Photonirvachak

J. Indian Soc. Remote Sens. (September 2009) 37:363376

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A Neural Network based Urban Growth Model of an Indian City

S. Maithani

Received: 25 March 2009 / Accepted : 27 March 2009

Keywords Spatial urban growth . Artificial neural network . Multilayer perceptron . Spatial metrics . Kappa . Urban growth potential

Abstract The aim of the study reported in this paper is to demonstrate that the subjectivity in urban growth modeling and the calibration time can be reduced by using objective techniques like Artificial neural network (ANN). As a case study, the ANNbased model was applied to simulate the urban growth of Saharanpur city in India. In the proposed model, remote sensing and GIS were used to generate site attributes, while ANN was used to reveal the relationships between urban growth potential and the site attributes. Once ANN learnt the relationship, it was then used to simulate the urban growth. Different

feed forward ANN architectures were evaluated in this study and finally the most optimum ANN architecture was selected for future growth simulation. The simulated urban growth maps were evaluated on a cell by cell matching using Kappa index and three spatial metrices namely, Mean Patch Fractal Dimension, Landscape Shape Index and Percentage of like Adjacencies. The most optimal architecture was then used subsequently for simulating the future urban growth. The study results thus, demonstrated that the ANN-based model can objectively simulate urban growth, besides successfully coupling GIS, remote sensing and ANN.

S. Maithani ( ) Human Settlement Analysis Division, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, 4, Kalidas Road, Dehradun 248 001, Uttarakhand, India

Introduction The urban population of India increased from 217.6 million to 285 million in the last decade and presently constitutes 27.8% of the total population (Census of India, 2001), it is expected to increase to 40% of the total Indian population by the year 2021 (GGIM,

email : maithanis@yahoo.com maithani@iirs.gov.in

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2005). This increasing population pressure is leading to unregulated growth of urban areas. The negative impacts associated with the unregulated growth of urban areas are namely, permanent loss of agricultural land, reduced ground water infiltration, raised greenhouse gas emissions, elevated air and noise pollution levels, damage to various ecological cycles etc. (Gowda and Sridhara, 2000; Kulshrestha, 2004, 2007a, 2007b; Tayal and Bharat, 1997). Faced with these severe negative impacts, there is an urgent need for urban planners to develop predictive models of urban growth. These models not only provide an understanding of the urban growth process, but also provide realizations of the numerous potential growth scenarios that an urban area may take in the future. This kind of information can be very helpful, in regulating urban growth and proper planning can also be done for the future urbanizable areas. Over the past few years, a number of models of urban growth have been developed namely by, White and Engelen, 1993, 1994, 1997; Barredo et al., 2003, 2004; Wu, 1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2002; Wu and Webster, 1998, 2000; Li and Yeh, 2000; Ward et al., 2000. However, these models are based on subjectively defined rules. The rules are based on the experts experience of the subject and study area and therefore, contain some bias towards the assumptions made. Secondly, it is extremely time consuming to find proper values for the model parameters during the calibration process. To overcome these limitations, an ANN-based model of urban growth has been proposed in the present study. The aim of the study is to demonstrate, that the subjectivity in rule definition and model calibration can be reduced by using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The research also aims at demonstrating the use of remote sensing and GIS as spatial data provider and spatial data handler respectively in the proposed model. In the proposed model, remote sensing data were used to provide empirical data about urban growth and other spatial information. GIS was used for handling this spatial data and generating site attributes.

Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used to reveal the relationships between future urban growth potential and the site attributes. The applicability of ANN-based urban growth models to Indian cities has also been lacking. Hence, as a case study, the ANN-based model was applied to simulate the urban growth of Saharanpur city in Uttar Pradesh state, India.

