Dynamic Models for Exploring the Resilience in Territorial Scenarios

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the role covered by dynamic models as support for the decision-making process in the evaluation of policies and actions for increasing the resilience of cities and territories. In recent decades, urban resilience has been recognized as a dynamic and multidimensional phenomenon that characterizes urban and metropolitan area dynamics. Therefore, it may be considered a fundamental aspect of urban and territorial planning. The employment of quantitative methods, such as dynamic models, is useful for the prediction of the dynamic behavior of territories and of their resilience. The present work discusses the system dynamics model and the Lotka-Volterra cooperative systems and shows how these models can aid technicians in resilience assessment and also decision makers in the definition of policies and actions, especially if integrated in wide evaluation frameworks for urban resilience achievements. This paper aims to provide an epistemological perspective of the application of dynamic models in resilience assessment, underlying the possible contribution to this issue through the analysis of a real case study and methodological framework. The main objective of this work is to lay the basis for future compared applications of these two models to the same case study.in order to underline dynamic model (DM) features that are closely related to the decision-making process in territorial and urban planning [11]. DMs are recognized as suitable tools to evaluate policies and actions aimed at increasing urban resilience [12][13][14]. This property is related to the fact that these models are built and grounded on dimensions related to both urban systems and urban resilience. In fact, during the construction of the model, it is necessary to select and identify which aspects of a territorial system have to be included with reference to the evaluation goal, from the environmental to the economic dimension [11,12,15]. In this sense, DMs are able to reveal both the dynamic behavior of urban and territorial systems and the impacts of policies on the key variables identified.Specifically, the main aim of this work is to study the principal characteristics of the system dynamics model (SDM) and Lotka-Volterra models (LV) in order to apply both to the same case study. The final purpose of this investigation is to understand the importance of the modelling approach in the field of resilience evaluation.The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the current state of the art of resilience and urban resilience; Section 3 explains the role of dynamic models-the system dynamic models (SDM) and Lotka-Volterra models (LV)-in the decision-making process and summarizes their methodological background, state of art and some illustrative examples; Section 4 explains how the SDM models and LV models could contribute to urban planning; a comparative matrix is developed to investigate the utility of the considered models in predicting support in the design of future transformation scenarios; and Section 5 incl...

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Discrete Competitive Lotka–Volterra Model with Controllable Phase Volume

“…Kamann and P. Nijkamp [16]. The role covered by dynamic models as support for the decision-making process in the evaluation of policies and actions for increasing the resilience of cities and territories was considered by Assumma et al [17].…”