Urban growth scenario projection using heuristic cellular automata in arid areas considering the drought impact

Arid areas with low precipitation and sparse vegetation typically yield compact urban pattern,and drought directly impacts urban site selection,growth processes,and future scenarios.Spatial simulation and projection based on cellular automata(CA)models is important to achieve sustainable urban development in arid areas.We developed a new CA model using bat algorithm(BA)named bat algorithm-probability-of-occurrence-cellular automata(BA-POO-CA)model by considering drought constraint to accurately delineate urban growth patterns and project future scenarios of Urumqi City and its surrounding areas,located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,China.We calibrated the BA-POO-CA model for the drought-prone study area with 2000 and 2010 data and validated the model with 2010 and 2020 data,and finally projected its urban scenarios in 2030.The results showed that BA-POO-CA model yielded overall accuracy of 97.70%and figure-of-merits(FOMs)of 35.50%in 2010,and 97.70%and 26.70%in 2020,respectively.The inclusion of drought intensity factor improved the performance of BA-POO-CA model in terms of FOMs,with increases of 5.50%in 2010 and 7.90%in 2020 than the model excluding drought intensity factor.This suggested that the urban growth of Urumqi City was affected by drought,and therefore taking drought intensity factor into account would contribute to simulation accuracy.The BA-POO-CA model including drought intensity factor was used to project two possible scenarios(i.e.,business-as-usual(BAU)scenario and ecological scenario)in 2030.In the BAU scenario,the urban growth dominated mainly in urban fringe areas,especially in the northern part of Toutunhe District,Xinshi District,and Midong District.Using exceptional and extreme drought areas as a spatial constraint,the urban growth was mainly concentrated in the"main urban areas-Changji-Hutubi"corridor urban pattern in the ecological scenario.The results of this research can help to adjust urban planning and development policies.Our model is readily applicable to simulating urban growth and future scenarios in global arid areas such as Northwest China and Africa.

A novel method for clustering cellular data to improve classification

Many fields,such as neuroscience,are experiencing the vast prolife ration of cellular data,underscoring the need fo r organizing and interpreting large datasets.A popular approach partitions data into manageable subsets via hierarchical clustering,but objective methods to determine the appropriate classification granularity are missing.We recently introduced a technique to systematically identify when to stop subdividing clusters based on the fundamental principle that cells must differ more between than within clusters.Here we present the corresponding protocol to classify cellular datasets by combining datadriven unsupervised hierarchical clustering with statistical testing.These general-purpose functions are applicable to any cellular dataset that can be organized as two-dimensional matrices of numerical values,including molecula r,physiological,and anatomical datasets.We demonstrate the protocol using cellular data from the Janelia MouseLight project to chara cterize morphological aspects of neurons.

Exosomes originating from neural stem cells undergoing necroptosis participate in cellular communication by inducing TSC2 upregulation of recipient cells following spinal cord injury

We previously demonstrated that inhibiting neural stem cells necroptosis enhances functional recovery after spinal cord injury.While exosomes are recognized as playing a pivotal role in neural stem cells exocrine function,their precise function in spinal cord injury remains unclear.To investigate the role of exosomes generated following neural stem cells necroptosis after spinal cord injury,we conducted singlecell RNA sequencing and validated that neural stem cells originate from ependymal cells and undergo necroptosis in response to spinal cord injury.Subsequently,we established an in vitro necroptosis model using neural stem cells isolated from embryonic mice aged 16-17 days and extracted exosomes.The results showed that necroptosis did not significantly impact the fundamental characteristics or number of exosomes.Transcriptome sequencing of exosomes in necroptosis group identified 108 differentially expressed messenger RNAs,104 long non-coding RNAs,720 circular RNAs,and 14 microRNAs compared with the control group.Construction of a competing endogenous RNA network identified the following hub genes:tuberous sclerosis 2(Tsc2),solute carrier family 16 member 3(Slc16a3),and forkhead box protein P1(Foxp1).Notably,a significant elevation in TSC2 expression was observed in spinal cord tissues following spinal cord injury.TSC2-positive cells were localized around SRY-box transcription factor 2-positive cells within the injury zone.Furthermore,in vitro analysis revealed increased TSC2 expression in exosomal receptor cells compared with other cells.Further assessment of cellular communication following spinal cord injury showed that Tsc2 was involved in ependymal cellular communication at 1 and 3 days post-injury through the epidermal growth factor and midkine signaling pathways.In addition,Slc16a3 participated in cellular communication in ependymal cells at 7 days post-injury via the vascular endothelial growth factor and macrophage migration inhibitory factor signaling pathways.Collectively,these findings confirm that exosomes derived from neural stem cells undergoing necroptosis play an important role in cellular communication after spinal cord injury and induce TSC2 upregulation in recipient cells.

