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Konrad Dramo wic z

Computer modelling, as long as a problem is difficult to solve by analytical methods and its solution reąuires a large number of calculations and utilization of a large amount of information, is the best method of analysis of a system. Si-mulation, as a techniąue consisting in the substitution of an real system for its Computer model (Simulator), has a special application in Sciences studying the behavior of certain socio-economic systems where experimenting with a real phenomenon or process is too expensive or simply unfeasible. In Computer simulation, the laboratory in which experiments are being madę with the process under investigations is a digital Computer. By means of simulation on a digital Computer we can study any problems related to regional systems, the morę so because the relations describing them are in reality of non-linear and stochastic character. Computer modelling, based on systems analysis, can in futurę become a generał spatial techniąue, one leading to the methodological deepe-ning of research. The starting point in Computer simulation of real systems is the determination of their parameters in a probabilistic space. In the location analysis this problem is solved by means of the so-called Mean Information Field.

Computer modelling, applied to spatial research sińce 1953, has, so far been centered around a certain, limited number of problems, amongst which the most freąuent are simulation^ of individual cities and urban systems as well as simu-lations of spatial diffusion processes (diffusion of innovation and migration included). In the case of simulation of economic, and especialy agricultural problems, spatial Computer modelling has been much less developed than in the case of non-spatial economic-operation research. An exception here is simulation of transportation problems wherein simulation of network usually calls for the application of spatial analysis. Computer simulation is a techniąue attractive on account of its didactic and scientific merits, one appearing as a substitute for experiments in nonexperimental Sciences. That is why its propagation in these Sciences can be an impulse to the development of many valuable and original studies.

Translated by Ireneusz Jakubczak