the users can track the changes of any
elements and pause the simulation at any time. The users also can ex-
port the simulation results of the spatial data and the tracked data for
in-depth analysis and study under GIS or other statistical platforms at
any time.
In LandSDS, the data interaction and mutual influence between each
sub-models are realized with the smallest grid unit as the breakthrough.
The overall relationship can be expressed as (modified from Liu et al.
(2017)):
Ft + 1 ∼ f (SDt + 1, ABMt , CAt ) (1)
where Ft + 1 represents the land-use state at time t+ 1; SDt + 1 is the effect
of the SD model on the state transition at time t+ 1; ABMt denotes the
effect of ABM on the state transition at time t ;
CAt represents the effect of CA model on the state transition at time t; f is
the transition function; and ∼ indicates the proportional relationship.
2.2. Integration between SD and CA
As shown in Fig. 2, the data bidirectional interaction mechanism
between SD model and CA model is displayed. In the traditional in-
tegration model between SD model and CA model, the iterations of CA
model are generally controlled by the macro parameters in SD model,
which is only the data flow and impact form SD model to CA model. In
the interaction mechanism of LandSDS constructed in this paper, the
data bidirectional communication and influence between SD model and
CA model are realized by selecting appropriate indicators. Firstly, the
SD model is run to get the values of the selected indicator. Then the
parameters are passed to CA model, and the CA model is started to run.
In CA model, the iterations are controlled and the transition rules are
affected on micro-scale according to the parameters which are passed
from SD model. When the evolution is push to the next time, the in-
dicators’ values obtained from CA model are fed back to SD model to
adjust the parameters of dynamic equations. Bidirectional real-time
communication between the two sub-models is achieved through data
transfer between SD model and CA model. Through the bidirectional
real-time communication mechanism, the trend of simulation results is
corrected in time, which is more in line with the reality that the gov-
ernment proposes some short-term goals to achieve long-term planning.
2.3. Integration between ABM and CA
The CA model, which comprehensively considers the factors of
natural environment and neighborhood influence, can better simulate
the land-use change process, but does not consider the dominant role
for controlling land-use change. And in real life, the dominant role,
such as the government, usually play a decisive role in land-use change.
Based on this, we coupled CA model with ABM to introduce human-
land interactions into land-use change simulations.
In this study, taking urban expansion as an example, agents are
divided into two categories: resident agents and government agents.
The resident agents select the suitable land for living by considering the
surrounding environment, such as transportation convenience,
D. Liu, et al.
environmental suitability, and school convenience. Government agents
determine the land-use type for a particular plot through the macro-
planning. At the same time, according to the China’s condition, the
choices of government agents are absolutely authoritative in the deci-
sion for the land-use pattern. For example, if the government classifies a
certain area as an ecological protection area, the land parcels in the
area will not be allowed to convert into other land-use types.
In the integration of ABM and CA model, the selection behaviors of
resident agents are determined according to the surrounding environ-
ment, human factors, and other factors. The behaviors influence the
transition rules in CA model to some extent to decide the land-use type
for a certain plot. At the same time, combined with the macro-plan of
the government agents in a period of time, it is checked whether the
land-use type for a certain plot is allowed to determine the land-use
type finally. Fig. 3 shows the integration mechanism between ABM and
CA model.
2.4. The causal relationship in SD
SD model explores the complex and non-linear effects between
various factors by construction a causal relationship to obtain useful
information at macro level (Theobald and Gross, 1994). In the process
of urban development, the land-use system is complex and variable, and
