Intelligent Knowledge-Based Models for Sustainable Spatial Planning and Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

The objective of this Special Issue is to investigate qualitative–quantitative approaches, methods and models aimed at analysing and structuring spatial knowledge for sustainable management of decision-making processes, strategies and implementation related to spatial planning and engineering.

In this context, knowledge plays a delicate and essential role. Yet, it creates elicitative, analytical and managerial difficulties, mainly because of its multi-source, multi-agent, multi-scale, co-creative and co-designed nature. This expresses the complex world that produces it, and the importance of what we don’t know in the moment of analysis, as recent events have demonstrated.

In acting sustainably and planning for a renewed sustainable approach to our lives, cities, and the environment in general, models and tools need to take into account interaction features and issues. These include the relation between natural objects and artifacts in dealing with complex environmental systems; space and time interactions in dealing with the making of a city or of a design object; and the relations among cognition and natural and/or formal language in environmental/urban systems.

Traditionally, the management of spatial organization processes has mainly focused on formalized, normative content or on the discretionary interpretation of non-formalized qualitative content. Fatally, these have been synthetic processes aimed at reducing dimensional complexity and allowing representations that are spatially and decisionally manageable—i.e., management of routine events, reactive management of emergencies, planning for housing development and, in general, programs aimed at specific benefits.

Models for the elicitation and representation of knowledge increasingly aim at what in general remains invisible and ambiguous, yet has to be coped with. Recent emergencies confirm and possibly enhance this, by drawing increased attention to what is there and we don’t see but we need to know—towards a really sustainable way of living on this planet, beyond empty words and labelling.

The rapid evolution of technology, together with growing social and environmental awareness, has now extended information technological limits. This increasingly allows the exploration of intelligent models for managing the complexity of spatial cognition in a multi-dimensional and multi-agent sense, both with theoretical and operational models. Starting from these models, complex knowledge management system architectures can be defined to support cognitively inclusive and sustainable development, decisions and strategies. The areas of interest and the operations of these models are manifold. They include multi-agent spatial planning processes; civil and architectural design activities with a space-cognitive and behavioural orientation; management and engineering of environmental conservation; transformation and recovery processes involving differentiated knowledge and agents; management of spatial and cognitive impacts of processes and risk situations within natural and/or anthropic environments; and much more.

For example, we particularly welcome papers dealing with, but not limited to:

• Models of spatial cognition management.
• Models of formal knowledge management, ontologies and ontological formalizations, mathematical and algorithmic formalizations.
• Ontologies in specific science or professional domains for the general organization of actual space.
• Ontologies for sharing meanings and overcoming ambiguities in managing data and language for knowledge implemented in territorial and environmental planning.
• Knowledge management models in spatial planning processes, in architectural and civil design and in infrastructure engineering.
• Multi-agent systems modeling and simulation in social domains.
• Virtual and remote knowledge management.
• Sentiment analysis and management.
• Knowledge management in environmental awareness processes within spatial planning, microclimate governance processes, energy management and ecosystem services.
• Co-evolutionary and multi-level perspectives on the analysis of data and extensive policy in planning.
• Innovative integrated, knowledge-enhancing and participatory area-based approaches in scenario planning.
• Knowledge management in risk and extreme events, such as natural hazards, floods, fires, etc.
• Space cognition and management during and after the the COVID19 pandemic.
• How to deal with strategies, programs and designs at different scales, granularities, and times before and after COVID19 challenge, with possible drastic changes in habits.
• Modelling systems architectures and tools to deal with and manage unknown and/or unpredictable events from a knowledge-building perspective.

Prof. Dr. Domenico Camarda
Dr. Maria Rosaria Stufano Melone
Guest Editors

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