International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Applied Earth

Observations and Geoinformation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jag

Reducing spatial autocorrelation in the dynamic simulation of urban

growth using eigenvector spatial filtering
Xinlei Yan, Yongjiu Feng *, Xiaohua Tong, Pengshuo Li, Yilun Zhou, Peiqi Wu, Huan Xie,
Yanming Jin, Peng Chen, Shijie Liu, Xiong Xv, Sicong Liu, Chao Wang
College of Surveying & Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
The Shanghai Key Laboratory of Space Mapping and Remote Sensing for Planetary Exploration, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: In cellular automata (CA) based modeling of dynamic urban growth, non-spatial statistical approaches are
Dynamic urban growth usually affected by spatial autocorrelation and fail to describe the spatially non-stationary relationships between
Cellular automata urban growth and its drivers. The eigenvector spatial filtering (ESF) is a representative method that can well
Eigenvector spatial filtering
estimate the regression coefficients in the presence of spatial autocorrelation. In this study, we developed two CA
Spatially non-stationary model
models based on the linear ESF (LESF) and the non-stationary ESF (NESF), of which LESF is featured by spatially
Suzhou
stationary coefficients while NESF is featured by spatially varying coefficients. These two models were compared
to a conventional logistic regression (LOGR) CA model. The three models (i.e. CALOGR, CALESF and CANESF) were
used to simulate rapid urban growth in Suzhou between 2009, 2014 and 2019. The statistics suggest significant
reduction in the spatial autocorrelation of the residuals in the CALESF and CANESF land transition maps, as well as
an increase in the model reliability. The results show that compared with CALOGR, CALESF and CANESF respectively
improved the overall accuracy by 2.0% and 2.2% in 2014, and improved by 0.4% and 0.7% in 2019; they also hit
more new-urban-cells, respectively increasing the figure-of-merit (FOM) by 3.8% and 4.3% in 2014, 0.3% and
0.9% in 2019. All three models performed better when integrated spatial heterogeneity into the CA neighbor­
hoods, increasing overall accuracy by over 1% and FOM by over 2%. We concluded that the ESF-based CA
models can effectively derive spatially varying land transition rules to capture the urban dynamics, and more
accurately predict urban growth featured by spatial autocorrelation.

1. Introduction
With the rapid growth of urban population, many developing
countries are facing severe pressure of land use change from non-urban
to urban (Wu et al., 2012; United Nations, 2019). As such, dynamic
urban growth simulation and prediction have become an essential
approach to understanding the mechanism of urbanization and
informing decision making in sustainable land use planning and envi­
ronmental protection (Foley et al., 2005; Wu et al., 2013; Zhao et al.,
2016). Land use models such as cellular automata (CA), multi-agent and
spatial statistics integrated with remote sensing and geographical in­
formation systems can be used to effectively interpret urban land use
change (Liu, 2012; Wahyudi and Liu, 2015). Through reconstructing
historical land use patterns, the CA and agent models are able to capture
urban land use dynamics and predict future scenarios (Liu and Feng,
2016; Saeedi, 2018; Sikder et al., 2019). Among these, CA models are
discrete dynamic systems that are simple to construct but exhibit com­
plex self-organizing behaviors (Wolfram, 2018). They construct a set of
transition rules that describe the weighted impacts of different driving
factors on land use change. For CA modeling, one major challenge is to
determine the relationships between land use change and its driving
factors that vary over time and space (Chen et al., 2016).
Considering the construction of land transition rules, many methods
have been developed during the past two decades. These can be cate­
gorized into statistical, heuristic, artificial intelligent, or machine
learning approaches (Chen et al., 2014; Khalili-Damghani et al., 2014;
He et al., 2015; Du et al., 2020). Among these, statistical methods are
proved to be one of the best to capture urban growth dynamics (Feng
and Tong, 2018). It is noted that spatial autocorrelation is inherent
features of urban growth dynamics, and may directly lead to spatial non-
stationarity when statistical methods are applied (Cadenasso et al.,
2007; Wu et al., 2009). In terms of how to solve spatial autocorrelation

