Assessment of landscape change is critical for attainment of regional sustainability goals. Urban growth assessments are needed because over half the global population now lives in cities, which impact biodiversity, ecosystem structure and ecological processes. Open space protection is needed to preserve these attributes, and provide the resources humans need. The San Francisco Bay Area, Califo...

Developed for Internet-based simulations, the Urban Growth Simulator allows users to select from a suite of available options for growth management when generating build-out scenarios. With all required data layers for the 15-county region in northeast Ohio freely accessible and available from the simulator's server, planners, government officials, and the general public can use the Urban Growt...

High-resolution numerical simulations of the urban heat island (UHI) effect with the widely-used Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are assessed. Both the sensitivity of the results to the simulation setup, and the quality of the simulated fields as representations of the real world, are investigated. Results indicate that the WRF-simulated surface temperatures are more sensitive to t...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of the recent patterns and trends of urban growth in developing countries. Over the last 20 years many urban areas have experienced dramatic growth, as a result of rapid population growth and as the world’s economy has been transformed by a combination of rapid technological and political change. Around 3 billion people—virtually half of ...

The objective of this paper is to develop and implement a Cellular Automata (CA) algorithm to simulate urban growth process. Indianapolis city, Indiana is selected as a case study to simulate its urban growth over the last three decades. Urban growth simulation for an artificial city is carried out first. It evaluates a number of urban sprawl parameters including the size and shape of neighborh...

Analyzing spatiotemporal characteristics of the historical urbanization process is essential in understanding the dynamics of urbanization and scientifically planned urban development. Based on historical urban area maps and remote sensing images, this study examined the urban expansion of Shenyang from 1910 to 2010 using area statistics, typology identification, and landscape metrics approache...

“Urban Pixels” are wireless, solar-powered lighting units for cities that blur the boundary between digital display technology and traditional urban lighting. By combining a renewable energy source with RF communication it is possible to achieve a self-sustaining, distributed display network that can be attached to any building surface and reconfigured with ease. Depending on their configuratio...