Using the SLEUTH urban growth model to simulate the impacts of future policy scenarios on land use in the Giza Governorate, Greater Cairo Metropolitan region

The goal of this paper was to find an appropriate urban policy to preserve arable land that is being consumed by highly accelerated urban growth in the Giza Governorate of the Greater Cairo Metropolitan region for the last 50 years. We simulated three different urban policies and relevant growth scenarios for Giza from 2015 to 2035 by using the SLEUTH model to investigate their effects on arable lands. The first scenario used historical growth trends to simulate the persistent growth trends under existing conditions. The second was a compact growth scenario with robust restrictions on development in areas outside of designated growth centres. The third scenario considered officially planned growth that integrated stricter growth plans and stronger protections on lands with natural resources at a level that could be realistically accomplished with strong political commitments. The input data required by the model, including slope, land use, exclusion, and urban growth, transportation, and hill shade were derived from three Landsat satellite images from 1984, 2000, and 2013, according to supervised classifications. The simulation results found that the compact growth policy scenario had the least negative impact on arable lands, while the historical growth scenario had the worst impact.