Artificial neural network Artificial neural network (ANN) is a non-parametric technique for quantifying and modeling complex behavior and patterns. Unlike the commonly used statistical methods, ANN has the following advantages (Li and Yeh, 2001): a. It makes no assumptions regarding the distribution of the data. b. Measurement data of different types can be used. c. They can solve highly nonlinear problems. Since, urban growth is also a complex phenomena in which a number of variables interact non-linearly with each other, the application of ANN to model urban growth appears quite logical. In ANN, the basic processing elements are the neurons that are arranged in different layers and work in parallel to transform input data into output entities. The neurons in each layer are connected to the neurons in the next successive layer and each connection carries a weight (Atkinson and Tatnall, 1997). This arrangement of neurons in layers and the pattern of connection within and in between these layers is called ANN architecture. In the present study, a feedforward multilayer perceptron (MLP) ANN architecture has been used and is shown in Fig. 1. The MLP consists of three types of layers, i.e., input, hidden and output layers. The black circles in Fig. 1 represent the neurons, in input, hidden and output layers, while the lines

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represent the weighted connections between neurons in these different layers. Since the ANN architecture used is a feedforward architecture, a link is only allowed from a neuron in a layer to neurons in the next subsequent layer. There are no interconnections between neurons within the same layer or with neurons in the preceding layers (Kavzoglu and Mather, 2003). The ANN is described by a sequence of numbers indicating the number of neurons in each layer. For example, the ANN shown in Fig. 1 has a 4-5-1 architecture, i.e., it contains four neurons in the input layer, five neurons in the hidden layer and one neuron in the output layer.

Fig. 1 A feedforward MLP ANN architecture.

netj = weighted input at neuron j n = number of neurons in the input layer The neuron j generates an activation signal, in response to the netj. The activation signal is generated via a transfer function. Any differentiable non-linear function can be used as a transfer function, but a sigmoid function is generally used due to its useful properties like monotonicity and continuity which help in increasing the learning capacity of the ANN (Haykin, 1999, Kumar, 2004; Sivanandam et al., 2006). The sigmoid function constraints the ANN output between 0 and 1. The activation signal generated at neuron j becomes the input to the neurons in the next layer. Thus, all hidden and output neurons collect the activation signals of the neurons in the previous layer and then generate an output activation signal themselves. This activation signal becomes the input for neurons in the subsequent layers. The number of neurons in the input layer depends on the number of input data sources. The number of hidden layers and their neurons are often determined by trial and error or literature-driven thumb rules. The number of neurons in the output layer depends on the number of classes being mapped (Arora et al., 1998, 2004; Kavzoglu and Mather, 2003; Kanungo et al., 2006). ANN training In order to use the ANN for prediction purposes, the ANN must be taught the characteristics of the dataset being processed. This is called ANN training. Once the ANN learns the characteristics of the dataset, the ANN is considered as trained and the whole dataset is passed through this trained ANN to generate the output. A training dataset is usually employed for training the ANN. The training dataset consists of input values and the desired output values corresponding to these input values. The desired output values can be obtained from field, remote sensing data and other secondary sources.

The neurons in the input layer only transmit data to the next layer, while the hidden and output layer neurons actively process the data. Each neuron in the hidden and output layers responds to the weighted inputs it receives from the connections to the neurons in the preceding input layer. If i is the neuron in the input layer and j is a neuron in the next layer, then the weighted input (netj) that neuron j receives is computed as,
net j

I i Wij (0 d i dn)

(1)

where, Ii = input signal from neuron i Wij = weight associated with connection between neurons i and j

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Although the ANN can be trained using a number of training algorithms, in the present study, the backpropagation (BP) learning algorithm proposed by Rumelhart et al. (1986) has been used for training the ANN due to its simplicity and wide applicability. In the BP algorithm, the ANN weights are randomly initialized and the training data are fed to the input neurons. The hidden neurons collect the data from input neurons and generate an activation signal as the input to the next layer. The ANN outputs generated at the output neurons, are compared with the desired outputs. The error (difference) between the ANN outputs and the desired outputs is back propagated through the ANN and is minimized by updating the interconnection weights between the layers. This process of backpropogating the errors is repeated iteratively with weights being recomputed in each iteration, until the error falls below a predefined threshold value. Thus, during training, the ANN weights are continuously adjusted till they are optimized (Haykin, 1999; Kumar, 2004). In order, to evaluate the performance of the trained ANN on an independent data set, a testing dataset is also fed to the trained ANN. A minimal difference between the overall accuracies obtained on the training and testing datasets indicates that the trained ANN has not only learned the data characteristics, but also performed well on the unseen data (testing data) (Kanungo et al., 2006). The best ANN architecture is selected based on the minimum difference between the overall accuracies obtained on the training and testing datasets. Since in the present study, a sigmoid activation function was used, the ANN output values varied from 0 to 1. The ANN values in the present case represented the urban growth potential (UGP) at each location in the study area. A value of 1 denotes maximum potential for future urban growth while a value of 0 denotes the minimum urbanization potential for future urban growth. The intermediate values between 0 and 1, indicate different potentials for future urban growth.

