An Intelligent Analysis for Rural Settlement Distribution Based on Gaussian Mixture Models: A Case Study of Kengzi Village

摘要

In light of the booming rural construction industry in China, the recurring problem of the “village sameness” reflects the inadequate understanding of inherent characteristics of traditional settlements. To discern the internal logic of historic rural settlements from historical spatial data, this study proposed a machine learning method based on the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) to examine the settlement distribution sensitivity for every geographical variable, and to perform a multivariate regression analysis on the nonlinear non-monotonic relationship between variables and the land usage development potential. In accordance with the abstracted spatial rules, the model was also used for predicting the spatial trends to support regional planning activities.