Abstract: It is a critical scientific challenge to better simulate urban growth, especially for the regions undergoing rapid urbanization in developing countries. Conventional methods based on single or integrated models, however, can not provide direct support for decision-making. This paper introduces a new urban growth simulation model——FUTURES(FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simulation). The model was developed by UNC Charlotte Center for Applied GIScience (CAGIS). FUTURES not only considers the gradient calculation of dynamic suitability for urban growth, analysis of the trend of per capita land consumption, and visual simulation of patch changes based on spatial locations, but also focuses on the feedback process of dynamic interactions between modules, thus forms a unique insightful coupling mechanism, and model structure is compact and flexible. A number of experiments have been executed in a high performance computing environment for several study areas of North Carolina, USA. This paper mainly describes the model design, model composition, and key modeling methods, and summarizes the characteristics and advantages of this model. This review provides a reference for urban growth simulation research in China, which will be meaningful and helpful for promoting related research from another point of view.

Key words: dynamic suitability, ecological effects, FUTURES model, patch growth algorithm, urban growth simulation