Understanding Residential Expansion in Big Cities Using MAS/RE

Based on the conceptual MAS/LUCC model,a MAS/RE(Multi-agent System for Residential Expansion) model was constructed to understand the effects of human behaviors on residential expansion by analyzing the behaviors of government authorities and households.The model takes complex human actions into account,namely urban master planning,planning review and approval,policies of traffic,economy and environment,location and allocation choices of the households and the interrelationship among them.Taking Hongshan district in Wuhan as an example,the model was implemented on Arc/Info platform to simulate residential land use expansion between 1996 and 2002.