During the Ming Dynasty, Yuxian occupied a strategic position on the southern edge of the Xuan-Frontier Towns, linking Great Wall outposts with the Shanxi-Hebei hinterland and concentrating passes, forts, and military farms. Understanding its role within Nine Frontier Defense Garrisons clarifies the spatial organization of fortress settlements. This study proposes a methodological framework that integrates the Minimum Cumulative Resistance (MCR) model with machine learning to predict defense corridors. By constructing resistance surfaces based on the nonlinear location preferences of military defense ruins, multi-tiered defense corridors were identified. Results indicate that line-of-sight density and settlement density dominate corridor orientation. The reconstructed system exhibits peripheral corridors along the Great Wall and passes, as well as in-depth corridors toward hinterland fortress settlements, and shows strong coupling with reconstructed post road networks. This study provides quantitative evidence for reconstructing Yuxian’s Ming defense system and offers a transferable model for Great Wall defense analysis.
Zhao et al. (Thu,) studied this question.