* Corresponding author at: College of Surveying & Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
E-mail address: yjfeng@tongji.edu.cn (Y. Feng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102434
Received 23 January 2021; Received in revised form 26 June 2021; Accepted 2 July 2021
Available online 10 July 2021
1569-8432/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
X. Yan et al.
Fig. 1. Our study area of the Suzhou city in the Yangtze River Delta, China.
in urban simulation modeling, Feng’s group has proposed spatial
autoregressive (SAR) models and produced better CA models with ac­
curate simulation results (Feng and Tong, 2018; Gao et al., 2020; Lei
et al., 2020). SAR considers the spatial autocorrelation among nearby
cells and incorporates it into the definition of CA transition rules (Ku,
2016; Feng and Tong, 2018). The method addresses spatial non-
stationarity implicitly, where the CA parameters expressed by them do
not vary across space. The spatial variation can also be included as
separate variables into the regression models using geographically
weighted regression (GWR) (Murakami et al., 2016; Mirbagheri and
Alimohammadi, 2017; Feng and Tong, 2018). By specifically focusing
on the local relationships between the dependent and independent
variables, GWR intuitively reflects urban growth dynamics through
spatial varying parameters, providing an ideal solution for solving non-
stationarity (Griffith, 2008). Therefore, if one possible method can
reduce the spatial autocorrelation while having spatially varying pa­
rameters analogous to GWR coefficients, it will be effective to accurately
interpret urban growth dynamics and improve the simulation accuracy.
This study aims to simultaneously solve the spatial autocorrelation
and spatial non-stationarity issues in dynamic urban growth modeling
using the eigenvector spatial filtering (ESF). This method, also known as
Moran’s eigenvector mapping, is an approach to estimate the regression
coefficients in the presence of spatial autocorrelation (Griffith, 2003).
Unlike the SAR methods, ESF removes spatial autocorrelation from the
observations instead of incorporating it (Feng et al., 2018; Gao et al.,
2020; Lei et al., 2020). By using a linear combination of a geographic
connection matrix of eigenvectors, ESF divides the original variables
into spatially dependent parts and spatially independent parts, so that
the variables can be studied independently of adjacent regions and the
influence of spatial autocorrelation can be effectively eliminated (Grif­
fith and Chun, 2014). ESF usually includes the linear ESF (LESF) that
yields spatially stationary model coefficients and the nonstationary ESF
(NESF; such as Moran ESF and Geary ESF) that yields spatially varying
model coefficients (Murakami and Griffith, 2019). NESF provides
regression analysis of independent variables with spatially varying co­
efficients, and can capture the spatially different influences of driving
factors (Murakami et al., 2016). Because NESF can simultaneously deal
with spatial autocorrelation and spatial non-stationarity of spatial data,
it should be an ideal method in CA modeling of urban land use change
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434
and urban growth.
In this study, we incorporated LESF, NESF, and logistic regression
(LOGR) into CA modeling, and constructed the CALESF, CANESF and
CALOGR models to simulate dynamic urban growth. We calibrated these
three models to retrieve urban land transition rules of 2009–2014 at
Suzhou City, considering its representation in the Yangtze River Delta
and rapid urbanization during the past two decades. We then validated
the three models for 2014–2019 and simulated the urban pattern of
Suzhou at 2019. The urban land transition rules and simulation results of
the three models are then evaluated and compared to form our
conclusions.
2. Study area and data preprocessing
2.1. Study area
Suzhou lies in the southeast of Jiangsu Province, at the center of the
Yangtze River Delta. The city is located at 119◦ 55′ –121◦ 20′ E by
30◦ 47′ –32◦ 02′ N, with Shanghai in the east, Taihu Lake in the west, and
Yangtze River in the north (Fig. 1). Suzhou is a low-lying city with
numerous lakes and rivers, with plains accounting for 54.8% of the total
area, hills accounting for 2.7%, and rivers, lakes and beaches accounting
for 36.6% (www.suzhou.gov.cn). The city has jurisdiction over five
administrative districts: Gusu, Huqiu, Wuzhong, Xiangcheng and
Wujiang, and four satellite cities: Changshu, Zhangjiagang, Kunshan,
and Taicang. By 2019, Suzhou covered a total area of 8657 km2, with a
registered population of 7.2 million including 77% urban residents
(xzqh.mca.gov.cn/map), making it one of the highly urbanized cities in
the Yangtze River Delta. Suzhou’s rapid urbanization benefited from its
appropriate natural conditions, and resulted from its economic boom,
private enterprise growth, and fast industrialization. As the city covers
various districts whose urbanization levels and features exhibit certain
differences, there exists distinct spatial heterogeneity in Suzhou’s ur­
banization. This characteristic along with Suzhou’s high-speed urbani­
zation in the past ten years makes Suzhou ideal for testing our CA
models.
X. Yan et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434

Fig. 2. Land use classification and urban growth of Suzhou in 2009, 2014 and 2019.

Table 1
The land use change of Suzhou in 2009, 2014 and 2019.
Year Non-urban land Urban land

Cell number Percent (%) Decreasing rate (%) Cell number Proportion (%) Increasing rate (%)

2009 3,421,309 61.2 NA 2,172,857 38.8 NA

2014 2,316,395 41.3 32.3 3,293,011 58.7 51.6
2019 1,739,539 31.0 24.9 3,869,984 69.0 17.5

2.2. Remote sensing data and processing 2.3. Extraction and selection of driving factors

The satellite images used to produce urban land use maps of Suzhou
were downloaded from the USGS EarthExplorer website (https://earth
explorer.usgs.gov). These include two Landsat-7 TM images (30 m) ac­
quired on 4 April 2009, two Landsat-8 OLI images (30 m) acquired on 16
March 2014, and two Landsat-8 OLI images (30 m) acquired on 15 April
2019. The images were processed successively through radiation
correction, Mosaicking, and clip by the Suzhou boundary. We then used
the Mahalanobis Distance supervised classifier to categorize the images
into urban, non-urban and water body (Fig. 2). Table 1 shows the rapid
urban growth at Suzhou from 2009 to 2014, where the urban land
increased from 38.8% to 58.7% (excluding water bodies), with a growth
rate of over 50%. From 2014 to 2019, the urban land continued to
expand, but at a slower rate and with a growth rate of 17.5%.
Urban growth is usually related to three dimensions: social, eco­
nomic, and environmental (United Nations, 2019). Thus, its driving
factors mostly include biophysical conditions, socioeconomic activities,
and landscape dynamics (Shu et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2018; Wang
et al., 2020). In this study, we chose eleven factors including population,
gross domestic product (GDP), terrain conditions (i.e., slope), and
proximity to urban infrastructure (Table 2). The maps used to extract the
driving factors were provided by the National Geometrics Center of
China (ngcc.sbsm.gov.cn). Due to limitations of existing data sources,
the intensity-related factors including slope, population density and
GDP had lower resolution. Therefore, we adopted the bilinear interpo­
lation on the three intensity-related layers so that their resolution can
match the 30 m land use maps. For the proximity-related factors, we

