Generating Urban Forms from Ontologies

The paper presents the ongoing research work on a software system for supporting the exploration of the numerous and often interrelated factors that can affect the urban design. The present implementation of the system supports the simulation of different urban scenarios in relation to the uniqueness and constraints peculiar to a design and a site. The paper considers our ongoing research work to formally represent the implicit and explicit knowledge used by means of ontologies. The ontology semantic system administrates a set of rules and relations among urban entities. To this aim, we are dealing with different issues: all the factors involved in the urban design process cross various domain knowledge, from different competencies and sources; the knowledge is both semantic and procedural.