Demographic and economic simulation with human mobility-enhanced cellular automata in the Pearl River Delta

Humans are fundamental to urban development. Human mobility is the key driving factor for urban simulation. But few studies have considered the effect of human mobility. To fill this gap, this study proposes a human mobility-enhanced cellular automata (HEM-CA) model to simulate the demographic and economic conditions in the megacity region. Both human flow variables and mobility-informed neighbourhood networks are developed for cellular automata-based urban simulation. The experiment in the Pearl River Delta demonstrates the good performance of the presented HEM-CA model. This study introduces an alternative human perspective for CA-based urban simulation and bridges the domain of human mobility and urban simulation