Modeling of rock failure based on physical cellular automata

To analyze the effects of heterogeneous material characteristics on rock failure,a micro-heterogeneous physical cellular automata （Mh-PCA） model is introduced according to the cellular automata theory from a general power view.In this model,the neighbor is the Moore pattern and the Weibull distribution is adopted to simulate the rock heterogeneousness.Using this model,the evolvements and acoustic emission of rock failure are simulated for four materials of different degree of homogeneousness （m＝1,5,10,15）.The results show that the heterogeneous characteristic has a great effect on the rock failure,the more the homogeneousness,the fewer the crack branches and the more concentrated acoustic emissions.The physical cellular automata theory gives a new idea for studying rock failure.

Stochastic Lattice gas Cellular Automata Model for Epidemics

The aim of this study was to develop and explore a stochastic lattice gas cellular automata （LGCA） model for epidemics. A computer program was development in order to implement the model. An irregular grid of cells was used. A susceptible-infected-recovered （SIR） scheme was represented. Stochasticity was generated by Monte Carlo method. Dynamics of model was explored by numerical simulations. Model achieves to represent the typical SIR prevalence curve. Performed simulations also show how infection, mobility and distribution of infected individuals may influence the dynamics of propagation. This simple theoretical model might be a basis for developing more realistic designs.

Visualization of Gene Mutation Complicated Pattern of Hepatitis B Virus Based on Cellular Automata

Hepatitis B virus shows instantaneous and high rate mutations in biological experiments, some sorts of which affect the efficiency of virus replication greatly through enhancing or depressing the viral replication, while others have no influence at all. Taking advantage of prominent features of cellular automata, we simulate the effect of hepatitis B virus gene mutation on its replication efficiency. The computer simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of our novel model by comparing with the results of biological experiments.

Modeling spatio-temporal distribution of soil moisture by deep learning-based cellular automata model

Soil moisture content （SMC） is a key hydrological parameter in agriculture,meteorology and climate change,and understanding of spatio-temporal distributions of SMC in farmlands is important to address the precise irrigation scheduling.However,the hybrid interaction of static and dynamic environmental parameters makes it particularly difficult to accurately and reliably model the distribution of SMC.At present,deep learning wins numerous contests in machine learning and hence deep belief network （DBN） ,a breakthrough in deep learning is trained to extract the transition functions for the simulation of the cell state changes.In this study,we used a novel macroscopic cellular automata （MCA） model by combining DBN to predict the SMC over an irrigated corn field （an area of 22 km^2） in the Zhangye oasis,Northwest China.Static and dynamic environmental variables were prepared with regard to the complex hydrological processes.The widely used neural network,multi-layer perceptron （MLP） ,was utilized for comparison to DBN.The hybrid models （MLP-MCA and DBN-MCA） were calibrated and validated on SMC data within four months,i.e.June to September 2012,which were automatically observed by a wireless sensor network （WSN） .Compared with MLP-MCA,the DBN-MCA model led to a decrease in root mean squared error （RMSE） by 18%.Thus,the differences of prediction errors increased due to the propagating errors of variables,difficulties of knowing soil properties and recording irrigation amount in practice.The sequential Gaussian simulation （s Gs） was performed to assess the uncertainty of soil moisture estimations.Calculated with a threshold of SMC for each grid cell,the local uncertainty of simulated results in the post processing suggested that the probability of SMC less than 25% will be difference in different areas at different time periods.The current results showed that the DBN-MCA model performs better than the MLP-MCA model,and the DBN-MCA model provides a powerful tool for predicting SMC in highly non-linear forms.Moreover,because modeling soil moisture by using environmental variables is gaining increasing popularity,DBN techniques could contribute a lot to enhancing the calibration of MCA-based SMC estimations and hence provide an alternative approach for SMC monitoring in irrigation systems on the basis of canals.

