Where will the change come from? Identifying decision-relevant factors in future Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) scenarios to support planning under uncertainty

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Previous efforts to assess uncertainty in Land Use Cover Change (LUCC) models have primarily focused on increasing model accuracy and hence the credibility of future simulations. However, such an approach does not adequately incorporate the inherent, deep, uncertainty associated with long-term future projections of LUCC. By contrast, exploratory modelling approaches, which capture this uncertainty through the simulation of multiple potential future scenarios, offer better potential to support decision-making. This paper proposes and demonstrates a framework for exploratory modelling of LUCC scenarios to identify the main factors of change and map decision boundaries to support planning. Specifically, this framework projects a large ensemble of future LUCC simulations to then apply Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) in two different settings: Factor prioritisation and Factor mapping to quantify the influence of all possible types of factors driving LUCC: external uncertainties, planning decisions and stochasticity. The framework is demonstrated through the projection of future urban development scenarios for the Lausanne-Morges agglomeration in Switzerland, under major transport infrastructure development. This case study illustrates the potential value of the framework for planning support by highlighting that new infrastructure development supports densification efforts over a wide range of future scenarios, although the magnitude of this effect exhibits clear spatial variations.