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Table 2 3. Methods
The selected driving factors of urban growth and development of Suzhou.
Category Name Explanation Data source and extraction 3.1. Modeling workflow
method

Proximity- D-city Distance to Suzhou’s administrative Fig. 4 shows that our procedure for the CA-based urban growth
related Suzhou city division vector map, extracted modeling include three steps: (1) data pre-processing: described in the
center by Euclidian distance at a 30 m last section; (2) model calibration: the independent and dependent
Proximity- D-town Distance to resolution. variables were put into the models, and the coefficients of the three
related town centers
models (NESF, LESF and LOGR) were calculated for defining the cor­
Proximity- D-subway Distance to Suzhou’s road network vector responding land transition rules; and (3) model validation: the land
related subway map, extracted by Euclidian
change transition rules and constructed CA models were performed to
Proximity- D-railway Distance to distance at a 30 m resolution.
related railway stations
predict urban land use change. In the simulation stage, additional
Proximity- D-highway Distance to components such as spatial heterogeneity and constraints including
related highway water body and land available were included to simulate urban land
Proximity- D-road Distance to city change between 2009–2014 and 2014–2019. Finally, we compared the
related main roads
simulation results with the observed results, and assessed performance
Proximity- D-facility Distance to Daily facilities including stores, of the three models.
related daily facilities medical services, and schools in
the city, extracted by Euclidian
distance at a 30 m resolution. 3.2. Generic CA models
Proximity- D-tourist Distance to Tourist spots in the city,
related tourist spots extracted by Euclidian distance CA can be regarded as a state estimation model composed of a
at a 30 m resolution.
cellular space and a transition function defined within this space. In land
Intensity- Slope Average ground The 1:50,000 DEM data,
related slope interpolated at a 30 m use modeling, the state of a cell at a future time step is estimated ac­
resolution, and calculated into cording to its present state and global transition rules (White and
slope. Engelen, 1997; Lei et al., 2020):
Intensity- Population Population per Suzhou’s census data combined
related density km2 with the administrative Lsi,t+1 = f (Lsi,t , Divi , Neii,t , Rand, Res(), Count (1)
division map, interpolated at a
30 m resolution. where f is the global transition function; Lsi,t+1 and Lsi,t are the states of
Intensity- GDP GDP per km2 Suzhou’s GDP statistics
related combined with administrative
cell i at time t +1 and t; Divi is the effects of driving factors; Neii,t is the
division map, interpolated at a neighborhood effects; Rand is a stochastic factor; Res() is the land
30 m resolution. development restrictions; and Count is the total number of cells. Ac­
cording to this definition, in CA models, land use change is influenced
not only by the spatial variables but also other factors including
Table 3 neighborhood effects, land development restrictions, total cell number
Examining the multicollinearity of driving factors using VIF. and other constraints.
The model’s decision rules can be defined by transforming land
Variable VIF before Order of Reason of VIF after
selection removal removal selection transition rules into land transition probabilities and comparing them
with a predefined threshold (White and Engelen, 1997; Wu, 2002). To
D-city 24.5469 2 Large VIF Excluded
D-town 5.3401 5.1292 achieve this, we applied the land transition rule proposed by Feng and
D-subway 23.1473 4.5213 Tong (2020) to determine the transition probability:
D-railway 5.7330 4.7329 ( )
D-highway 1.8643 1.5063 PDiv × (1 + TIP)t− 1 + PNei,t × LAP + Rand × Res()
D-road 12.1258 3 Large VIF Excluded
PGlb = (2)
2
D-facility 52.7781 3.8004
D-tourist 65.9304 1 Large VIF Excluded where PGlb is the global part; PDiv is the local part defined by the driving
Slope 1.0434 4 Little Excluded
factors; the restriction component Res() includes water bodies and
influence
Population 1.6854 1.5323 available urban land cell number, as there is currently no standard urban
density planning policy available across the study area; TIP denotes a parameter
GDP 2.6317 2.5560 ranging from 0.0 to 0.1 for scaling PDiv ; LAP denotes a parameter ranging
from 0.5 to 1.0 for scaling PNei,t ; PNei,t is another local part defined by
neighborhood, which is assessed over a square cell area:
calculated their Euclidean distance from each point to the targets at a 30
∑m×m ( )
m resolution. Si,t=U (j ∕
= 1)
(3)
j
The multicollinearity test was performed because these factors may PNei,t =
m×m− 1
be related to each other and will cause variable redundancy (Chun and
∑ ( )
Keles, 2010). We adopted the variance inflation factor (VIF) method to where m×m j Si,t=U is the total number of urban cells within the m × m
examine the multicollinearity (Marcoulides and Raykov, 2019). Table 3 cells neighborhood, excluding the processing cell i. To further reflect the
shows the VIFs of all the selected factors, where the D-city, D-road, D- spatial heterogeneity in urban growth, we added the weight (w) to
tourist and Slope factors were excluded. Fig. 3 shows the spatial visu­ reflect the real neighborhood effect:
alization of the selected driving factors in Suzhou. We synthesized the ∑m×m ( )
land use change and driving factor maps, and conducted systematic PNei,t =
j Si,t=U × w (j ∕
= 1)
(4)
sampling to generate 4,369 sample points for model training. The value m×m− 1
of each driving factor map was normalized to the range of 0–1.
where w was generated by calculating the slope of 2009–2014 land use
change and then normalizing the result between 0 and 1, producing a
heterogeneity map (Feng and Tong, 2019).
According to Eq. (1), the key to define the transition rule is to define

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X. Yan et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434

Fig. 3. The spatial visualization of the selected urban growth driving factors in Suzhou.

