Exploration of expansion patterns and prediction of urban growth for Colombo City, Sri Lanka Pavithra Jayasinghe 1 • Venkatesh Raghavan 1 • Go Yonezawa 1 Received: 10 June 2020 / Revised: 24 September 2020 / Accepted: 30 September 2020 Ó Korean Spatial Information Society 2021 Abstract This study attempts to analyze and simulate urban growth pattern of Colombo city in Sri Lanka which is a dynamic and rapid urbanizing region. The spatiotem- poral urban growth patterns during 1997–2019 were first analyzed by comparing Land Cover (LC) maps for time intervals between 1997–2008 and 2008–2019 using inten- sity and growth pattern analysis. Urban lands in Colombo have grown in a faster rate during 1997–2008 as compared to 2008–2019 period. The prominent spatial expansion pattern during 1997–2008 is outlying, as opposed to edge expansion which is predominant during 2008–2019. These major urban expansion patterns were modeled to predict the future urban structure of Colombo in 2030 using FUTURES (FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simu- lation) model. FUTURES is a patch-based, multilevel modeling framework for simulating the emergence of landscape spatial structure in urbanizing regions. Simulated result generated from the model reveals substantial agree- ment with real ground urban changes showing a kappa value of 0.78. The model allows to predict three different scenarios, namely Business as Usual, Infill Growth and Sprawl showing over 100 km 2 increase in urban lands by 2030. Predicted urban structure was then compared with proposed development plan. With certain limitations aris- ing from available data, the model is effective in predicting possible urban scenarios and providing valuable inputs to support better decision making for sustainable develop- ment of Colombo city. The results demonstrated in this study would be useful in modelling urban growth in other cities and further validate the efficacy of the proposed workflow. Keywords Urban growth  Spatial pattern  Simulation  FUTURES 1 Introduction Cities in South Asia are experiencing a rapid urban expansion with upcoming development activities and high population growth [1]. Urban planning practitioners are facing challenges in understanding complex spatial trends associated urban growth brought about by population influx and infrastructure agglomeration [2]. Understanding of complex urban growth process involves interplay of vari- ous factors that induce different behavior patterns [3]. Therefore, urban growth analysis and simulation has become an essential requirement for sustainable urban development planning. Due to its strategic location, Sri Lanka plays a tremen- dously important role in global trade since ancient time by being a transit point in the trans-continental sea trade connecting Europe, Middle East, East Africa, India and Southeast Asia [4]. Sri Lanka’s geographic centrality enables maritime transactions in terms of trade and this trading legacy brings great wealth to the country [5]. Colombo, the largest port in Sri Lanka, accounts for 90% of the country’s seaborne cargo and connects Europe, the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-020-00364-4) contains sup- plementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Pavithra Jayasinghe jayasinghe.pavithrap@gmail.com Venkatesh Raghavan raghavan@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp Go Yonezawa yonezawa@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp 1 Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan 123 Spat. Inf. Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-020-00364-4