Four Fundamental Questions to Evaluate Land Change Models with an Illustration of a Cellular Automata–Markov Model

• Autor(a) principal: Viana, Cláudia M.
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Pontius, Robert Gilmore, Rocha, Jorge
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/59036

Numerous models exist for users to simulate land change to communicate with an audience concerning futureland change. This article raises four fundamental questions to help model users decide whether to use anymodel: (1) Can the user understand the model? (2) Can the audience understand the model? (3) Can the usercontrol the model? (4) Does the model address the goals of the specific application? This article applies thesequestions to the popular cellular automata–Markov (CA–Markov) model as IDRISI’sCA–Markov moduleexpresses. Sensitivity analysis examines 120 ways to set the module’s parameters. Verification compares themodule’s behavior to the software’s documentation. Results show that the cellular automata’s allocation fails tofollow the quantity of change that the Markov module computes. The module’s behavior is likely to cause usersto misinterpret the validation metrics and to miscommunicate with audiences. Thus, the answers to the fourquestions were not satisfactory for this article’s case study. This article’s framework helps users to judge amodel’s appropriateness for a specific application by combining sensitivity analysis with verification in amanner that helps to interpret validation. Users should answer the four questions as they decide whether to useany software’s modules.