Fig. 4. Modeling procedure using the three different CA models.

the local transition probability PDiv , which describes the direct rela­
∑
N
tionship between urban growth and driving factors. Using statistical y = β0 + (βj *Varj ) + ε (6)
methods, PDiv can be expressed as (Hu and Lo, 2007): j=1

ey
PDiv = (5) where β0 is a constant, Varj is the factor and βj is the corresponding
1 + ey
coefficient, and ε is the residuals. In the CALESF and CANESF models, y is
where y denotes an expression with parameters of factors, referring to in similar linear forms described below.
the impacts of spatial variables on urban growth. For instance, y in the
conventional CALOGR model can be expressed as (Hu and Lo, 2007):

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X. Yan et al.
Fig. 5. The procedure of training transition rules of the CANESF, CALESF and CALOGR models.
3.3. The new spatially varying CA model
3.3.1. A basic eigenvector spatial filtering (ESF)
Spatial filtering is a common statistical method in spatial analysis. It
decomposes a spatial variable into three parts: trend, spatially struc­
tured random component (i.e. spatial stochastic signal), and random
noise (Murakami, 2012; Griffith and Chun, 2014). The goal is to separate
spatially structured random component from trend and random noise,
and therefore remove spatial autocorrelation among the variables. The
eigenvalues and their accompanying eigenvectors are produced during
the separation. ESF adopts a spatial weight matrix to separate the
components, which describes the weighted relationships between each
geographic object in space (Griffith, 2003; Sinha et al., 2017). In our
CALESF and CANESF models, we adopted a distanced-based spatial weight
matrix:
Fig. 6. The derived distribution of the jth eigenvectors.
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434
d(i,j)
C(i,j) = exp(− ) (7)
r
where C(i,j) is the (i, j)th element in matrix C, d(i,j) is the Euclidean dis­
tance between sites i and j, and r is the longest distance in the minimum
spanning tree covering the sampled sites (Dray et al., 2006; Murakami
and Griffith, 2015).
The component extraction procedure of eigenvectors in ESF includes
the construction and decomposition of the transformed Moran coeffi­
cient matrix (MCM) of matrix C (Griffith and Chun, 2014):
MCM = EΛET (8)
where M = (I-11T/n), the projection matrix that centers a variable; I is
an n-by-n identity matrix and 1 is an n-by-1 vector of ones; n is the
X. Yan et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434

Table 4
The factor coefficients (CA parameters) of the three models.
Variable LOGR LESF NESF

Min 1st Qu Median Mean 3rd Qu Max

Constant − 2.0071 0.0206 0.0125 0.0125 0.0125 0.0125 0.0125 0.0125

D-town − 1.0211 0.1146 − 0.3913 − 0.0618 0.0304 0.0854 0.1697 0.8854
D-subway − 0.3845 0.0005 0.1133 0.1433 0.1476 0.1483 0.1519 0.2036
D-railway 0.7209 0.0638 − 0.0196 − 0.0196 − 0.0196 − 0.0196 − 0.0196 − 0.0196
D-highway − 0.0834 0.0033 − 0.3963 − 0.0293 0.0237 0.0066 0.0828 0.2778
D-facility − 2.8441 − 0.2107 − 0.2001 − 0.2001 − 0.2001 − 0.2001 − 0.2001 − 0.2001
Population − 2.5194 − 0.2801 − 0.3500 − 0.2750 − 0.2468 − 0.2443 − 0.2214 − 0.1344
GDP 2.0343 0.3550 0.0676 0.3203 0.3816 0.3864 0.4394 0.8518