Study area The study area consisting of Saharanpur city and its surrounding areas covers an area of about 80 km2 and encompasses the geographical extents, 2955' N to 300' N latitude and 7730' E to 7735' E. The city is located in the fertile tract of Upper Ganga-Yamuna daob (tract of land between two confluent rivers) in the western part of Uttar Pradesh State (India). The city, besides being a major market of food grains also acts as a service centre for the surrounding hinterland, as it provides education and medical facilities. The city is well connected by several roads and the railways which provide transport to other important cities and in its regional setting has a very significant place as a transport node. Lately, due to the emergence of several industries (e.g., paper, strawboard, tobacco), the city has lost its agrarian fabric and the growing numbers of its labour force are presently employed in the secondary and tertiary sectors. This development of industry and services is attracting migrants not only from the citys hinterland but also from far away areas. As a result, the city is expanding rapidly, onto the nearby surrounding fertile agricultural lands (Subudhi, 1998; Fazal, 2000). Hence, there is an urgent need to model the growth pattern of the city, so that proper planning measures can be taken for future urbanizable areas.

Data sources used for creating spatial database of study area Built-up/ non built-up maps The remote sensing data used to produce the builtup/non built-up area maps of the years 1993 and 2001 (Fig. 2a and 2b) consisted of aerial photographs (1:10,000 scale) and remote sensing data acquired by Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite 1C, PAN sensor (1:12,500 scale) respectively. Both data products were panchromatic, so the built-up area has a blocky appearance with a light tone. The vegetated

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 2 Built-up/ non built-up areas in the years (a) 1993 and (b) 2001 as interpreted from remote sensing data.

areas have a light to dark tone with rough texture. Bare soil has a very light tone, while the water bodies have a dark tone. The overall accuracy of the 1993 and 2001 built-up/ non built-up maps prepared by visual interpretation of the respective data products, was 93% and 91% respectively. Generation of road network map A road network map depicting major and minor roads was generated by a visual image interpretation of the 1993 aerial photographs. The guide map and master plan of Saharanpur city were used as secondary data sources. Delineation of city core The city core was demarcated after consultation with the local planning authorities. Most of the

commercial and institution facilities in Saharanpur city are located in the city core. This area constitutes the old part of the city and has a very high built-up area and population density.

Factors driving urban growth In the present study urban growth was defined in terms of increase in built-up area, over a period of time. An urban growth map, depicting the increase in built-up area during the 19932001 period was derived from the built-up/ non built-up maps of the years 1993 and 2001, using the overlay function of ARC/INFO. A value of 1 was assigned to the cells, which changed from non built-up to built-up during 19932001 and a value of 0 was assigned to cells, which remained non-built during the 19932001