Effects of rainy weather on traffic accidents of a freeway using cellular automata model

The aim of this work is to investigate the influence of rainy weather on traffic accidents of a freeway. The micro-scale driving behaviors in rainy weather and possible vehicle rear-end and sideslip accidents are analyzed. An improved CA model of two lanes one-way freeway is presented, where some vehicle accidents will occur when the necessary conditions are simultaneously satisfied. The characteristics of traffic flow under different rainfall intensities are discussed and the accident probabilities are analyzed via the simulation experiments by using variable speed limit （VSL） and incoming flow control. The results indicate that the measures are effective especially during heavy rainstorms or short-time heavy rainfall. According to different rainfall intensities, an appropriate strategy should be adopted in order to reduce the probability of vehicle accidents and enhance traffic flux as well.

Stair evacuation simulation based on cellular automata considering evacuees' walk preferences

As a physical model, the cellular automata （CA） model is widely used in many areas, such as stair evacuation. However, existing CA models do not consider evacuees＇ walk preferences nor psychological status, and the structure of the basic model is unapplicable for the stair structure. This paper is to improve the stair evacuation simulation by addressing these issues, and a new cellular automata model is established. Several evacuees＇ walk preference and how evacuee＇s psychology influences their behaviors are introduced into this model. Evacuees＇ speeds will be influenced by these features. To validate this simulation, two fire drills held in two high-rise buildings are video-recorded. It is found that the simulation results are similar to the fire drill results. The structure of this model is simple, and it is easy to further develop and utilize in different buildings with various kinds of occupants.

A Two-Lane Cellular Automata Model with Influence of Next-Nearest Neighbor Vehicle

In this paper, we propose a new two-lane cellular automata model in which the influence of the next-nearest neighbor vehicle is considered, The attributes of the traffic system composed of fast-lane and slow-lane are investigated by the new traffic model. The simulation results show that the proposed two-lane traffic model can reproduce some traffic phenomena observed in real traffic, and that maximum flux and critical density are close to the field measurements. Moreover, the initial density distribution of the fast-lane and slow-lane has much influence on the traffic flow states. With the ratio between the densities of slow lane and fast lane increasing the lane changing frequency increases, but maximum flux decreases. Finally, the influence of the sensitivity coefficients is discussed.

Modeling Passengers Boarding in Aircraft Using Cellular Automata

Aircraft are profitable to their owners as long as they are in the air transporting passengers to their destinations;therefore it is vital to minimize as much as possible their preparation time on the ground.In this paper we simulate different boarding strategies with the help of a model based on cellular automata parallel computational tool,attempting to find the most efficient way to deliver each passenger to her/his assigned seat.Two seat arrangements are used,a small one based on Airbus A320/ Boeing 737 and a larger one based on Airbus A380/ Boeing777-300.A wide variety of parameters,including time delay for luggage storing,the frequency by which the passengers enter the plane,different walking speeds of passengers depending on sex,age and height,and the possibility of walking past their seat,are simulated in order to achieve realistic results,as well as monitor their effects on boarding time.The simulation results indicate that the boarding time can be significantly reduced by the simple grouping and prioritizing of passengers.In accordance with previous papers and the examined strategies,the outside-in and reverse pyramid boarding methods outperform all the others for both the small and large airplane seat layout.In the latter,the examined strategies are introduced for first time in an analogous way to the initial small seat arrangement of Airbus A320/ Boeing737 aircraft family.Moreover,since in real world scenarios,the compliance of all the passengers to the suggested group division and boarding strategy cannot be guaranteed,further simulations were conducted.It is clear that as the number of passengers disregarding the priority of the boarding groups increases,the time needed for the boarding to complete tends towards that of the random boarding strategy,thus minimizing the possible advantages gained by the proposed boarding strategies.