is interfered by many factors such as human. Therefore, SD model is
often used to explore complex urban expansion behaviors (Han et al.,
2009; Shen et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2019).
In this study, we construct a SD model to explore the impact of
human activities on urban growth. Meanwhile, to simplify the calcu-
lation, we suppose that the land-use change is affected only by human
activities and ignore the natural choice. In SD model, there mainly
contains three subsystems, namely population subsystem, economy
subsystem, and land-use subsystem (Fig. 4). The population increase
has led to the demand increase for built-up land. At the same time,
further investment in the land has also promoted the expansion of
urban built-up land to a certain extent.
2.5. Transition rules in CA
Transition rules is the core of CA model. The traditional CA tran-
sition rules can be expressed as:
St + 1 = f (St , Nt )
(2)
where St+1 is the cell state at time t + 1; St is the cell state at time t ; Nt
represents the state of the neighbor cell at time t ; and f refers to the
transfer function for cell state from time t to time t + 1.
In this study, the impact of SD model and ABM is extended into the
CA transition rules. Therefore, the CA transition rules can be calculated
4
Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924
Fig. 3. The integrated simulation process be-
tween ABM and CA model: (a) is the initial
state of the cell; (b) is the cell state which is
determined by the CA model; (c) is the cell
state which is determined by the resident
agents; (d) is the cell transition state under the
joint action of CA model and resident agents;
(e) is the cells which are not allowed to transfer
to the certain state by the government agents;
(f) is the final cell transition state under the
combined action.
as:
St + 1 = f (St , Nt , Dt + 1, Bt ) (3)
where Dt + 1 indicates the macro factors influence on cell state change at
time t + 1; and Bt is the agent behaviors influence on cell state change
at time t . The more detailed formulas can be found in (Liu et al. (2017)).
2.6. Agents’ behaviors rules in ABM
In this paper, the relationship of ABM can be expressed as:
Uk ∼ (Fresident , Fauthority ) (4)
where Uk represents the combined effect of the different agents on the
land-use change; Fresident indicates the effect of the resident agents on the
land-use change; and Fauthority indicates the effect of the government
agents on the land-use change.
In this study, the role of government mainly reflects in macro-
planning, which determines the land-use pattern based on a series of
factors. Given China’s conditions, the government planning has a high-
level mandatory role.
The choices of resident agents are often influenced by the sur-
rounding living environment. For example, people often choose to live
in the places where the public facilities are relatively complete and the
environment is friendly. After comprehensive consideration of various
factors, the choices of resident agents in this paper are mainly influ-
enced by the following factors: transportation convenience, facility
convenience, education convenience, hospital convenience, and en-
vironmental friendliness. The relationship can be expressed as:
Fresident = βtraffic X + βfacility X + βeducation X education
traffic facility
+ βhospital Xhospital + βenvironment X environment + γ (5)
where βtraffic , βfacility , βeducation , βhospital , and βenvironment indicate the effec-
tiveness of transportation convenience, facility convenience, education
convenience, hospital convenience, and environmental friendliness,
respectively; βtraffic + βfacility + βeducation + βhospital + βenvironment = 1; Xtraffic ,
Xfacility , Xeducation , Xhospital , and Xenvironment indicate the influence values of
transportation convenience, facility convenience, education con-
venience, hospital convenience, and environmental friendliness on
land-use change, respectively; and γ is the random interference value.
3. Study area and data
Beijing is China’s political, economic, and cultural center, and is
adjacent to Tianjin and Hebei Province. Beijing is one of the most
densely populated and oldest cities in the world, with a history of more
than 3000 years (Li et al., 2005), and it will host the Winter Olympic
Games in 2022. There are 16 districts under the jurisdiction of Beijing,
D. Liu, et al. Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924

