Simulating urban expansion with interpretable cycle recurrent neural networks


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Date

2024

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

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Abstract

Recent advances in deep learning have brought new opportunities for analyzing land dynamics, and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) presented great potential in predicting land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes by learning the transition rules from time series data. However, implementing RNNs for LULC prediction can be challenging due to the relatively short sequence length of multi-temporal LULC data, as well as a general lack of interpretability of deep learning models. To address these issues, we introduce a novel deep learning-based framework tailored for forecasting LULC changes. The proposed framework uniquely implements a cycle-consistent learning scheme on RNNs to enhance their capability of representation learning based on time-series LULC data. Moreover, a local surrogate approach is adopted to interpret the results of predicted instances. We tested the method in a LULC prediction task based on time-series Landsat data of Shenzhen, China. The experiment results indicate that the cycle-consistent learning scheme can bring substantial performance gains to RNN methods in terms of processing short-length sequence data. Also, the tests of interpretation methods confirmed the feasibility and effectiveness of adopting local surrogate models for identifying the influence of predictor variables on predicted urban expansion instances.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Volume

61 (1)

Pages / Article No.

2363576

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Event

Edition / version

Methods

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Date collected

Date created

Subject

Land-use and land-cover change; deep learning; recurrent neural network; cycle consistency; LIME

Organisational unit

03473 - Burlando, Paolo (emeritus) / Burlando, Paolo (emeritus) check_circle

Notes

Funding

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