Through the probabilistic reasoning is possible to take rational decisions even if there is limited information. The bayesian network is a probabilistic model that allows representing the uncertain knowledge in an given domain (of knowledge) in a graphical way. This method is not much used in...

Brainstorming (based on conceptual mapping tools) is a method for identifying ideas, oriented to workgroups. In brief, it is the conceptual analysis of the discussion inside the group. In this way it is possible to enhance creative energies and develop new ideas. We propose two applications in...

The cladistic is an technique born in the field of biology. Starting from the physics characteristics of some elements, the cladistic method try to find the hierarchical links between them in the bases of their similarity and of the research of “evidences” of relationship. The goal of this...

It is very discussed about the sustainability of urban areas. One of the requests of urban sustainability consists in the capability of the city to preserve around itself a good level of naturalness: A sustainable economy reflects an image of its territory that must represent a landscape of...

Land use evolution during forty years in a large set of European cities is analysed by means of a cellular automaton. In one hand (the operational level), the use of this modelling tool allows: a: to study the transition rules in land use and the proximity effects on these rules; b: to compare...

At the 41th congress of ERSA., Staufer-Steinnocher (2001) proved that kernel density estimation, a technique of spatial analysis belonging to the point pattern methods, can be usefully applied to geomarketing. Following this point of view, the aim of this paper is to show that other point...

There is a missing concept in the Italian planning tradition: the delimitation of Urban Systems. The laws of the European countries all provide some kind of delimitation for the 'Built Areas', in Italy there are no official boundaries for what it is built. This work tries to fill the gap by...

This paper analyses the multi-agents systems that are now considered the best tool to simulate and study real world. We review the main characteristics of a multi-agents system, namely interactions and cooperations of agents, communications and behaviours between them and finally the schedule of...

Usually applications of urban growth cellular automata are related to an only one town, with transition rules and constraints a priori defined. This seems to be a severe limits in applications. The paper presented is born to follow a different kind of approach, so to have rules and constraints...

In the paper of Cavezzali, Girotti and Rabino presented at ERSA 2003 conference, features of multi-agent models and their potentiality for the study of territorial phenomena are discussed. Starting from this study, the present paper digs deeper mechanisms of multi-agent systems working,...