Improving urban growth forecasting with cellular automata: a case study for Hervey Bay

This paper investigates approaches for predicting patterns of urban growth within land use planning scenarios. Planning scenarios for a coastal area in Australia use demographic (socio-economic) and land use (physical and environmental) to assess the impacts of growth. The paper describes two different approaches for defining the spatial pattern of growth: i) based upon a supply and demand for land uses, and ii) historical growth patterns modelled using cellular automata. Predicting patterns of growth is important in spatial planning to assess impacts of future growth pressure.