Cellular automata model for traffic flow with safe driving conditions

In this paper, a recently introduced cellular automata （CA） model is used for a statistical analysis of the inner micro-scopic structure of synchronized traffic flow. The analysis focuses on the formation and dissolution of clusters or platoons of vehicles, as the mechanism that causes the presence of this synchronized traffic state with a high flow. This platoon formation is one of the most interesting phenomena observed in traffic flows and plays an important role both in manual and automated highway systems （AHS）. Simulation results, obtained from a single-lane system under periodic boundary conditions indicate that in the density region where the synchronized state is observed, most vehicles travel together in pla- toons with approximately the same speed and small spatial distances. The examination of velocity variations and individual vehicle gaps shows that the flow corresponding to the synchronized state is stable, safe and highly correlated. Moreover, results indicate that the observed platoon formation in real traffic is reproduced in simulations by the relation between vehicle headway and velocity that is embedded in the dynamics definition of the CA model.

A cellular automata model of epidemics of a heterogeneous susceptibility

In this paper we present a model with spatial heterogeneity based on cellular automata （CA）. In the model we consider the relevant heterogeneity of host （susceptible） mixing and the natural birth rate. We divide the susceptible population into three groups according to the immunity of each individual based on the classical susceptible-infectedremoved （SIR） epidemic models, and consider the spread of an infectious disease transmitted by direct contact among humans and vectors that have not an incubation period to become infectious. We test the local stability and instability of the disease-free equilibrium by the spectrum radii of Jacobian. The simulation shows that the structure of the nearest neighbour size of the cell （or the degree of the scale-free networks） plays a very important role in the spread properties of infectious disease. The positive equilibrium of the infections versus the neighbour size follows the third power law if an endemic equilibrium point exists. Finally, we analyse the feature of the infection waves for the homogeneity and heterogeneous cases respectively.

An extended cellular automata model with modified floor field for evacuation

The floor field model has been widely used in evacuation simulation research based on cellular automata model. However, conventional methods of setting floor field will lead to highly insufficient utilization of the exit area when people gather on one side of the exit. In this study, an extended cellular automata model with modified floor field is proposed to solve this problem. Additionally, a congestion judgment mechanism is integrated in our model, whereby people can synthetically judge the degree of congestion and distance in front of them to determine whether they need to change another exit to evacuate or not. We contrasted the simulation results of the conventional floor field model, the extended model proposed in this paper, and Pathfinder software in a same scenario. It is demonstrated that this extended model can ameliorate the problem of insufficient utilization of the exit area and the trajectory of pedestrian movement and the crowd shape of pedestrians in front of exit in this new model are more realistic than those of the other two models. The findings have implications for modeling pedestrian evacuation.

A cellular automata model of traffic flow with variable probability of randomization

Research on the stochastic behavior of traffic flow is important to understand the intrinsic evolution rules of a traffic system. By introducing an interactional potential of vehicles into the randomization step, an improved cellular automata traffic flow model with variable probability of randomization is proposed in this paper. In the proposed model, the driver is affected by the interactional potential of vehicles before him, and his decision-making process is related to the interactional potential. Compared with the traditional cellular automata model, the modeling is more suitable for the driver＇s random decision-making process based on the vehicle and traffic situations in front of him in actual traffic. From the improved model, the fundamental diagram （flow^tensity relationship） is obtained, and the detailed high-density traffic phenomenon is reproduced through numerical simulation.

Cellular automata modeling of pedestrian＇s crossing dynamics

Cellular automata modeling techniques and the characteristics of mixed traffic flow were used to derive the 2-dimensional model presented here for simulation of pedestrian’s crossing dynamics. A conception of “stop point” is introduced to deal with traffic obstacles and resolve conflicts among pedestrians or between pedestrians and the other vehicles on the crosswalk. The model can be easily extended, is very efficient for simulation of pedestrian’s crossing dy- namics, can be integrated into traffic simulation software, and has been proved feasible by simulation experiments.

