Robots and Artificial Intelligence

Advanced computer applications

The abundance of increasingly affordable computing power lends itself to new and demanding applications. In the environmental field, one of the most demanding problem areas is that of environmental systems analysis, subsuming the areas of policy design, planning and management. These areas and their problems are characterized by their multi- and inter-disciplinary nature, as well as the often dominating importance of political and judgemental elements, as opposed to purely technical, scientific problems. Thus, since the classical, formal approaches to technical problem solving are not strictly applicable, and the people involved are not necessarily technically trained experts but will include elected representatives, interest groups, and the general public, new methods of problem-solving, or applied systems analysis, and new methods of communicating scientific and technical information have to be developed.