Simulating informal settlement growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: An agent-based housing model

The simulation of the growth of informal settlements can be an essential building block to manage urbanization processes in cities of the developing world. We used agent-based modelling to develop a vector-based, micro-scale housing model to simulate the growth of informal settlements. A prototype of the housing model was implemented for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The results show that such a vector-based housing model built on three simple rules of spatial change (infilling, extension and enlargement of existing houses) can successfully simulate the housing pattern of informal settlements growth.

Research highlights
► We developed an agent-based model for simulating informal settlement growth.
► The simulation model is vector-based representing individual houses as polygons.
► Three rules of extension, infilling, and enlargement of houses were implemented.
► For model evaluation results were compared to observations in empirical data.