sample size; E=(E1, E2, E3, …, En), a matrix composed of n extracted
eigenvectors; Λ is an n-by-n diagonal matrix whose diagonal elements
are the n eigenvalues λ=(λ1, λ2, λ3, …, λn).
The MC of a projected eigenvector Ej is equal to a function of its
eigenvalue λ (Tiefelsdorf and Boots, 1996):
n 2009–2014. The CA parameters and land use change estimates are then
MCj = *λ
1T C1
where C is the spatial weight matrix. It can be inferred that a larger
corresponding eigenvalue indicates greater correlation described by the
eigenvector.
3.3.2. The stationary coefficient ESF linear model (LESF)
The extracted eigenvectors and eigenvalues were then applied in the
linear regression model for analysis. The generic form of the LESF model
was expressed as (Griffith and Chun, 2014):
y = xβx + El βl + ε, ε ∼ N(0, σ2 I) (10)
where y denotes the explanatory variable; x denotes the n-by-p matrix of
p explaining variables, and βx is a p-by-1 vector of corresponding
regression parameters; El is an n-by-l matrix of l eigenvectors, and βl is a
l-by-1 vector of corresponding regression parameters; ε is an n-by-1
error vector. As the model separates the trend part xβx of the explanatory
variable from the spatial residual part El βl composed of the spatial ei­
genvectors, the trend part thus is not affected by spatial autocorrelation,
leaving the residual independent.
3.3.3. The nonstationary coefficient ESF (NESF)
The LESF model is a linear model with fixed explaining variable
coefficients. However, in real geographic scenarios, there is usually a
spatial difference in the impact (i.e., weight) of each variable, and its
coefficient may vary with space. Therefore, the LESF model was
extended to the NESF with Moran eigenvector (Murakami et al., 2016):
∑ 3.5. Model evaluation methods
y= xk ⊗ βk + Eγ + ε, γ ∼ N(0, σ2γ ∧ (α)), ε N(0, σ 2 I) (11)
( )
βk = βk,0 1 + Eγk , γk N 0, σ2γ,k ∧ (αk ) (12)
where y denotes the explanatory variable; x and βx denote the explaining
variables and corresponding regression parameters; E is a matrix of
selected eigenvectors; ε is an n-by-1 error vector.
Unlike LESF, explaining variable xk here includes spatial constant
part and spatial varying part, and corresponding coefficient βk contains
spatial constant part βk,0 1 and spatial varying part Eγk . Both γk and γ are
normal distributed random coefficients, and their corresponding
matrices ∧(αk ) and ∧(α) are symmetric matrices composed of eigen­
values multiplied by the proportional constant αk or α. Hence, the spatial
varying part of the coefficient vector can describe the spatial difference
of explaining variables, solving the non-stationarity problem of the
urban growth simulation models.
3.4. The validation procedure
In the CALESF and CANESF models, the explaining variables include
geographical coordinates and driving factors. The explanatory variable
is a binary variable of the observed value of Suzhou urban growth in
(9) obtained using OLS training in the three models (see Fig. 5). We trained
the models using free software environment RGui (Team, 2020). For
LESF and NESF, we used the “spmoran” package to extract the eigen­
vectors and eigenvalues of the sample points, and computed the model
coefficients. Fig. 6a shows the extracted 1,082 pairs of eigenvectors in
total out of the 4,369 sample points. Each eigenvector portrays a distinct
map pattern with a specified level of spatial autocorrelation (Tiefelsdorf
and Boots, 1996; Diniz-Filho and Bini, 2005). The first eigenvector has
the largest MC (i.e., the strongest spatial autocorrelation), as units with
similar values are largely clustered; while the last (j = 1082) eigenvector
has the smallest MC (i.e., the weakest spatial autocorrelation), as units
with similar values are more dispersed.
Based on the land transition rules retrieved from 2009 to 2014 urban
growth, we simulated the land use end-state of 2014, and further vali­
dated our models by simulating land use end-state of 2019. In the model
simulation, we set TIP to 0.01 and LAP to 0.8, and the neighborhood a
square 5 × 5 cell area following earlier publications (Feng and Tong,
2019). By comparing the global transition probability PGlb of each land
cell to a predefined threshold Pthd , its future state Lsi,t+1 can be deter­
mined. If PGlb > Pthd , the land cell will convert to urban state; and vice
versa. The suitable threshold was defined by the urban land cell avail­
ability constraint. We experimented with different thresholds and
simulated land use predicted states under the thresholds until the dif­
ference between the predicted number and the actual number of urban
land cells was less than 1%, then the obtained threshold and simulation
results were considered valid.
To evaluate the transition rules, we selected the Akaike Information
Criterion (AIC) and statistics of residuals. Among a set of candidate
models, the one with the smallest AIC is presumed to be the most fitting
(Akaike, 2011). To examine whether ESF effectively eliminate the re­
sidual clustering, we analyzed the residual distribution of the three
models by calculating the spatial autocorrelation statistics including
Moran’s I, its z-score and its p-value (Jong et al., 1984).
The overall accuracy (ACC) was generated from the error matrix to
describe the proportion of all correct results in the total observed value
in the model, reflecting the model’s ability to predict the urban pattern
expansion at a specific time. Figure of Merit (FOM) was also used to
evaluate the simulation results (Pontius et al., 2011). We divided the
simulation results into: the initial urban land, correct rejection (correctly
modeled non-urban land), hit (correctly modeled new urban land), miss
(falsely modeled urban land), and false alarm (falsely modeled non-
urban land). FOM can be represented as:

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X. Yan et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434

Fig. 7. The coefficient map and frequency of each factor for the CANESF model.

Hit a certain time period (Pontius et al., 2008).

FOM = (13)
Hit + Miss + False alarm
The equation shows that FOM represents the proportion of correctly
modeled changes in the total changes in the prediction results, thus
reflecting the sensitivity of the model to the detection of urban growth in

Fig. 8. The land use transition probability maps of the three models and their summary statistics in each district.

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X. Yan et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434

