A Comprehensive Study of the Suitability of Urban Underground Spaces for Connection Development: A Case Study of the Erhai Lake Basin, China

Urban underground space (UUS) involves multiple stakeholders whose concerns span the entire life cycle of underground space. The government pays more attention to the social benefits of UUS to the region, developers pay more attention to the economic benefits brought by the development of UUS, and users pay more attention to the comfort level of UUS operation. This study used the analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), government, developers, and users to construct a comprehensive evaluation index system of underground space development needs. Different from previous studies, considering the need for future connectivity development in the UUS circle, this paper proposes to comprehensively consider the impact of connectivity development on regional suitability through coupled AHP and cellular automata (CA). The results show that about 102.67 km2 (13.03%) underground area of Erhai Lake Basin is suitable for underground space development. Compared with the traditional evaluation method, the evaluation result of about 31.41 km2 (3.99%) area was improved, and the fragmentation problem between blocks was improved. This method is of great value to the comprehensive development of UUS in the Erhai Lake Basin and is helping to improve future underground space planning.