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TopPrediction Methods
Several studies addressed the urban evolution prediction and simulation, and made use of different techniques, in this respect. By investigating the literature, we noticed two major categories: the statistical variable based techniques and the rule based techniques.
Variable based techniques such as logistic regression and Markov Chains based models, handle mathematical and statistical urban variables, such as the extent value of built up areas, population density, distance to main roads, etc., and their interrelation to understand the urban reality then predict it by means of statistical and mathematical operations. Many predictive variable based models employed logistic regression, a type of regression analysis used for predicting the outcome of a categorial criterion variables, based on one or more predictor variables, for empirically forecasting the probabilities of events such as urban changes (Fang, Gertner, Sun, & Anderson, 2005).
In line with logistic regression based methods, Markov chain models were commonly used in the urban development prediction and simulation. A Markov chain based method is defined as a set of states and a set of transitions with associated probabilities, where the transitions emerging from a given state define a distribution over the possible next states. The homogeneous Markov chain is a special class of Markov chains that is widely applied in practical simulation problems. As an example of works proposing Markov chains based predictive models, we note the work of Bhagawat (2011) wherein he focused on the analysis of urban growth trends, examined the land use and land cover changes then used Markov chains models to predict the urban growth patterns. Markov chains based models have been applied mainly on vegetation types (Balzter, 2000) and recently on urban and non urban coverage changes (Lopez, Bocco, Mendoza, & Duhau, 2001; Weng, 2002).