Table 5 town, railway, subway and highway weigh next, where highway and
The evaluation of the land transition rules defined by the three models. subway have relatively minor influences in both models.
Index LOGR LESF NESF Different from the former models, the spatially non-stationary CAN­
ESF model does exhibit spatial variance in the factor coefficients (CA
Moran’s I 0.0812 0.0063 0.0055
Z 7.5105 0.5991 0.5295 parameters) and the distribution of each factor (Fig. 7). Among these,
p-value 0.0000 0.5491 0.5965 the positivity of coefficients of D-subway, D-railway, D-facility, popu­
AIC 3115.4785 2344.2400 2309.4100 lation and GDP remain consistent, where population and subway
Adjusted R2 0.0279 0.0821 0.0840 restrain urban growth while GDP, railway, and facility promote urban
growth. The coefficients of D-town and D-highway are partly positive
4. Results and partly negative, playing a restraining role in some regions but a
promoting role elsewhere (c.f. Fig. 7).
4.1. The land transition rules For each factor in CANESF, its spatial distribution can be explained
geographically. GDP promotes urban growth of all land cells. Cells with
Table 4 shows that the coefficients of the factors calculated by the large GDP coefficient are clustered in the regional centers, or in devel­
three models are different substantially. The coefficients of CALOGR and oping zones and far suburbs. The population factor has an inhibiting
CALESF are similar, where facility, population, and GDP have a greater effect on urban growth, which is mainly restricted by high urbanization
impact on urban growth of Suzhou. Their coefficients show that a non- level in the populated areas. Spatially, cells with lower absolute co­
urban cell closer to urban facilities, with smaller population, or with efficients (i.e. weaker influence) are mainly located in the Wujiang area,
higher GDP is more likely to convert to an urban state. The influence of where the urbanization level and GDP output are relatively low. The

Fig. 9. The simulated urban patterns in 2014 with three enlarged areas.

9
X. Yan et al.
Fig. 10. Comparison between the simulations and the observed results of 2014 with ACC and FOM calculated for each district.
facility factor plays a promoting role in the whole region and the nu­
merical change is minor. The subway factor restrains urban growth, and
its spatial distribution is roughly similar to that of GDP, as cells with
larger absolute coefficients are clustered in regions with relatively low
urbanization rate, or in the far suburbs. The town factor coefficient
varies from positive (i.e., inhibiting effect) in the city center to negative
(i.e., promoting effect) in surrounding areas. In the downtown area, a
land cell further away from the town center is more likely to transform
into an urban state; and within a certain distance range, a land cell
further from the city center is less affected by the town factor. This
phenomenon can be explained by urban development policies between
the urban districts and satellite cities. The railway factor plays a pro­
moting role but the coefficient changes little. The highway factor plays a
promoting role in Changshu and Kunshan, which are close to the three
main expressways, while other regions are inhibited by this factor. In the
downtown areas of Suzhou, the urban center is often less affected by the
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434
driving factors, while these factors play a more significant role in the
urban suburbs and areas near the development zone; in other regions
with less development level but fast developing speed such as Huqiu and
Wujiang, driving factors usually have a strong effect in the urban center.
Fig. 8 shows the land transition probability maps of Suzhou produced
based on the above factor coefficients. There is a significant difference in
land transition probability among different regions in Suzhou, where the
probability of transition into urban land is smaller in the central urban
area and greater in other counties and districts in surrounding areas.
Land cells in Huqiu, Taicang, the east of Kunshan and the east of
Zhangjiagang exhibit high transition probabilities. It can be inferred that
during the study periods, Suzhou city may expand outwards from the
downtown suburbs and other regional urban centers.
Table 5 shows that the CANESF model outperforms the CALOGR and
CALESF models in each index. Moran’s I of CANESF is the smallest
(0.0055), suggesting significant reduction in the autocorrelation of the
X. Yan et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434