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period. Analysis of the urban growth map for 1993 2001 revealed that 630 hectares of land has changed from non built-up to built-up during the period. Due to the presence of a defense establishment, i.e., Remount Depot, in the east direction, the growth has been restricted in this direction. As accessibility to roads and higher level facilities (mainly located in the city core) are important factors driving urban growth, the urban growth pattern was analyzed with respect to distance from roads and the city core. After consultation with the local planning authorities and based on field knowledge, buffer zones of different distances were created around the road network and the city core. These buffer zones were overlaid with the urban growth map of the 19932001 period, in order to find out the spatial distribution of urban growth in these different buffer zones The results showed that 79% of the total urban growth in 19932001 had taken place within a distance of 400 meters from the roads. Similarly 90% of the total urban growth in 19932001 has taken place within a distance of 4000 meters from the city core. However, besides these two factors, the accessibility to basic infrastructure facilities (i.e., water supply, sewerage, electricity, banks, shopping centre, medical centre, etc.) also influences the urban growth process (Paul and Bharat, 1997; Gupta and Bawa, 2004; Gowda, 1998). Thus, urban growth in the study area was defined as a function of the following three factors (hereafter causative factors), i) Accessibility to roads (connectivity is a major factor affecting the urban growth process) ii) Accessibility to the city core, (most of the higher level facilities are located in the city core). iii) Accessibility to infrastructural facilities. Raster maps corresponding to the three factors were generated using the data layers generated in section 4. Standard GIS operations like Euclidian distance, focal sum etc., were used to create these raster data layers. The cell size of these raster maps was kept as

20 meters. The cell size was kept as 20 meters as a smaller cell size increased the map size and model processing time, while a coarser cell size led to generalization and loss of detail. The raster maps generated corresponding to the three causative factors are discussed below : i) Accessibility to roads : The accessibility to roads network was measured in terms of Euclidian distance from the nearest road. Raster maps depicting the Euclidian distance of each cell from the nearest major and minor roads were generated using the Euclidian distance function of ARC/INFO GRID. ii) Accessibility to the city core : The accessibility to the city core was measured in terms of Euclidean distance from the city core, where most of the higher level commercial facilities are located. A raster map depicting the Euclidian distance of each cell from the city core was generated using the Euclidian distance function of ARC/INFO GRID. iii) Accessibility to infrastructural facilities : The accessibility to infrastructural facilities has been measured in terms of: a) Distance from existing built-up cell : The cost of connecting to urban services (e.g., water supply, sewerage etc.) decreases with the distance from existing built-up areas, as these basic urban services are already present in existing builtup areas. A raster map showing the Euclidean distance of each cell from the nearest built-up cell was generated using the Euclidian distance function of ARC/INFO GRID. b) Amount of builtup cells in the neighbourhood : A larger proportion of built-up area in the neighbourhood implies availability of localized facilities, i.e., shopping centre, medical centre, banking, post office etc., necessary to support the population. A raster map showing the amount of built-up in a 500-meter circular neighbourhood of each cell was generated using the focal sum function of ARC/INFO GRID. The size of 500-meter

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neighbourhood was decided after consultation with the local planning authorities. These five raster maps formed the spatial dataset corresponding to the three causative factors. The five maps were normalized from 0 to 1 by dividing each value in the map by the maximum value contained in the map. The maps were normalized so as to make them compatible with the sigmoid activation function used in the ANN.

Implementation of the ANN model The proposed ANN model is based on the dichotomy of built-up and non built-up areas. The model simulated transition from non built-up to built-up areas with no reverse process taking place. The ANN processing was implemented using the Neural Network Tool Box of MATLAB software. The following steps were followed in the implementation of the ANN model : i) Generation of maps corresponding to factors driving urban growth in study area ii) Generation of maps depicting actual urban growth in study area iii) Generation of training and testing dataset from the data created in step i) and ii) iv) Design of ANNs with different network architectures v) Training and evaluation of ANNs vi) Selection of optimal ANN architecture vii) Masking of exclusionary areas viii) Simulation of urban growth using the optimal ANN architecture i) Generation of maps corresponding to factors driving urban growth in study area : As discussed in section 5, urban growth in the study areas was expressed as a function of the following five raster maps, 1. Euclidian distance of each cell from the nearest major road 2. Euclidian distance of each cell from the nearest minor road

