Economic and social development planning

urban planning

and land use planning are statutory plans in China. However

China faces a "three planning separation" problem because these plans have different planning principles

technical standards

and approaches

thereby resulting in conflicts. To eliminate such conflicts

the "three-plan integration" program was introduced in China in 2013. Many cities

such as Guangzhou

Shanghai

and Xiamen

have attempted to achieve such integration. As a basic technology for solving problems related to "three planning separation

" the geographic information system has been very helpful in the quantitative analyses of spatial information. Apart from traditional spatial analysis

combining GIS with the location-allocation model

cellular automata（CA）

or multi-agent model provides an innovative alternative in the quantitative analysis of the decisions made in urban planning. The geographical simulation andoptimization applications not only simulate and optimize the land use systems in complex environments but also provide sufficient information for preparing planning scenarios. However

because of the lack of theoretical and practical support

these applications remain in the primary stage. Therefore

advanced GIS analytic models must be developed to devise effective methodologies for integrating the three aforementioned plans. In this paper

we summarized the geographical simulation and optimization applications from the perspective of geographic information science from national and international studies. The Geographical Simulation and Optimization System（GeoSOS） comprises three components

namely

CA

Multi-Agent Systems（MAS）

and swarm intelligence. This system compensates for the weakness of the general GIS software

which cannot perform advanced spatial analyses

and satisfies the demands of complex simulation and optimization. We reviewed several geographical simulation and optimization methods

including CA

MAS

ant colony optimization

and Particle Swarm Optimization（PSO）. We also summarized the GeoSOS applications related to planning ecological control

urban growth boundary

and permanent basic farmland protection. GeoSOS technologies have been proven to be capable of solving the problems encountered in these applications. The framework associated with geographical simulation and optimization has been used as the theoretical and methodological support of the "three-plan integration." This framework aims to provide various techniques

such as the Pareto strategy

Pareto simulated annealing

non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm

multi-objective PSO

and multi-objective immune system algorithm

for solving the multi-objective optimization problem in "three-plan integration." High-resolution land use imageries have been increasingly used for solving planning problems. A very large data volume must be used when various sources of spatial data are used in implementing large-scale simulation. However

previous studies have utilized high-performance computation techniques for geographical simulation and optimization

for establishing eco-designated line of control

and for generating predictions and early warnings of illegal development.