Table 6 decreases, the compactness of urban patterns produced by CALESF and

A summary of the model evaluation of the simulation results in 2014. CANESF becomes more significant.
Year Index LOGR LESF NESF LOGR LESF NESF
(heter) (heter) (heter) 4.3. Evaluation of simulation results
2014 ACC (%) 79.2 81.2 81.4 82.0 82.9 82.7
Kappa 57.1 61.2 61.6 62.8 64.9 64.3 Fig. 10 shows the comparison between the simulations and the
coefficient observed results of 2014, with the study area categorized into a Pontius
(%)
map, and ACC and FOM calculated for each district. It can be observed
Hit (%) 10.2 10.8 11.0 10.9 11.1 11.1
Miss (%) 9.2 9.1 9.0 8.5 8.4 8.4
that CALESF and CANESF outperform CALOGR in central city areas, while
False alarm 11.7 9.6 9.5 9.2 8.3 8.7 the three models have similar performance in other satellite cities. The
(%) comparison between the simulations and the observed results of 2019
FOM (%) 32.9 36.7 37.2 38.2 39.7 39.4 shows slightly different results (c.f. Appendix Fig. A2). Compared with
2019 ACC (%) 77.1 77.5 77.8 78.2 78.3 78.5 the results of 2014, the simulations of 2019 portray obvious increase in
Kappa 45.9 47.7 48.2 48.6 48.9 49.5 missed urban cells and false alarms.
coefficient Table 6 shows the assessment of the simulation urban patterns and
(%)
Hit (%) 19.1 19.2 19.4 19.3 19.2 19.3
urban growth in 2014 and 2019, where the ACC and FOM of CALESF and
Miss (%) 10.4 10.9 10.7 10.1 10.2 10.2 CANESF are higher than those of CALOGR. The three models incorporated
False alarm 11.8 11.1 11.2 11.5 11.1 10.9 spatial heterogeneity performed better than those without the hetero­
(%) geneity maps. Compared with 2014, the proportions of hit, miss and
FOM (%) 46.2 46.5 47.1 47.2 47.5 47.9
false alarms in the new prediction results have increased, along with a
slight decrease in the state-static ACC, while FOM increases significantly
modeling residuals; its Z score (0.5295) is smaller than 1.96 and the from below 40% to above 45%. Compared with the CALESF model, the
smallest among the three models, indicating the model’s strong reli­ nonstationary CANESF model also maintains a higher simulation accu­
ability; its AIC is the smallest among the three models, indicating the racy, indicating that the nonstationary model not only provides a more
highest goodness-of-fitting; the adjusted R2 is larger than the other two reasonable explanation for the impacts of driving factors, but also en­
models as well. These prove that ESF plays an ideal role in eliminating sures stronger simulation ability.
spatial autocorrelation and reducing the spatial clustering of modeling In comparison, the results of the three models in terms of ACC
residuals, thus substantially improving the overall fitting of the model (delineating static state) are inferior to those in terms of FOM (the ability
and its simulation results. to capture change). According to results Table 1, Suzhou still maintains
high-speed urban growth under the context of a high urbanization rate;
when the total urban land cell number has exceeded the total non-urban
4.2. The simulation results
land cell number, the non-urban land keeps decreasing, and while the
space for urban land expansion is becoming restricted, the speed of
Fig. 9a, c, & e shows the 2014 simulation results of the three CA
urban growth does not slow down. This phenomenon results in a sig­
models without spatial heterogeneity layers. All three simulations
nificant decrease in ACC resulted from mis-simulated parts as displayed
indicate Suzhou’s significant urban growth outwards from the suburbs
by ACC. In contrast, a city with a lower urbanization rate and a larger
and the town centers. Unlike the other two models, CALOGR shows
proportion of non-urban land will obviously have a higher prediction
obvious difference in expansion degree in some regions such as the three
accuracy if it has the same urban land growth and prediction results as
enlarged areas. The enlarged area-1 in east Zhangjiagang has more
Suzhou. Therefore, for highly urbanized Suzhou, it is more meaningful
urban growth patches according to CALOGR and fewer by the other two
to study the urban land transition part (the changed areas) than to
models, while the enlarged area-2 in east Taicang and the enlarged area-
evaluate the state-static ACC of the urban land patterns. From the
3 in central Huqiu have more urban growth patches according to CALESF
evaluation results, the land transition process represented by FOM in­
and CANESF. The enlarged area-2 and area-3 show that the urban pat­
dicates a good consistency between the simulated and observed land
terns predicted by CALESF and CANESF are more compact than that pre­
transformations, which is higher than the FOMs of urban growth in
dicted by CALOGR. The simulation results of the three models are slightly
many applications (Gao et al., 2020; Lei et al., 2020). These indicate that
different after adding the spatial heterogeneity layer (Fig. 9b, d, & f).
the unsatisfactory ACC and ideal FOM in the model evaluation results
The enlarged areas show that all three models generated more small-
can be well explained, and the introduction of ESF substantially
urban-patches, suggesting their effectiveness in embodying spatial het­
improved both the simulation results and the modeling ability.
erogeneity. Further simulations of 2019 using the three models show
The urban land change in the two periods can also explain the dif­
similar results (c.f. Appendix Fig. A1). Differences in the three enlarged
ference in accuracy between the simulation results of 2014 and 2019.
areas remain obvious, and as the space available for urban growth
Compared with the period from 2009 to 2014, the total urban land
continues to increase from 2014 to 2019, while the non-urban land
Table 7
continues to decrease. Therefore, it is more difficult to predict the
The GAM results analyzing the relationship between urban growth and selected
growth results, and the ACC is likely to decrease. However, the growth of
factors.
urban land from 2014 to 2019 is smaller than that of 2009 to 2014, so
Index CALOGR CALESF CANESF
the prediction of growth is more accurate.
Importance 1 Population Population Population
rank density density density 5. Discussion
2 GDP GDP D-facility
3 D-facility D-facility GDP
4 D-highway D-town D-subway CA models are effective systems that can capture urban land use
5 D-railway D-subway D-town dynamics and predict future scenarios. Considering the spatial auto­
6 D-subway D-railway D-railway correlation and spatial non-stationarity of urban growth dynamics, we
7 D-town D-highway D-highway
adopted ESF in CA models in our study of Suzhou. In the model training,
ADE 22.6% 16.8% 16.5% the ESF method was introduced to extract eigenvectors and eigenvalues
R2 0.218 0.156 0.154 of Suzhou’s urban spatial structure; a spatial nonstationary NESF was
AIC 3408.567 3615.985 3633.396
established to allow the driving factor coefficients vary across space, and

