LEAM is designed to simulate future land use change as a result of alternative policies and development decisions.
In recent years, LEAM has been used in combination with transportation and social cost models to better capture the effects land use has on transportation demand and social costs and vice versa.
LEAM was first developed in the LEAMlab of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the late 1990s with funding from the National Science Foundation.
Its popularity with counties and regional agencies in Illinois led to technology licensing from the university and commercialization.
Since then, LEAM and its associated planning and decision support tools have been applied all around the U.S. and abroad.
LEAM was developed to coordinate complex regional planning activities and aid in regionally-based thinking, decision support, and policy establishment.
Drivers of change include factors associated with each cell such as proximity to cities, employment centers, roads, highways; slope; location within wetlands and floodplains; and characteristics of surrounding cells.
LEAM results then serve as inputs to impact assessment models that determine the implications of land use change on human, natural, and cultural systems.
"Ecological Urban Dynamics: The Convergence of Spatial Modeling and Sustainability," The Journal of Building Research and Information 29(5): 381-393.
"A Dynamic Model of the Spread of an Infectious Disease: The Case of Fox Rabies in Illinois," in Landscape Simulation Modeling: A Spatially Explicit, Dynamic Approach R. Costanza and A. Voinov, eds.
"A Spatially Explicit Urban Simulation Model: Landuse Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM)," in Smart Growth and Climate Change: Regional Development, Infrastructure and Adaptation M. Ruth, ed.