Euclidean distance of a cell from the nearest built-up 4. Euclidian distance of each cell from the city core 5. Amount of built-up in neighbourhood (500 metre) ii) Generation of maps depicting actual urban growth in study area : An urban growth map depicting cells that transit from non built-up to built-up area during 19932001 was generated using remote sensing data and GIS tools as discussed in section 5. iii) Generation of training and testing dataset : Using ERDAS IMAGINE software, 1800 sampling points were selected from the urban growth map of 19932001 period. The number of training sample points was based on the heuristic 60 Ni (Ni +1) given by Kavzoglu and Mather (2003), where Ni is the number of input neurons. Since there are five neurons in the input layer corresponding to the five raster maps, so 1800 training sample points were selected. Out of these 1800 sampling points, 900 points belonged to the urbanized category (cells which transit from non built-up in 1993 to built-up in 2001 and were assigned a value of 1) while 900 points belonged to the non-urbanized category (cells which remained non built-up in 1993 and 2001 and were assigned a value of 0). This was done so as to ensure equal representation of both the classes. These sample point coordinates were then imported into Arc/Info for extraction of cell attributes that were associated with these sampling points in the five raster maps (the five raster maps are discussed in section 5). The sample function of Arc/Info was used for retrieval of the cell attributes. This dataset consisting of 1800 sample points along with the associated site attributes was used as the training data. Table 1 shows an example of the training dataset. In the table the values under f1,f2,f3,f4 and f5 columns show the attributes value at a cell corresponding to the five factors maps, while the

3.

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target value of 1 or 0 indicates whether the cell transit from non built-up to built-up or remained non builtup during the 19932001 period respectively.

driven thumb rules given by Kanellopoulos and Wilkinson (1997), Hush (1989), Hecht-Nielsen (1987), Wang (1994), Ripley (1993) and Paola (1994).

Table 1 Example of training dataset consisting of cell attributes and the target value f1 Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 Sample 4 Sample 5 0.132 0.015 0.015 0.009 0.009 f2 0.407 0.343 0.390 0.409 0.402 f3 0.010 0.010 0.007 0.007 0.007 f4 0.345 0.181 0.089 0.236 0.222 f5 0.323 0.151 0.189 0.336 Target output 0 0 1 1 1

In order to determine the generalization capability of the ANN, a testing dataset of 1800 sample points was also created in the same manner as the training data set. However, the training and testing datasets were mutually exclusive (Foody and Arora, 1997). iv) Design of ANNs with different network architectures : In the present model a feed forward MLP ANN architecture having one input layer, one or two hidden layers and one output layer was used. The number of hidden layers was kept as one or two as these are sufficient for most of the classification like problems (Kanellopoulos and Wilkinson, 1997; Arora et al., 2004). The input layer had five neurons corresponding to the five raster maps (discussed in section 5). The output layer had one neuron since in the output only one class, i.e., the UGP at each cell in the study area was being mapped. The value of the UGP varied from 01. A value of 1 indicated maximum potential for transiting from non built-up to built-up and a value of 0 denoted minimum UGP. The intermediate values between 0 and 1, indicated different potential for transiting from non built-up to built-up. The number of neurons in the hidden layers were determined based on trial and error or literature

v) Training and evaluation of ANN : There are a number of variants of the back propogation algorithm available like, variable learning rate, conjugate gradient, resilient backpropogation, Quasi-newton and LevenbergMarquardt. In the present study, the LevenbergMarquardt algorithm which had the fastest convergence was used for training the ANN. The details of this algorithm can be found in Hagan and Menhaj (1994) and Demuth and Beale (2003). Different ANN architectures were trained using the training data discussed in step (iii). The testing dataset was also passed through each of the ANN architectures, in order to determine the generalization capability of the trained ANNs. vi) Selection of optimal ANN architecture : The ANN architectures, for which the difference between the training and testing data accuracies was minimum, were selected. Twelve ANN architectures (Table 2) were selected based on the difference between the training and testing data accuracies and their respective network weights were stored. vii) Masking of exclusionary areas : The restricted areas, water bodies, public grounds and gardens were treated as exclusionary zones as they had no growth potential. Hence, these areas were

