The Integration of Land Change Modeling Framework FUTURES into GRASS GIS 7. Petrasova, A., Petras, V., Shoemaker, D. A., Dorning, M. A., & Meentemeyer, R. K. In Brovelli, M. A., Minghini, M., & Negretti, M., editors, Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial - Open Innovation for Europe, volume 12, of Geomatics Workbooks, pages 21–24.
The Integration of Land Change Modeling Framework FUTURES into GRASS GIS 7 [link]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
Many valuable models and tools developed by scientists are often inaccessible to their potential users because of non-existent sharing infrastructure or lack of documentation. Case in point is the FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simulation (FUTURES), a patch-based land change model for generating scenario-based regional forecasts of urban growth pattern. Despite a high- impact publication, few scientists, planners, or policy makers have adopted FUTURES due to complexity in use and lack of direct access. We seek to address these issues by integrating FUTURES into GRASS GIS, a free and open source GIS and research platform for geospatial domain. This integration will enable us to take advantage of GRASS GIS tools for landscape structure analysis, and thus eliminate the need to use proprietary software for data preprocessing. Moreover, integration into GRASS GIS simplifies the distribution of FUTURES across all main operating systems and ensures maintainability of our project in the future. We will present our use case of integrating this advanced land change model into GRASS GIS platform and discuss the current state of the integration as well as the planned steps to achieve our vision of simple-to-use and fully free and open source FUTURES. [Excerpt] Despite all currently available technologies and tools for collaborative research and software development, many academic projects, although published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals are not adopted by disciplinary communities and thus fail to have broader impact for which they were intended. In the case of sophisticated geospatial models and analyses, acceptance of particular tools requires more than releasing the code with appropriate license online. Detailed and updated documentation, along with sample data of sufficient complexity, is required to demonstrate the model features and evaluate its suitability for use in research. A well defined user and programming interface implemented in a programming language widely used by disciplinary practitioners is crucial for further usage and extensions. Availability of the model across different operating systems is not only convenient for various users but it also simplifies model coupling. [] The introduction of the land change modeling framework FUTURES (Meentemeyer et al., 2012) created to map regional projections of urban growth is an example of disconnect between modelers-developers and potential users. The authors of the FUTURES model first published a study of land development dynamics in the rapidly expanding metropolitan region of Charlotte, North Carolina, and later an analysis of the impacts of urbanization on natural resources under different conservation strategies (Dorning et al., 2015). Despite the recognition of high accuracy and novelty of the model, its use has been limited to FUTURES' authors and close collaborators. Limited access to the model together with missing documentation have slowed the progress of updating and adding new features, effectively barring the land change community from adopting the model. Publishing the model as open source software is a solution that can address many of these disconnects, and create new opportunities for the scientific community to explore, apply and modify FUTURES for their own research. In this work-in-progress we rework the FUTURES urban growth model as an open source geospatial tool, highly relevant for the land change community, by integrating it into GRASS GIS, a free and open source GIS (Neteler et al., 2012). GRASS GIS natively provides many features, including landscape structure analysis, efficient large raster data processing and spatio-temporal visualizations, making it a suitable geospatial research platform for FUTURES. [...]
@incollection{petrasovaIntegrationLandChange2015,
  title = {The Integration of Land Change Modeling Framework {{FUTURES}} into {{GRASS GIS}} 7},
  booktitle = {Free and {{Open Source Software}} for {{Geospatial}} - {{Open}} Innovation for {{Europe}}},
  author = {Petrasova, Anna and Petras, Vaclav and Shoemaker, Douglas A. and Dorning, Monica A. and Meentemeyer, Ross K.},
  editor = {Brovelli, Maria A. and Minghini, Marco and Negretti, Marco},
  date = {2015},
  volume = {12},
  pages = {21--24},
  issn = {1591-092X},
  url = {http://mfkp.org/INRMM/article/13706774},
  abstract = {Many valuable models and tools developed by scientists are often inaccessible to their potential users because of non-existent sharing infrastructure or lack of documentation. Case in point is the FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simulation (FUTURES), a patch-based land change model for generating scenario-based regional forecasts of urban growth pattern. Despite a high- impact publication, few scientists, planners, or policy makers have adopted FUTURES due to complexity in use and lack of direct access. We seek to address these issues by integrating FUTURES into GRASS GIS, a free and open source GIS and research platform for geospatial domain. This integration will enable us to take advantage of GRASS GIS tools for landscape structure analysis, and thus eliminate the need to use proprietary software for data preprocessing. Moreover, integration into GRASS GIS simplifies the distribution of FUTURES across all main operating systems and ensures maintainability of our project in the future. We will present our use case of integrating this advanced land change model into GRASS GIS platform and discuss the current state of the integration as well as the planned steps to achieve our vision of simple-to-use and fully free and open source FUTURES.

[Excerpt] Despite all currently available technologies and tools for collaborative research and software development, many academic projects, although published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals are not adopted by disciplinary communities and thus fail to have broader impact for which they were intended. In the case of sophisticated geospatial models and analyses, acceptance of particular tools requires more than releasing the code with appropriate license online. Detailed and updated documentation, along with sample data of sufficient complexity, is required to demonstrate the model features and evaluate its suitability for use in research. A well defined user and programming interface implemented in a programming language widely used by disciplinary practitioners is crucial for further usage and extensions. Availability of the model across different operating systems is not only convenient for various users but it also simplifies model coupling.

[] The introduction of the land change modeling framework FUTURES (Meentemeyer et al., 2012) created to map regional projections of urban growth is an example of disconnect between modelers-developers and potential users. The authors of the FUTURES model first published a study of land development dynamics in the rapidly expanding metropolitan region of Charlotte, North Carolina, and later an analysis of the impacts of urbanization on natural resources under different conservation strategies (Dorning et al., 2015). Despite the recognition of high accuracy and novelty of the model, its use has been limited to FUTURES' authors and close collaborators. Limited access to the model together with missing documentation have slowed the progress of updating and adding new features, effectively barring the land change community from adopting the model. Publishing the model as open source software is a solution that can address many of these disconnects, and create new opportunities for the scientific community to explore, apply and modify FUTURES for their own research. In this work-in-progress we rework the FUTURES urban growth model as an open source geospatial tool, highly relevant for the land change community, by integrating it into GRASS GIS, a free and open source GIS (Neteler et al., 2012). GRASS GIS natively provides many features, including landscape structure analysis, efficient large raster data processing and spatio-temporal visualizations, making it a suitable geospatial research platform for FUTURES. [...]},
  keywords = {*imported-from-citeulike-INRMM,~INRMM-MiD:c-13706774,data-transformation-modelling,featured-publication,free-software,geospatial,gis,grass-gis,land-cover,land-use,open-science,reproducibility,reproducible-research},
  series = {Geomatics {{Workbooks}}}
}
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