Fig. 4. SD causality diagram for land use.

which are divided into four functional zones, namely capital functional Table 1
core zone, urban function development zone, urban development new Data used in the paper.
zone, and ecological conservation development zone. The total area of Data Data type Year
Beijing is 16410.54 km2. By 2016, the resident population of Beijing
reached 21.73 million, and the gross domestic product (GDP) reached Dependent variables Land-use map shape 1995, 2005,
2566.91 billion yuan (Beijing Municipal Statistics Bureau, 2017). The 2015
Socio-economic School features shape 2013
huge population makes Beijing so crowded. The road system in Beijing factors Market features shape 2013
is like a network, and there are six rings from the downtown area to the Hospital features shape 2013
suburbs. Similar to other big cities in developing countries, Beijing faces Restaurant shape 2013
many problems, such as environmental pollution and population features
Bank features shape 2013
overload (Chen et al., 2005).
Hotel features shape 2013
In this study, we selected the land-use data of Beijing for 1995, Road network shape 2013
2005, and 2015 to simulate the land use and cover change. The land- Park features shape 2013
use data came from Data Center for Resources and Environmental Gross Domestic Continuous 1995–2015
Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Liu et al., 2005). Through the Product variable
Population Continuous 1995–2015
visual interpretation of the Landsat data, the overall accuracy of in- variable
terpretation is over 94.3 % (Liu et al., 2014). The data is mainly divided
into six first-class categories: cropland, woodland, grassland, water
body, built-up land, and unused land (Liu et al., 2005). Because there logistic regression method was used to obtain the influence probability
are few unused land in Beijing, and most of them are located in of surrounding environment on the land-use type change. The formula
woodland, we reclassified the land-use types into four types: cropland, can be expressed as:
woodland and grassland, built-up land, and water body. According to
the availability and accessibility of the data, eight environmental ele- 1
φ=
ments were selected, as shown in Table 1, which were derived from the 1 + exp (−y ) (6)
Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of
Sciences. All of the spatial data was obtained based on the project y= β1 X1 + β2 X2 + ⋯+βn Xn + α (7)
supported by the Ministry of Land and Resources of China.
where φ represents the influence probability of the surrounding en-
vironment on the land-use type change; β1, β2 , ⋯, and βn are the re-
4. Results gression coefficients; X1, X2 , ⋯, and Xn represent the values of the
driving factors (e.g., the values of the distance to schools); and α is the
4.1. Simulation results regression constant.
According to the availability and acquirable of the data, the socio-
4.1.1. The construction of transition rules for CA model economic factors selected in this paper include distance to schools,
In CA model, the transition rules are the core content. The current distance to markets, distance to hospitals, distance to restaurants, dis-
mining methods for the transition rules are various, and the more tance to banks, distance to hotels, and distance to roads (Fig. 5).
commonly used are data mining (Li and Gar-On Yeh, 2004), ant colony In ArcGIS software, the values of these environmental elements
optimization (Liu et al., 2008, 2007; Yang et al., 2012), logistic re- were obtained through 4952 valid random points. Prior to the logistic
gression (Liu et al., 2015; Munshi et al., 2014), and so on. In this paper, regression, the values of these variables were normalized to exclude the

5
D. Liu, et al. Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924

Fig. 5. Distance to the social-economic factors.

effects of different scales. The normalization formula can be expressed 4.1.2. The construction of rules for ABM
as (Tian et al., 2011): For the government agents, in order to reduce the degree of inter-
ference for the simulation results, we only restricted the development of
⎧ Si − Min (Si ) built-up land by the macro planning data to a certain degree.
, Max (Si ) ≠ Min (Si )
Si′ = Max (Si ) − Min (Si ) In the rules of resident agents, we used the distance to roads to
⎨
⎩ 1, Max (Si ) = Min (Si ) (8) represent the transportation convenience, the distance to markets to
indicate the facility convenience, the distance to schools to represent
Si'
where is the value of the driving factor after the normalization; Si is the education convenience, the distance to hospitals to represent the
the value of the driving factor; Min (Si ) is the minimum for all values of hospital convenience, and the distance to parks to indicate the en-
the driving factor; and Max (Si ) is the maximum for all values of the vironmental friendliness (Fig. 5). The shorter distance, the better con-
driving factor. venience. Therefore, the convenience value is inversely proportional to
The normalized values were imported into the SPSS software for the distance value. At the same time, in order to prevent the denomi-
logistic regression analysis to obtain the regression coefficients for each nator from appearing 0, and to ensure that the result was still limited to
influence factor.

