Anticipation in Evaluation and Assessment of Urban and Regional Plans

In order to start a move toward better computer based supporting tools for the assessment of urban and regional plans, a new research and development endeavour is proposed. In so doing, anticipation andanticipatory computing, i.e. a technique applying modelling and simulation, is found to be an interesting and promising point of departure. Hence, a fuzzy cellular automata computer model (STF) for simulation and anticipation of geographical or physical space is constructed. The main idea is to map anurban plan onto the STF for its assessing. STF has a normalised and continuous, i.e. fuzzy, system variable while both the time and space dimensions take on discrete values. Further, while ordinary cellularautomata use local rules, global ones are employed in STF, i.e. there is a total interdependence among all the cells of the automata. Outcomes of STF can be interpreted more as possible future states than exact predictions. Preliminary results seem to be well in line with main characteristics of planned urban or regional geographical spaces. Further, for the managing of multi-criteria choice situations, a fuzzy procedure - the Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) procedure - with continuous control over the degree of ANDOR-ness and with independent control over the degree of tradeoff, is proposed