On August 20-23, 2023, the Global Smart Cities Summit cum The 3rd International Conference on Urban Informatics (GSCS & ICUI 2023) were held in Hongkong, China. The report titled "A user-friendly assessment of six common used urban growth models" by Zhang Yuzhi, a doctoral student from the Department of Earth System Science (DESS), Tsinghua University, won the "Best Presentation Award".

Award certificate

GSCS & ICUI is a biannual conference bringing together scholars and experts in the fields of smart cities and urban informatics to discuss the future development of smart cities. This year’s conference saw more than 500 participants from all over the world, including more than 230 presenters.

Zhang Hanzi delivers a presentation at the conference

The different modeling frameworks and algorithms in the present simulation and prediction of urban growth have given rise to many different urban growth models (UGMs), leading to researchers’ lack of reference when choosing a model. Subjective selection of a model may exacerbate the uncertainty of the prediction results. To solve this problem, Zhang Yuzhi, under the guidance of her supervisor Professor Yang Jun from the DESS, Tsinghua University, reviewed the use of various urban growth models in a simulation study of urban growth from 2000 to 2021. On this basis, six most commonly used urban growth models were compared in detail. These models included inputted data and the number of adjustable parameters. In addition, the study further analyzed inputted data with the same resolution ratio and types to simulate and predict urban expansion, and verified and compared the prediction results of six urban growth models.

Urban growth models are main research tool to predict urban growth, and this study can provide reference for researchers in their choice of suitable models to simulate and predict urban growth. The research results have been published as a paper titled "A user-friendly assessment of six commonly used urban growth models" in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems in September 2023.

Full-text link of the paper:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0198971523000674

Written by Zhang Yuzhi

Edited by Wang Jiayin

Reviewed by Yang Jun and Geng Rui