A Vector-based Cellular Automata Model for Simulating Urban Land Use Change

Cellular Automata(CA) is widely used for the simulation of land use changes. This study applied a vector-based CA model to simulate land use change in order to minimize or eliminate the scale sensitivity in traditional raster-based CA model. The cells of vector-based CA model are presented according to the shapes and attributes of geographic entities, and the transition rules of vector-based CA model are improved by taking spatial variables of the study area into consideration. The vector-based CA model is applied to simulate land use changes in downtown of Qidong City, Jiangsu Province, China and its validation is confirmed by the methods of visual assessment and spatial accuracy. The simulation result of vector-based CA model reveals that nearly 75% of newly increased urban cells are located in the northwest and southwest parts of the study area from 2002 to 2007, which is in consistent with real land use map. In addition, the simulation results of the vector-based and raster-based CA models are compared to real land use data and their spatial accuracies are found to be 84.0% and 81.9%, respectively. In conclusion, results from this study indicate that the vector-based CA model is a practical and applicable method for the simulation of urbanization processes.

Cellular Automata-based Chloride Ion Diffusion Simulation of Concrete Bridges under Multi-factor Coupling Actions

In order to accurately simulate the diffusion of chloride ion in the existing concrete bridge and acquire the precise chloride ion concentration at given time, a cellular automata （CA）-based model is proposed. The process of chloride ion diffusion is analyzed by the CA-based method and a nonlinear solution of the Fick＇s second law is obtained. Considering the impact of various factors such as stress states, temporal and spatial variability of diffusion parameters and water-cement ratio on the process of chloride ion diffusion, the model of chloride ion diffusion under multi-factor coupling actions is presented. A chloride ion penetrating experiment reported in the literature is used to prove the effectiveness and reasonability of the present method, and a T-type beam is taken as an illustrative example to analyze the process of chloride ion diffusion in practical application. The results indicate that CA-based method can simulate the diffusion of chloride ion in the concrete structures with acceptable precision.

Integration of Neural Networks and Cellular Automata for Urban Planning

This paper presents a new type of cellular automa ta (CA) model for the simulation of alternative land development using neural netw orks for urban planning. CA models can be regarded as a planning tool because th ey can generate alternative urban growth. Alternative development patterns can b e formed by using different sets of parameter values in CA simulation. A critica l issue is how to define parameter values for realistic and idealized simulation . This paper demonstrates that neural networks can simplify CA models but genera te more plausible results. The simulation is based on a simple three-layer netw ork with an output neuron to generate conversion probability. No transition rule s are required for the simulation. Parameter values are automatically obtained f rom the training of network by using satellite remote sensing data. Original tra ining data can be assessed and modified according to planning objectives. Altern ative urban patterns can be easily formulated by using the modified training dat a sets rather than changing the model.

Influence of driver’s yielding behavior on pedestrian-vehicle conflicts at a two-lane roundabout using fuzzy cellular automata

The roundabouts are widely used in China,some of which have central islands as scenic spots.The crosswalks connecting to the central islands,normally full of pedestrians,have negative impact on roundabout capability and pedestrian safety.Therefore,this study proposes a fuzzy cellular automata(FCA)model to explore the safety and efficiency impacts of pedestrian-vehicle conflicts at a two-lane roundabout.To reason the decision-making process of individual drivers before crosswalks,membership functions in the fuzzy inference system were calibrated with field data conducted in Changsha,China.Using specific indicators of efficiency and safety performance,it was shown that circulating vehicles can move smoothly in low traffic flow,but the roundabout system is prone to the traffic congestion if traffic flow reaches to a certain level.Also,the high yielding rate of drivers has a negative impact on the traffic efficiency but can improve pedestrian safety.Furthermore,a pedestrian restriction measure was deduced for the roundabout crosswalk from the FCA model and national guideline of setting traffic lights.