11
X. Yan et al.
Fig. A1. The simulated urban patterns in 2019 with three enlarged areas.
the spatially stationary LESF and LOGR were also used as comparison.
The results showed significant reduction of spatial autocorrelation and
spatial clustering of residuals in LESF and NESF, indicated by the
calculated Moran’s I of the land transition rules, with substantial
improvement of the overall fitting of the model and its simulation results
compared with LOGR.
To examine the ability of the driving factors in explaining the
simulated urban growth, we applied the generalized additive model
(GAM) to address the relationships between urban growth of 2009–2019
and the factors in the three models (Feng et al., 2019). GAM generates
statistics including ADE, AIC, and Adj R2. Higher ADE and Adj R2 indi­
cate stronger explanatory ability of the included factors regarding the
modeling residual deviance, while a relatively smaller AIC suggests a
better fitting performance. It also produces the importance rank of the
factors in terms of their influences. Table 7 shows the results of the
GAMs, where Population density was defined as the most influencing
factor in all three models. The three models proved to be effective with
the factors explaining over 16% of the total residual deviance of the
simulation results. This is strong evidence of the selected factors
12
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434
sufficiently play influencing roles.
Compared with the SAR method that incorporates spatial autocor­
relation into the transition rule implicitly (Feng et al., 2018; Gao et al.,
2020), the ESF method gives an explicitly portrait of spatial autocorre­
lation by containing a spatial related part of eigenvectors in its expres­
sion, as well as visualized maps of projected eigenvectors. In addition,
the strength of NESF lies in its ability to solve spatial autocorrelation and
spatial non-stationarity simultaneously. This is an advantage over the
non-stationary GWR method in terms of handling spatial autocorrelation
(Griffith, 2008). GWR was used by Feng and Tong (2018) to simulate
urban land change in central Suzhou area. Focusing on different time
periods, their GWR model detected more urban growth and achieved
higher accuracy, while our ESF method displayed a growth in FOM. Both
methods portrayed good spatial variance.
In fact, ESF has become an increasingly popular method to address
spatial dependence in spatial analysis. Apart from land use study, ESF
has been used in spatial interacted data analyses (Chun, 2008; Griffith,
2009; Chun and Griffith, 2011) and some social related issues such as
criminal analyses (Chun, 2014). All these applications have revealed
X. Yan et al.
Fig. A2. Comparison between the simulations and the observed results of 2019 with ACC and FOM calculated for each district.
simplicity and flexibility as one of ESF’s advantages (Murakami and
Griffith, 2015). As the basic model of ESF (i.e., LESF) is identical to the
standard linear regression models, it is easy to implement and extend the
basic model for various purposes (Murakami et al., 2016; Thayn, 2017).
Other studies have also shown that compared with OLS linear regression
or SAR, ESF produces an enhanced and robust statistical result, as its
parameters appear to be unbiased, relatively efficient, and consistent
(Thayn and Simanis, 2012; Griffith and Chun, 2014).
Our evaluation of 2014 and 2019 results shows that ESF works even
better when incorporated with spatial heterogeneity. The resulted ACC
and FOM, as well as the differences in the distribution of simulations
have all suggested an improved performance of this approach. Earlier
studies have also adopted various methods to interpret spatial hetero­
geneity. Some incorporated spatial heterogeneity into the transition
rules defined by driving factors (with spatial varying parameters) and
produced non-stationary probability maps, which reflect spatial het­
erogeneity implicitly or explicitly (Basile et al., 2014; Feng and Tong,
2018). Compared with these methods, our approach comprised spatial
heterogeneity into the transition rules defined by neighborhood,
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102 (2021) 102434
applying a global non-stationary rule defined by driving factors simul­
taneously, which gives a more comprehensive description of spatial
heterogeneity into CA models. Feng and Tong (2019) also built CA
models by incorporating the spatial heterogeneous weight in the
neighborhood effect. Their experiments together with ours suggest land
change gradient-based neighboring weight as an effective way to
interpret spatial heterogeneity in the CA transition rules.
Although transition rules defined by the global variables are essential
in CA modeling, the simulation results are also affected by parameters
including the study area, neighborhood configuration, cell size, spatial
scale, urban planning policy, and the sample selection (Aburas et al.,
2016; Abdullahi and Pradhan, 2018; Roodposhti et al., 2020). In our
study, we set the study area, cell size, spatial scale, and sampling
configuration as fixed, and included the neighborhood effect, water
bodies, urban land availability, and a stochastic factor as additional
constraint factors. Also, urban planning policy is an influential factor in
determining urban growth in CA modeling (Kim et al., 2019). However,
as planning policies differ at the provincial, municipal or township
levels, we could not acquire a recognized variable layer to represent
X. Yan et al.
Suzhou’s urban planning constraint. Instead we used a stochastic factor
to substitute its impacts.
6. Conclusions
We developed two CA models (i.e. CALESF and CANESF) to simulate
rapid urban land-use change by incorporating eigenvector spatial
filtering and spatial nonstationary into the land transition rules. The new
models were applied to derive the land transition rules and simulate
urban growth in Suzhou from 2009 to 2019, as well as a contrastive
CALOGR model. Our results show that all three models appear effective in
capturing urban growth, with the OAs over 75% and FOMs over 30%,
indicating the feasibility of statistic methods in acquiring CA transition
rules. CALESF and CANESF are superior to CALOGR in assessing both urban
growth end-state and change, and CANESF slightly outperforms CALESF in
most cases. The ESF method was applied in an attempt to eliminate
spatial autocorrelation in CA modeling, and the calculated Moran’s I of
the land transition rules strongly proved its effectiveness. We also added
the weight of neighboring cells as a neighborhood effect to reflect the
heterogeneity of urban growth between different cells. The resulted ACC
and FOM, as well as the differences in the distribution of simulations
have all suggested an improved performance of this approach. Through
the incorporation of ESF and spatial nonstationary, not only the simu­
lation accuracy and sensitivity are improved, but also further urban
analysis can be conducted through the obtained driving factors param­
eters and probability maps.
We chose Suzhou as the study area given its universality and
representativeness as well as its rapid development speed, and it is
convincing that our models are applicable and reliable in most rapid
urban growth simulations. Future work should also apply the same
model and method on another city with fast change rate but lower ur­
banization level than Suzhou to further verify the fitting of the model, as
the relationship between urbanization level and simulation accuracy
remains to be tested.
Funding
This work was supported by and the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (42071371), and the National Key R&D Program of
China (2018YFB0505000 and 2018YFB0505400).
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Appendix
See Fig. A1 and A2.
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