Spatio-Temporal Interpolation and Fuzzy Logic for GIS Simulation of Rural-to-Urban Transition

When studying dynamic geographic phenomena such as rural-urban transformation in a raster GIS environment, information between two consecutive snapshot layers may not be available. This paper describes an application of fuzzy logic which enables the completion of unknown information in generated intermediate layers using annual temporal resolution and spatio-temporal interpolation. Change is modeled temporally by performing three possible scenarios with a different duration of rural-urban transition, and spatially by applying two standard GIS methods. This methodology is tested with data from the Montreal Metropolitan area in Quebec, Canada, which cover the 1956 to 1986 period and have a temporal resolution of 10 years. User-friendly modules were developed and incorporated in GRASS4.1 environment in order to simulate the spatio-temporal changes which occur in the study area.