Dino Borri

The validation of evacuation simulation models through the analysis of behavioural uncertainty

Both experimental and simulation data on fire evacuation are influenced by a component of uncertainty caused by the impact of the unexplained variance in human behaviour, namely behavioural uncertainty (BU). Evacuation model validation studies should include the study of this type of uncertainty during the comparison of experiments and simulation results. An evacuation model validation procedure is introduced in this paper to study the impact of BU. This methodology is presented through a case study for the comparison between repeated experimental data and simulation results produced by FDS+Evac, an evacuation model for the simulation of human behaviour in fire, which makes use of distribution laws.

Social Capital as Knowledge Facilitator: Evidence from Latvia

This paper investigates knowledge acquisition through social ties. This issue has proved important in organizational studies as a mechanism of value creation. Recently, it has also been identified in regional studies as a factor behind regional development and consensus building. Policies are therefore needed to support such knowledge acquisition. The approach is based on the concepts of knowledge as a ‘club good’, and of social capital, where the latter is seen as a set of assets which can overcome obstacles to knowledge exchange. A taxonomy of social capital and knowledge is proposed and relationships among the considered dimensions are hypothesized. A multivariate analysis at the individual level is applied to data collected in the Republic of Latvia, including a sensitivity analysis with regard to socio-demographic dimensions. The analysis underlines the low effect of social capital on complex forms of knowledge. Results also show a strong sensitivity for socio-demographic dimensions.

Evolutionary Technologies in Knowledge-Based Management of Water Resources: Perspectives from South Asian Case Studies

Water management technologies and approaches in South Asia can be considered the result of two opposite forces: on the one hand, the modernist push for technological advance and reductionist thinking supported by local bureaucracies and international competition; on the other, local attempts to develop adaptive approaches and technologies, increasingly supported by NGOs and more recent international aid policies. Despite the disproportionate power between the two, evolutionary patterns of technologies are not the result of linear domination forces. On the contrary, local technologies and knowledge seem to evolve through complex interplay between local and global pressures as a result of cognitive and practical interactions. In the attempt to deal with these issues, our paper analyses some case studies from India. Our particular concern is with the evolutionary patterns of water management approaches and technologies with reference to the changing local–global interaction dynamics. In this context, we discuss the innovation potential of actual interaction spaces and the role local and global actor networks play in shaping mechanisms of cognitive interaction and technological innovation.

Supporting environmental planning: Knowledge management through fuzzy cognitive mapping

The inherently complex nature of the environmental domain requires that planning efforts become projects of participated, inclusive, multi-agent, multi-source knowledge building processes developed by the community. Knowledge is often hard to be processed, handled, formalized, modeled. Yet cognitive models are useful to avoid the typical unmanageability of domains with high complexity such as the environmental one, and enhance knowledge organization and management. We have investigated on the potentials of cognitive-mapping-based tools, particularly on cross impact evaluations, in the case study of Taranto (Italy). The process was aimed at building up future development scenarios in city neighborhoods, and fuzzy cognitive mapping were used to support decision-making by exploring cross impacts of possible policy perspectives. Although substantial results are rather general, the study proves to be interesting in enhancing the potentials of FCM-based approach to support decisionmaking, particularly when dealing with well-focused policy perspectives.

Planning for the Microclimate of Urban Spaces: Notes from a Multi-agent Approach

Agents, agent-oriented modelling and multi-agent systems (MAS) introduce new and unconventional concepts in computer science. These elements are able to sparkle new modelling perspectives in behavioural knowledge and in environmental domain, where interactions between humans and natural/artificial agents are not standardized. MAS are considered as “societies of agents” interacting to coordinate their behaviour and often cooperate to achieve some collective goal. In order to show the involved agents and their roles in a quasi-hierarchical scale of interaction behaviours, we propose the setting up of schemes aimed at simplifying the behaviors and the interactions between human and non-human agents in indoor spaces for urban microclimate management.

Spatial primitives and knowledge organization in planning and architecture: some experimental notes

Cities and territories share structural references to a common environmental ontology, in which space perception and representation play a major role. Many human abilities deal with space management, whose ontology can be useful in building intelligent machines in which space conceptualization plays a fundamental role. Space organizing is an important human ability, in which sensorial and mental abilities intriguingly interact. The analysis of human intelligent abilities in this functional perspective helps in shedding light on aspects otherwise erroneously given for granted. Human agents conceptualize, design and organize spaces for human organizations, for example in architectural design, by using numerous routine and non-routine cognitive processes often analysed. Yet automated reasoning/design agents still provide only bad copies of human performances . Here, creativity is postulated as a non-routine sophisticated human cognitive function, a conscious and intentional process for redefining agents’ situations in the world in new ways. Even if the concept of creativity remains controversial, an increasing number of cognitive scientists considers creativity as a specific part of the ordinary cognitive equipment of the human agent, to be used in certain situations, not confined to a limited set of exceptional human agents .In this context, we assume that it is worthwhile adding spatial domain to the other domains of creativity studied in cognitive science. We also assume that space understanding and space organizing can be fruitfully analyzed and modelled by paying attention to both routine and non-routine (creative) cognitive functions. The domain of civil architecture is a relevant domain of spatial knowledge and action and of course of spatial organization. In it, aesthetics and art, based on creativity mechanisms, play an important role. Studies on architectural creativity based on self-biographies by leading architects (who usually motivate their designs with memories of other designs or spaces, or architectures, experienced by them in the past) prove that spatial memory has primary importance on creativity.The paper carries out an introductory discussion on such issues, by analysing the case studies of single-agent and multi-agent spatial organizations under the level of spatial design. The paper explores possible modelling approaches and system architectures supporting cognition-oriented activities in spatial organizations.

