During the last two decades attention to location-dependent information has greatly increased. Process planning and decisionmaking require the availability of relevant data and proper information to monitor development processes, to prepare alternative plans, and to analyse impacts. It has...

Interactive telecommunication services for household use -- including shopping, booking and banking facilities -- are made available through viewdata systems, which also provide access to virtually limitless amounts of information. The initial experiences in Britain of the public viewdata...

Most current models of spatial interaction are structured so that a change to an existing spatial alternative or the introduction of a new alternative will not change the ratio of flows from any constrained origin to any pair of unchanged destination alternatives. This recently identified...

A radically new approach to facility layout optimization involving nonconvex quadratic assignment problems is presented. The approach uses a simulated annealing technique originally developed to solve problems in statistical mechanics by Metropolis et al, and recently applied to VLSI chip design...

In this paper it is noted that the way in which spatial information systems are used varies with the spatial level of the planning systems which use them. In West Germany very few systems with high spatial resolution are found at federal level, whereas at lower levels the areal coverage is...

In this paper, micro-DOT -- a version of the familiar DOT program based on a Monte Carlo solution procedure -- is introduced. It offers a way of exploiting the potential of microcomputers by offering a means of coping with large multicriteria optimisation problems relevant to practical planning....

In this paper the subject of prescriptive analysis in spatial planning is dealt with. The point is made that all planners to some extent engage in prescriptive analysis. It is argued that this kind of analysis need not be equated with a technocratic exercise provided that the analyst recognises...

The incorporation of safety considerations into land-development control decisions associated with nonnuclear hazardous installations in a major metropolitan planning authority area in the United Kingdom is examined. The experience of the case-study authority over the last ten years is examined...

The conflicting views of time proposed by nineteenth century classical science on the one hand and by biological and cultural evolution on the other are examined in the light of recent discoveries concerning nonequilibrium systems. A new view emerges of the evolution of complex systems, one...

The problem and methodology involved in modeling evolving complex systems is briefly discussed. The crucial importance of nonlinearity, bifurcation, stability, and instability are under-lined within this new understanding of the 'morphogenesis' of dynamic systems. An application of these new...