Enhancing geographical information systems capabilities with multi-criteria evaluation functions

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Short Software Descriptions

This paper briefly presents the software for interactive decision support that was developed in 1990-1991 within the Contracted Study Agreement between the System and Decision Sciences Program at IIASA and several Polish scientific institutions, namely: Institute of Automatic Control (Warsaw University of Technology); Institute of Computing Science (Technical University of Poznaii); Institute of Informatics (Warsaw University); and Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. This Contracted Study Agreement has been a continuation of the same type of activity conducted since 1985. Therefore many of the software packages are actually improved versions of the programs developed in 1985-1989. The theoretical part of the results developed within this scientific activity is presented in the IIASA Collaborative Paper CP-90-008 by A. Ruszczynski, T. Rogowski and A.P. Wierzbicki entitled "Contributions to Methodology and Techniques of Decision Analysis (First Stage)." Detailed descriptions of the methodology and the user guide for each particular software package are published in separate Collaborative Papers. Each software package described here is available in executable form for non-profit educational and scientific purposes, however, any profit-oriented or commercial application requires a written agreement with IIASA. Inquires about the software should be directed to the System and Decision Sciences Program at IIASA, Methodology of Decisions Analysis Project

Spatial optimization for land use allocation: accounting for sustainability concerns

Land-use allocation has long been an important area of research in regional science. Land-use patterns are fundamental to the functions of the biosphere, creating interactions that have substantial impacts on the environment. The spatial arrangement of land uses therefore has implications for activity and travel within a region. Balancing development, economic growth, social interaction, and the protection of the natural environment is at the heart of long-term sustainability. Since land-use patterns are spatially explicit in nature, planning and management necessarily must integrate geographical information system and spatial optimization in meaningful ways if efficiency goals and objectives are to be achieved. This article reviews spatial optimization approaches that have been relied upon to support land-use planning. Characteristics of sustainable land use, particularly compactness, contiguity, and compatibility, are discussed and how spatial optimization techniques have addressed these characteristics are detailed. In particular, objectives and constraints in spatial optimization approaches are examined

Parallel software tool for decomposing and meshing of 3d structures

An algorithm for automatic parallel generation of three-dimensional unstructured computational meshes based on geometrical domain decomposition is proposed in this paper. Software package build upon proposed algorithm is described. Several practical examples of mesh generation on multiprocessor computational systems are given. It is shown that developed parallel algorithm enables us to reduce mesh generation time significantly (dozens of times). Moreover, it easily produces meshes with number of elements of order 5 · 107, construction of those on a single CPU is problematic. Questions of time consumption, efficiency of computations and quality of generated meshes are also considered