Analysis and modelling urban growth of Dodoma urban district in Tanzania using an integrated CA-Markov model

Since 2018's presidential declaration of Dodoma to be one among cities in Tanzania, remarkable changes on land use/land cover (LULC) have been experienced over the area as results of population increase and related impacts of urban developments. To achieve the so-called sustainable development accurate information on the LULC changes becomes essential as it brings awareness of the past changes, current trends and expected future urban dynamics. This study took technological advantage of remote sensing and Geographical Information System to analyze LULC changes from 2005 to 2020 and uses it as a major input for the Cellular automata-Markov model to simulate future changes for the years 2025 and 2030. The past LULC changes was analyzed through maximum likelihood classification algorithm and the overall classification accuracy was above 85%, while the simulated model was validated by comparing actual and simulated maps with kappa indices. The results show that from 2005 to 2020, built-up area has increased from 86.17 to 617.02 km(2), and water has increased from 5.47 to 10.14 km(2). The tremendous decrease is in bare land by 511 km(2) (from 1528.51 to 1017.09 km(2)) and vegetation by 24 km(2) (from 1151.11 to 1127.01 km(2)). Also, the simulated model results show that in the next 10 years from 2020 to 2030, bare land will decrease by 26.97%, while built-up area will increase by 39.96%, also vegetation and water will have substantial increase of 27.57 km(2) and 0.22 km(2) respectively. Therefore, these observed changes can be used as a future planning benchmark by planning organizations to ensure that sustainable development is attained.