Spatial ontologies in multi-agent environmental planning

Landscapes and townscapes have been studied by many disciplinary areas over time. This study addresses the cognitive and perceptual dimensions of environmental spacescapes in planning by human agents. In fact, because of their dynamic complexity, environmental spacescapes create challengesfor the typical spatial behaviour of an agent perceiving and navigating in it. Therefore, environmental planning activities need to identify and manage the ‘fundamentals’ of spacescapes from the viewpoints of living single agents or multi-agent organizations, those to whom the planning effort is addressed. In this framework, the chapter deals with spatial ontologies in multi-agent systems. Some recent experiments are described and discussed here, highlighting spatial features of navigated environments from an environmental planning perspective.