Simulação de crescimento urbano em espaços celulares com uma medida de acessibilidade: método e estudo de caso em cidades do sul do Rio Grande do Sul.

Abstract

This work is committed to verify the capability of an accessibility measure to identify areas prone to high urban growth, related to the presence of higher locational advantages. This issue is addressed via urban modeling, using techniques of urban growth simulation based on cellular automata. Accessibility measures have proven effective in studies about the urbanized space and the natural landscape, with theoretical and methodological similarities. An expanded version of one of such measures is proposed, called Weighted Accessibility, considering the characteristics of the surrounding city, both natural and modified by human action. This measure was implemented in a cellular environment and used in a dynamic urban growth model. The model was tested in southern Rio Grande do Sul cities. Two types of constraints external to the city were considered: a) environmental factors, represented by the topography and hydrography b) anthropic factors, represented by the city traffic network. These conditions were grouped into four scenarios: a) absence of external factors; b) presence of anthropic factors; c) presence of environmental factors; d) simultaneous presence of environmental and anthropic factors. Evaluations were made using techniques of cell-by-cell comparison and fuzzy similarity. The best results were obtained in simulations that considered the influence of environmental factors alone or in combination with anthropic factors. These results suggest that city surroundings have an important influence on the urban growth process and that this influence can be identified by the accessibility measure at issue.