Modeling urban growth based on transport and accessibility changes in Kurunegala

Abstract

This research uses spatial modeling techniques to assess how urbanization is affected by transportation and accessibility in Kurunegala. It has been built on an approach to simulate urban growth patterns by examining a wide range of variables, such as land use, excluded areas from development, slope, and road network. The findings indicate that improvements in transportation and ease of access have a major bearing on urban development, especially in regions with higher population density and economic activity. The level of urbanization considering road influence is 6.78%, and when it is not considered it is 13.13%. The study used a CA model for comparing and contrasting the simulated results with the Agent-based (Net Logo) modeling outputs. The results generated from the CA-Python simulation, the level of urbanization was obtained as 11.12% and the results are quite similar when it is not considering the road-influenced growth. Accordingly, when road influence growth is considered, less urban dissemination can be observed and the results can be emphasized using the CA model. The model validation of the derived results was done using the urbanization level and the comparison of the level of urban area expansion. The validation of the CA-Python results was done using the same model itself.