Yasuhiro Suzuki - Böcker

Disaster Resilient Cities: Concepts and Practical Examples discusses natural disasters, their complexity, and the exploration of different ways of thinking regarding the resilience of structures. The book provides a blueprint for structural designers to better prepare structures for all types of natural hazards during the design stage.

Brief and readable, this book analyzes various examples of disaster damage from earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods, together with their causal mechanisms. Practical methods to plan and design structures based on their regions, cities, as well as the particular countermeasures are also included for study.

Proposes new methods and policies for enhancing structural resilience for key urban infrastructure Includes examples of disaster damage as a result of earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and their structural countermeasures Presents case studies that cover specific mega disasters, such as the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, Super Typhoon Hyan, and Bangkok flood

This book contains the joint proceedings of the Winter School of Hakodate (WSH) 2011 held in Hakodate, Japan, March 15–16, 2011, and the 6th International Workshop on Natural Computing (6th IWNC) held in Tokyo, Japan, March 28–30, 2012, organized by the Special Interest Group of Natural Computing (SIG-NAC), the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). This volume compiles refereed contributions to various aspects of natural computing, ranging from computing with slime mold, artificial chemistry, eco-physics, and synthetic biology, to computational aesthetics.

This book deals with one of the most novel advances in natural computing, namely, in the field of tactile sense analysis. Massage, which provides relaxation and stimulation for human beings, is analyzed in this book for the first time by encoding the motions and tactile senses involved. The target audience is not limited to researchers who are interested in natural computing but also includes those working in ergonomic design, biomedical engineering, Kansei engineering, and cognitive science.

This book highlights recent advances in natural computing, including biology and its theory, bio-inspired computing, computational aesthetics, computational models and theories, computing with natural media, philosophy of natural computing and educational technology. It presents extended versions of the best papers selected from the symposium “7th International Workshop on Natural Computing” (IWNC7), held in Tokyo, Japan, in 2013.The target audience is not limited to researchers working in natural computing but also those active in biological engineering, fine/media art design, aesthetics and philosophy.

This book highlights recent advances in natural computing, including biology and its theory, bio-inspired computing, computational aesthetics, computational models and theories, computing with natural media, philosophy of natural computing, and educational technology. It presents extended versions of the best papers selected from the “8th International Workshop on Natural Computing” (IWNC8), a symposium held in Hiroshima, Japan, in 2014. The target audience is not limited to researchers working in natural computing but also includes those active in biological engineering, fine/media art design, aesthetics, and philosophy.

This book highlights recent advances in natural computing, including biology and its theory, bio-inspired computing, computational aesthetics, computational models and theories, computing with natural media, philosophy of natural computing and educational technology. It presents extended versions of the best papers selected from the symposium “7th International Workshop on Natural Computing” (IWNC7), held in Tokyo, Japan, in 2013.The target audience is not limited to researchers working in natural computing but also those active in biological engineering, fine/media art design, aesthetics and philosophy.

This book highlights recent advances in natural computing, including biology and its theory, bio-inspired computing, computational aesthetics, computational models and theories, computing with natural media, philosophy of natural computing, and educational technology. It presents extended versions of the best papers selected from the “8th International Workshop on Natural Computing” (IWNC8), a symposium held in Hiroshima, Japan, in 2014. The target audience is not limited to researchers working in natural computing but also includes those active in biological engineering, fine/media art design, aesthetics, and philosophy.

The essence of natural computing is aesthetics; for example, in cooking, one of the most common forms of natural computation, the decision to add salt, and how much, is based on the aesthetics of taste. Because touch perception is instinctively related to a sense of beauty, the aesthetics of tactile sense are considered as algorithms by using the Tactile Score, which encodes tactile sensation. This book will appeal not only to researchers of natural computing or aesthetics, but also those working in ergonomic design, haptic-Kansei engineering, philosophy, design and art.

Most natural and artificial systems transform information in a predictable or programmable way; such transformation can be interpreted as harnessing nature for computing. Recently we have witnessed a burst of research in unconventional computing, resulting in the development of experimental prototypes of natural computers, plasmodium computers, reaction-diffusion processors, and DNA computers as well as theoretical paradigms of natural computation such as cellular automata, artificial chemistry, evolutionary computing, and neural networks. The International Workshop on Natural Computing (IWNC) brings together computer scientists, biologists, mathematicians, electronic engineers, physicists, and others to critically assess present findings in the field, and to outline future developments in nature-inspired computing. This compilation of papers presented at the most recent workshop, held in Nagoya, Japan, makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of natural computing.