6
D. Liu, et al.
the range of 0∼1, we exponentially processed the denominator. The
processed equation can be expressed as:
μtraffic
Xtraffic =
exp (droad )
μfacility
Xfacility =
exp (dmarket )
μeducation
Xeducation =
exp (dschool )
μhospital
Xhospital =
exp (dhospital )
μenvironment
Xenvironment =
exp (dpark )
where droad represents the distance to roads; dmarket represents the dis-
tance to markets; dschool represents the distance to schools; dhospital re-
presents the distance to hospitals; dpark represents the distance to parks;
and μtraffic , μfacility , μeducation , μhospital , and μenvironment are coefficients. In
this paper, to simplify the operation, μtraffic , μfacility , μeducation , μhospital , and
μenvironment are set to 1, respectively.
4.1.3. Precision verification
The test of the accuracy for the system is very necessary. We usually
compare the simulation result with the real data to obtain the simula-
tion accuracy. The visual comparison method is a simple method for
evaluating the simulation result, which can visually show the difference
in spatial distribution between the simulation result and the real data.
The comparison between the actual land-use maps and the simulation
results for 2005 and 2015 in Beijing is shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen
from the visual comparison that the simulation results generally show
the land-use distribution well, although the simulation effect on some
scattered land use is not very well.
The verification of the simulation results also needs to be calculated
from the perspective of quantification. This paper adopted the overall
accuracy and Kappa coefficient to verify the accuracy of the system.
Kappa coefficient is widely used in accuracy evaluation, and is a stan-
dard measurement method (Congalton, 1991). The calculation results
showed that the total accuracies of land-use for 2005 and 2015 were
86.56 % and 90.40 %, and the Kappa coefficients were 0.7659 and
0.8254, respectively. Meanwhile, we introduced the Fuzzy Kappa
coefficient to evaluate the system’s simulation effect. The Fuzzy Kappa
coefficient takes into account the neighborhood effect of the grid and is
more intelligent, which can be used in combination with Kappa coef-
ficient to obtain better results (Dou et al., 2007; Visser and de Nijs,
2006). The Fuzzy Kappa coefficients of land-use change for 2005 and
2015 were 0.852 and 0.887, respectively. We also used areal simulated
error to further verify the system’s simulation results. Table 2 listed the
area error for the four land-use types in Beijing. The above four accu-
racy indicators indicate that the system has good simulation effect. Of
course, the simulation accuracies of land-use change are affected by
many aspects, such as the quality of interpretation for remote sensing
image, which will have different degrees impact on simulation results.
From 1995 to 2015, the population of Beijing increased from 12.51
million to 21.71 million, and the GDP increased from 150.77 billion
yuan to 2368.57 billion yuan (Beijing Municipal Statistics Bureau,
2017). On the one hand, the increase of population has driven the rapid
economic growth, but on the other hand, it has promoted the sky-
rocketing of urban built-up land area. It can be seen from Fig. 6 that the
rapid expansion of the central urban area in Beijing occupied a large
amount of arable land and woodland and grassland, which is very un-
favorable for the sustainable development of Beijing.
Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924
5. Discussion
5.1. Comparison between LandSDS and traditional SD-CA coupled model
(9) The performance of the LandSDS is compared with the traditional
SD-CA coupled model. In the usual integration models, the SD model is
only used to control the iterations of the CA model. In this paper, we
(10) used the common coupled method for SD and CA model (Han et al.,
2009; He et al., 2006) for simulation research as a comparative ex-
perimental group. It can be seen in Table 3 that the system which we
(11) built in this paper has better overall accuracies, Kappa coefficients, and
Fuzzy Kappa coefficients than the common SD-CA coupled model. The
reason for the above results may be due to the data bidirectional ex-
change between SD model and CA model, and the intervention of dif-
(12)
ferent agents’ selection behaviors decided by socio-economic factors.
Table 3 also shows that LandSDS can better simulate land-use change
under long time series, which indicates that LandSDS can be used for
(13) future scenario simulation studies.
Of course, due to the availability of data, different experimental
environments, and other reasons, it is very difficult to completely si-
mulate other researchers’ experiments for comparison. Therefore, in
this paper, we used the same data to conduct the comparative experi-
ments based on different model integration principles in the same ex-
perimental environment.
5.2. The policy recommendations for Beijing development
Due to the excessive concentration of resources, such as educational
resources and medical resources, a large number of migrant workers
enter Beijing, which has brought tremendous ecological and land
supply pressure. From 1995 to 2005, Beijing’s built-up land increased
by more than 1200 km2, while the cropland decreased by more than
1900 km2 (Table 4).
The government should take more effective measures to promote
Beijing green and harmonious sustainable development: (1) Control
population growth and ease urban expansion pressure. In the future
development plan, Beijing should refer to the development pattern of
foreign satellite cities. Beijing need to transfer some resources and
gradually evacuate population to reduce the expansion pace and im-
prove ecological stability; and (2) Enhance linkages between regions
and promote regional coordinated development. With the rapid eco-
nomic growth, uneven development between cities will lead to very
serious problems. The coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-
Hebei and the construction of Xiongan New District are aimed to ease
some non-capital function and promote regional harmonious develop-
ment. The government should strength Beijing economic leading role
for Tianjin and Hebei to gradually promote the overall development of
the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration.
6. Conclusion
This paper proposed a Land-use Simulation and Decision-Support
system (LandSDS), which is actually an artificial intelligence temporal-
spatial simulation model. LandSDS is a system that integrates macro-
scopic SD model and microscopic ABM and CA model in cell unit.
LandSDS also integrates GIS at the same time. The system can solve
data analysis and graphic visualization problems from top to down
caused by target data or policy mutations, and can also handle the data
and graphic visualization problems from bottom to up caused by tem-
poral-spatial changes of cell units. The system solves the temporal-
spatial analysis methods and technical problems about the top-down
and bottom-up seamless integration, which plague researchers long. In
this system, the SD model controls the changes of various elements on a
macro scale, and decides the iterations of the entire simulation run at
the same time. ABM is used to simulate the complex selection behaviors
of different agents. CA model simulates the distribution of micro-cell
7
D. Liu, et al. Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924