J. Indian Soc. Remote Sens. (September 2009) 37:363376 Table 2 ANN architectures which gave the minimum difference between the training and testing data accuracies S No ANN Overall training Overall testing architecture accuracy accuracy 5-13-1 5-15-1 5-17-1 5-5-9-1 5-5-11-1 5-6-5-1 5-6-8-1 5-6-10-1 5-7-6-1 5-7-7-1 5-7-8-1 5-7-9-1 79.22% 67.94% 76.94% 83.67% 73.72% 79.33% 74.00% 82.78% 71.17% 90.56% 74.28% 75.56% 75.28% 64.78% 73.44% 81.11% 70.39% 77.94% 69.28% 79.67% 69.56% 87.83% 69.67% 72.67%

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Evaluation of model results The twelve simulated urban growth maps for 1993 2001 were evaluated by comparing them with the actual urban growth map of 19932001, using Kappa coefficient and spatial metrics. The Kappa coefficient (Congalton, 1991) evaluated the simulated urban growth maps on the basis of cell by cell matching of each map with the actual growth map. However, the Kappa coefficient is based on independent comparison between pairs of cells. Thus, small displacements between the actual and simulated urban growth maps are considered as errors and the same error is reported even if the displacement is of n cells or one cell (Barredo et al., 2003). The Kappa coefficient, therefore, was unable to take into account the patterns or distribution of urban growth. As the usefulness of any model is not in its correctness to predict the exact location of future growth, but on its generalization capability and the ability to simulate the future growth pattern. Hence, the simulated urban growth maps were also evaluated on the basis of three spatial metrics namely, Mean Patch Fractal Dimension, Landscape Shape Index and Percentage of like Adjacencies. These three metrices evaluated the similarity between the actual and simulated growth patterns. Kappa coefficient Kappa coefficient was computed from the confusion matrices generated by cross-tabulating the cell-bycell attributes between each of the twelve simulated urban growth maps and the actual growth map for 19932001. The values of the Kappa coefficient obtained for each of the twelve simulated urban growth maps are given in Table 2. The value of Kappa varies from 01, a Kappa value of 0.6 can be interpreted as an indication that the simulation is 60 per cent better than one resulting from chance (Lillesand and Kiefer, 2000). From Table 3, it can be observed that in general the value of Kappa

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

masked out and the model made no prediction in these areas. A mask corresponding to these areas was generated based on Survey of India topographical map and guide map of the study area. Since the model only simulated transition from non built-up to built-up with no reverse process taking place, so the built-up cells in 1993 were also masked out from the analysis. viii) Simulation of urban growth using the optimal ANN architecture : The entire dataset consisting of the five raster maps (14093 cells in each of the five raster maps) was then passed through each of the selected twelve ANN architectures. The output map obtained from each ANN architecture showed the urban growth potential (UGP) of each cell in the study area. In each of these twelve UGP maps, cells which had a UGP value of 1 were converted to built-up cells while cells having a UGP value of less than 1 did not transit to built-up and remained non built-up.

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coefficient lies between 0.6 and 0.7, which can be termed as very good as far as the prediction capability of the model on cell-to-cell basis is considered. The simulated urban growth map generated using the 57-9-1 ANN architecture had the maximum value of kappa coefficient, i.e., 0.72.
Table 3 Kappa coefficient values for each of the twelve simulated urban growth maps ANN architecture 5-13-1 5-15-1 5-17-1 5-5-9-1 5-5-11-1 5-6-5-1 5-6-8-1 5-6-10-1 5-7-6-1 5-7-7-1 5-7-8-1 5-7-9-1 Kappa 0.658 0.65 0.64 0.62 0.66 0.57 0.65 0.61 0.64 0.62 0.66 0.72

Spatial metrics Three spatial metrics were calculated for each of the twelve simulated urban growth maps and the actual growth map for 19932001, using the spatial pattern analysis software FRAGSTATS 3.3 (freely downloadable from the University of Massachusetts website, http://www.umass.com). The three spatial metrics calculated were : a. b. c. Mean Patch Fractal Dimension Landscape Shape Index Percentage of Like Adjacencies