Learning and Sharing Technology in Informal Contexts: A Multiagent-Based Supporting Approach

An interesting debate is growing today about the roles of new and traditional technologies in raising knowledge of agents involved, as well as in boosting effective community development. The last century has been largely dominated by capital-intensive technologies, impacting large and populated areas. From the 1990s, due to social, financial, environmental concerns, new low-impact, local-born, little to medium-scale experiences have grown, with interesting results. The importance of local-based technologies seems to lay on the abilities and knowledge of local populations, which are quite difficult to emerge as formal and shared methodologies. Yet they often succeed where traditional technologies had failed. In this paper, the EU-funded Antinomos project is discussed, dealing with local knowledge raising in the water sector. The study carries out a cross-disciplinary, cross-scale, multi-agent approach, to create a real learning environment for the sharing and the active generation of local knowledge in the water sector.

Technological Change and Innovation for Sustainable Cities: A Multiagent-Based Ontological Approach

Debates on sustainable technologies for urban management—be they related to energy, water, transport, or any other major sectors—tend to be restricted to issues about how to support a transition to new and more efficient technologies, as part of a linear path of progress proceeding from old, backward technologies to modern ones. Technologies themselves tend to be treated like black-boxes, somehow exogenously defined by engineering R&D efforts, while societies are mainly conceived of as passive agents, which can, at most, accept or reject them on the basis of their preferences. In our paper we adopt a different perspective, i.e., we start from the acknowledgement of the importance of the work of many distributed agents and micro-learning processes in technological evolutions and innovations as well as from the idea that sustainable solutions are by no means restricted to linear progression from past to future, as they can also encompass returns and recombinations of traditional components and practices together with new ones. After grounding our approach in some of the main contributions from innovation studies as well as in the application of cognitive science to evolutionary studies of technologies, we specifically discuss the possibility to use a multi-agent and multi-indexing ontological system as a device to share and learn technological knowledge across a wide community, thus supporting those micro-learning processes of distributed agents, which—in our perspective—can boost innovation and change in practice. In so doing, we will refer to a case study developed within the EU-funded project ANTINOMOS “A knowledge network for solving real-life water problems in developing countries: bridging contrasts”, which has largely dealt with enhancement and management of local/community-based knowledge for water sector management. The major aim is to create an appropriate learning environment for sharing and for actively generating knowledge through multi-actor synergies. In this paper, the above subject is discussed and carried out with a cross-disciplinary, cross-scale, multi-agent approach, considering the different forms of local knowledge and language involved.

Navigating in multi-level buildings: the effect of rotation

BackgroundThe existence of the complexity in layout and physical parameters are still under investigation in urban architecture in cognitive science. Current research seems to pay more attention to wayfinding in two-dimensional environments investigating it in public buildings such as hospitals, airports or university departments, where it is more common to experience disorientation. Also, the presence of turning walks or staircases undermines the users’ cognitive map. As a consequence, the sense of disorientation would depend on various factors such as the number of ramps, their location and orientation with respect to the building’s main façade.MethodsWe carry out two case studies: the first one is a qualitative experiment at the University of Bremen; the second one is a quantitative analysis at the Technical University of Bari. In both studies we select a random sample in which respondents perform a series of tests. . Participants are not familiar with the building in which the experiment is conducted but have some knowledge with the surrounding environment.ResultsMain results suggest the importance of building layouts as an important element affecting human cognitive map in wayfinding. They seem to support the hypothesis that the direction of stairs plays an important role on the disorientation when navigating complex three-dimensional environments.ConclusionsThis paper is an attempt to understand how the location of staircases affects disorientation and how this aspect, in turn, affects knowledge acquisition for wayfinding. These findings, coming from experimentations in indoor environments, seem to evoke a peculiar extension to outdoor environments, too. There is fair interest toward convenient investigation for outdoor integration and/or generalization. An intriguing future perspective for the present research would be the extension to the urban level of spatial cognition.

Assessing vulnerability to landslides in Italy

The present work aims at answering the following research questions: (a) to infer on the causes of vulnerability (e.g. in infrastructures) to landslides and assess the contribution of these factors to vulnerability risks in disaster management; (b) to address policy implications for planning solutions to help reducing the risk of vulnerability to landslides in the Italian context. To answer to these questions we assess the concept of vulnerability in the context of natural disasters. Second, with a Multinomial Logit regression we infer data on the order of damages, with the characteristics of landslides in order to study the relationship between the vulnerability of structures and infrastructures, with the landslide phenomenon. Third, we argue on the need of an effective policy strategy at national level in line with the indications given at EU level.