The author deals with the analysis of urban open spaces, once conceived as part and parcel of our urban heritage. He introduces a mathematical modelling technique that is capable of mapping the variation of the sky visible from points distributed throughout space. The resulting maps overcome the...

This paper focuses the novel GIS-related aspects of a prototype planning support system for urban planners and energy advisers. The system design combines commercial database and GIS packages to provide a flexible means of predicting the solar energy potential and energy consumption of...

In a previous paper, emergence and ways of computing with emergence were discussed. Emergence goes hand in hand with ambiguity. Ambiguity, of a particular kind, is foundational in shape grammars. Shape grammars compute with shapes that have ambiguous or indefinite parts. This <i>part ambiguity</i> is...

This paper introduces procedures involving the recursive construction of Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay tessellations. In such constructions, Voronoi and Delaunay concepts are used to tessellate an object space with respect to a given set of generators and then the construction is repeated every...

In line with the paradigmatic shift towards spatial ecology, it is generally accepted that the conservation value of a habitat remnant cannot be determined in isolation from its wider landscape. Sensitivity to the spatial context of forest patches should, therefore, characterise habitat...

A computer simulation, based on the garbage-can decisionmaking process, is presented in order to investigate effects of making plans and of two other organizational characteristics -- namely, decision cost and problem disutility -- on the behavior of complex systems. In this simulation a...

The application of information technology to landscape analysis dates back to the early work in computer-based mapping. Indeed, much of the early development of what became geographic information systems (GIS) and three-dimensional landscape simulation was undertaken by landscape architects....

This article synthesizes two GIS-based accessibility measures into one framework, and applies the methods to examining spatial accessibility to primary health care in the Chicago ten-county region. The floating catchment area (FCA) method defines the service area of physicians by a threshold...

The writings of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, Bauhaus theorists and pioneers of nonrepresentational art, are the framework for a discussion of contemporary issues in computational design. Kandinsky and Klee wrote of the many misguided dualisms in the art theory and pedagogy of their time....

Several environment applications require the computation of visibility information on a terrain. Examples are optimal placement of observation points, line-of-sight communication, and computation of hidden as well as scenic paths. Visibility computations on a terrain may involve either one or...