A. Mean Patch Fractal Dimension (FRAC_MN): A patch is defined as a group of pixels that are contiguous to each other and have the same attribute value. Thus, different pockets of built-up area in a map constitute urban patches of different shape and

size. One of the basic types of shape index based on perimeter-area relationships is the fractal dimension (FD), which can be computed as 2 times the logarithm of patch perimeter (m) divided by the logarithm of patch area (m 2). FD > 1 indicates departure from Euclidean geometry (i.e., an increase in shape complexity). FD near to 1 reflects shapes with very simple perimeters such as squares. FD approaches 2, for shapes with highly convoluted, plane-filling perimeters. The fractal dimension was calculated for all the built-up patches and then it was averaged. B. Landscape Shape Index (LSI): It is defined as the total perimeter of built-up class divided by the perimeter of the built-up class, if it was aggregated into one square patch. The value of LSI = 1 when the landscape consists of a single square. The LSI increases as the class becomes more disaggregated. C. Percentage of Like Adjacencies (PLADJ): It is defined as the number of like cell adjacencies involving the urban class, divided by the total number of cell adjacencies involving the urban class, multiplied by 100. PLADJ measures the degree of aggregation of the built-up patch type. A landscape containing greater aggregation of built-up patches (e.g., larger patches with compact shapes) will contain a higher proportion of like adjacencies than a landscape containing disaggregated patch types (e.g., smaller patches). As such, this index provides an effective measure of class-specific contagion. The value of PLADJ varies from 0 to 100. PLADJ equals 0 when the corresponding class is maximally disaggregated (i.e., every cell is a different patch) and there are no like adjacencies. A PLADJ value of 100 indicates that the landscape consists of single class and all adjacencies are between the same class. The above mentioned three spatial metrics were calculated for each of the twelve simulated maps and actual urban growth map. The percentage difference between the values of the three metrics for each simulated map and the actual growth map was calculated using Equation 4 and the results were plotted as shown in Fig. 3.

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Fig. 3 Percentage difference between values of three spatial metrics calculated for the actual and simulated urban growth maps for the year 2001.

Percent difference = [ (SM s - SM r) / SM r ]*100 (4)

SM s = Spatial metrics calculated from simulated urban growth map SM r = Spatial metrics calculated from actual growth map

Results and discussion From Fig. 3 it can be observed that the 5-7-7-1 ANN architecture best simulated the urban growth pattern compared to other network architectures, as the per cent difference between the values of the three spatial metrics is least for the 5-7-7-1 ANN architecture compared to other ANN architectures. While in terms of kappa coefficient (cell to cell matching) the 5-7-9-1 ANN architecture gave the highest value of 0.72. Since urban growth is a stochastic process, so the strength of a predictive urban growth model is in its ability to simulate the future urban growth patterns, if not the exact location of future growth. Hence, an exact simulation in terms

of cell-to-cell basis was not found to be realistic because of the complexities and uncertainties of the real world. It was felt that the model should be able to simulate the overall future shape or growth pattern of the city, instead of a pixel-to-pixel match between the actual and simulated map. So the 5-7-7-1 network architecture was selected for future prediction, instead of the 5-7-9-1 network which produced the highest kappa coefficient. A visual comparison of the simulated built-up area for 2001 (Fig. 4a) with the actual growth for year 2001 revealed, that the model was able to simulate the actual urban growth pattern which had taken place in a contiguous and concentric manner around the existing built-up area. However, some growth had taken place in an isolated and patchy form in the city fringe areas, mainly in the south and north east directions. The model is not able to predict these types of growth quite accurately. Thus, the model was able to simulate the growth pattern in areas having a compact, dense and contiguous growth (city core) more accurately as compared to the areas which had

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 4 Simulated built-up areas using 5-7-7-1 ANN architecture for year (a) 2001 and (b) 2009.

a dispersed and isolated growth pattern (city fringe areas). The built-up area for year 2009 was also simulated using the trained 5-7-7-1 ANN architecture (Fig. 4b). It can be observed from Fig. 4(b), that the future urban growth will take place in a compact form and contiguous to the existing built-up areas. The areas in the north, north-west, south and south-east might experience more growth, as these areas are well served by the road network and most of the roads connecting the city to other parts of the state are located also in these areas. Growth is also expected to occur around patches of built-up areas located in the vicinity of the main city. According to the model, these fringe areas might grow in future and finally merge with the city. The area in the east direction is mainly occupied by defense establishments therefore, not much of future growth is expected in this direction.