Fig. 6. The simulation of Beijing land-use change from 1995 to 2015.

state by changing the state of each cell on a micro scale. GIS is used for
visual display and further in-depth spatial analysis of the simulation
results. In the whole system, each sub-module communicates and
transfers data through the micro-individual cell unit, and realizes the
mutual influence and restriction between sub-models.
Beijing was used as a case to verify the effectiveness of the LandSDS.
The results showed that the integrated SD-ABM-CA system could si-
mulate the rapidly growing regions well. By comparing with the real
data, the better overall simulation accuracies, Kappa coefficients, and
Fuzzy Kappa coefficients were obtained. The system was also compared
with the common coupled SD-CA model, and the compared results
showed that LandSDS was superior to the traditional coupled model.
Through the interaction between SD model and CA model and the in-
troduction of agents’ complex behaviors, the simulation results are
more realistic.
The influencing factors of urban land-use change are complex and

Table 2
Areal simulated error for 2005 and 2015 in Beijing.
Cropland Woodland and grassland Built-up land Water body

2
2005 Actual Area (km ) 3528.50 10001.63 2590.38 283.94
Simulated Area (km2) 3536.5 9423.25 2992.25 454.0625
Error 0.0023 0.0578 0.1551 0.5991
2015 Actual Area (km2) 2603.06 10497.31 2991.25 313.25
Simulated Area (km2) 2680.19 9834.50 3605.81 283.94
Error 0.0296 0.0631 0.2055 0.0936

8
D. Liu, et al. Ecological Modelling 417 (2020) 108924

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Declaration of Competing Interest of simulating land-use change. Ecol. Modell. 350, 1–10.
Liu, J., Kuang, W., Zhang, Z., Xu, X., et al., 2014. Spatiaotemporal characteristics, pat-
terns and causes of land-use changes in China since the late 1980s. J. Geogr. Sci. 24
We promise that there is no conflict of interest exiting in the sub- (2), 195–210.
mission of this manuscript, and manuscript is approved by all authors Liu, J., Liu, M., Tian, H., Zhuang, D., Zhang, Z., Zhang, W., Tang, X., Deng, X., 2005.
for publication. I would like to declare on behalf of my co-authors that Spatial and temporal patterns of China’s cropland during 1990–2000: an analysis
based on Landsat TM data. Remote Sens. Environ. 98, 442–456.
the work described was original research that has not been published Liu, X., Li, X., Liu, L., He, J., Ai, B., 2008. A bottom‐up approach to discover transition
previously, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere, in rules of cellular automata using ant intelligence. Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci. 22,
whole or in part. All the authors listed have approved the manuscript 1247–1269.
Liu, X., Li, X., Yeh, A.G.-O., He, J., Tao, J., 2007. Discovery of transition rules for geo-
that is enclosed. graphical cellular automata by using ant colony optimization. Sci. China Ser. D Earth
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