## 1 Introduction  
In the past three decades, the cities in developing countries have experienced a rapid increase in the rate of the population growth. According to the world urbanization prospects 2014 revision, the trend in urbanization recently has been focusing on the population transition between urban and rural [1]. Developing land for an urbanization and migration of people from rural areas is a global phenomenon. The statistical report endorses that about 53 percent of the population live in urban areas in 2015. About 77 percent of those people living in urban areas come from developed countries and 48 percent come from developing countries [2]. This change in urban population is continuously increasing year by year. By 2035, the world's population living in urban areas will reach 5000 million, principally in African and Asian countries [3]. This situation will result in land use, economic, and environmental deterioration problems if each country does not have a suitable approach for better urban planning. Bangkok Metropolis (BM) is one of the largest primary cities in Southeast Asia [4]. BM has expanded rapidly in both size and population since the 1960s. Local organizations have tried to improve the management to keep up with the changes; however, it fails to stop the growth. The issue of the primacy of the city of Bangkok is even more pronounced. The main cause is that BM has defined roles in the National Social and Economic Development Plan (NESDP) virtually in every issue for the prosperity of the country in all forms [5]. It is the administrative center of the country, as well as the center of investment in real estate development, various business services, and industrial center. This results in the expansion of the built-up area in its vicinity and the characteristics of a metropolitan region have become more noticeable. There is a policy to develop major and minor cities in each region of the NESDP to decentralize BM. In contrast, the NESDP continues to promote the development of the metropolitan region that combines BM and five surrounding provinces called Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR). The metropolitan role of the BM focuses on supporting the diversification of production and serves as a residential area to prevent the evacuation of the population. The urbanization pattern in the BMR was initially found along the Chao Phaya River and then expanded itself along the transportation network and centers of minor cities. Nowadays, the major transportation network plays as an important factor in extending the urban areas [6]. Presently, land use and land cover (LULC) analysis has been extensively used to monitor urban expansion forms in specific space and time. Many satellite images have been used by scientists to comprehend the spatial-temporal evolution of an urban area [7]. However, they could not account the need for prediction of future LULC without an incorporation of land use models [8; 9]. These models are powerful techniques that can support the policy making and future land demand evaluation, and simulate the spatial pattern of the land use based on the driving factors [10]. The LULC simulation models in an urban study are developed from the theories of urban morphology and dynamic process of LULC to forecast the urban expansion in different patterns and scales [11; 12]. Those models can be categorized into four types: (i) empirical and statistical models such as Markov Chain (MC), logistic regression, etc. [13; 14]; (ii) dynamic models such as cellular automata (CA), agent-based model (AGB), genetic algorithm (GA), artificial neural network (ANN), system dynamic (SD), etc. [15; 16; 17; 18; 19; 20; 21]; (iii) integrated models such as conversion of land use and its effects at small regional extent (CLUE-S) and Dyna-CLUE [22]; and (iv) hybrid models, like Metronamica, land transformation model (LTM), land change modeling (LCM), SLUETH, etc. [23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28; 29].