As observed from the existing actual growth trends in the study area, (i.e., in year 2009), the city is growing mainly in the north and south directions with a number of residential areas and other facilities coming up in these areas. Besides, growth is also taking place around the areas which have developed in a patchy manner around the city. These field observations thus, also validate the predictions made by the model for 2009. Conclusions A number of models have been built by various authors, to explain urban spatial growth in terms of various variables. The definition of rules for these models is very crucial as the model performance depends on them. Most of the models follow a subjective procedure for definition of these rules, which is a very tedious process. In the present study,

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375 Barredo JI, Demicheli L, Lavalle C, Kasanko M and McCormick N (2004) Modeling future urban scenarios in developing countries: an application case study in Lagos, Nigeria. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 32: 6584 Census of India, 2001 (New Delhi: Government of India). Congalton RG (1991) A review of assessing the accuracy of classifications of remotely sensed data. Remote Sensing of Environment 37: 3546 Demuth H and Beale M (2003) Neural networks toolbox: User guide, version 4. The Mathworks, Inc., USA Fazal S (2000) Urban expansion and loss of agricultural land a GIS based study of Saharanpur city, India. Environment & Urbanization 12(2): 133149 Foody GM and Arora MK (1997) An evaluation of some factors affecting the accuracy of classification by an artificial network. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 18(4): 799810 Gowda K (1998) Forces of urban form, In International Symposium on Changing Environmental Scenario in South Asia During the Past Five Decades, 2022 December 1998, Calcutta Gowda K and Sridhara MV (2000) Sustainable city: experiences and perspectives. In International Conference on urbanisation and housing 2000, Bangalore GGIM, Good governance India magazine, available online at: www.infochangeindia.org (accessed on 4 April 2005) Gupta JK and Bawa P (2004) Selecting sites for urban development projects. Spatio-Economic Development Record 11(3): 2933 Hagan MT and Menhaj M (1994) Training feedforward networks with the Marquardt algorithm. IEEE Trans. Neural Networks 5(6): 989993 Haykin S (1999) Neural Networks: A Comprehensive Foundation. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Hecht-Nielsen R (1987) Kolmogorovs mapping neural network existence theorem. In Proceedings of the first IEEE International conference on neural networks. 21 24 June 1987, San Diego, CA Hush DR (1989) Classification with neural networks: a performance analysis. In Proceedings of the IEEE International conference on systems engineering, Ohio, USA, pp 277280 Kanellopoulos I and Wilkinson GG (1997) Strategies and best practice for neural network image classification. International Journal of Remote Sensing 18(4): 711 725

the definition of rules is done directly by the ANN. The user has to give the input variables or causative factors (which are derived from remote sensing data), once the ANN has learnt the growth pattern as a function of these causative factors, the trained ANN can then be used for future prediction. As a result, the model calibration time is reduced and not much computing power is required. In the present work, instead of using the traditional back propagation training algorithm (BP), a faster version of BP the Levenberg- Marquardt was used, which made it possible to evaluate a number of ANN architecture in less time. The simulated urban growth map had a kappa index greater than 0.6, which demonstrated that the ANN based model was able to predict the location of the built-up cells quite accurately. For evaluating the simulated urban growth pattern three spatial metrics were used. The values of these three metrics calculated for the simulated and the actual urban growth map matched very closely. Thus, it can be inferred that the model was able to simulate both the location and pattern of urban growth. Finally, it can be concluded that the model has successfully coupled GIS, remote sensing and ANN, while reducing the subjectivity in urban growth modelling at the same time.

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