Marcos E. Gaudiano

In this paper, we use an entropic formalism to compare the temporal strike patterns of two important unions in Córdoba city, Argentina. Despite being uncorrelated, the combined impact of the protests is not simply additive. This is reflected in the form of emerging nonlinear effects. The formalism allows for a study of system’s controllability aspects described in terms of entropic regimes. The analysis enables the characterization of correlations between overlapping periods of protest activity. It makes possible to quantitatively point out how in principle low-intensity seasons of independent strikes can often form a joint pattern of protests with higher social conflict.

Hierarchically organized patterns are ubiquitously found in complex systems. However, this point is frequently misrepresented in many Sociophysics models, mainly because random initial conditions are by far the most assumed in the literature. In this article, we studied a simple and quasi-aparametric Axelrod model of culture dynamics assuming structured (hierarchically organized) initial conditions. As a first remarkable point, the maximum final culture branching is observed to correspond to a highest uncontrollability regime of an entropy based framework described before. Also, this model shows a quantization of culture patterns that can be explained with the aid of that formalism.

The accelerated growth of cities since the middle of the last century occupies a prominent place in urban agendas. The development of planning strategies depends on the knowledge and understanding this phenomenon. Therefore, identifying the modification pattern in the spatial configuration is of paramount importance. In this sense, the high level of detail offered by remote sensing technologies makes it possible to estimate the distribution of human settlements and their relationship to other coverages. The information obtained allows to analyze spatial contiguity and general expansion but other indicators are needed to identify spatial singularities. This work aims to present a compaction indicator and fragmentation indicator, useful for identifying local configuration patterns and their temporal variation. The study area consists of the Moreno, Pilar, Gral Rodriguez, Luján and Mercedes municipalities of the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires (AMBA) for the period 1986–2019. The results indicate an increase in impervious surfaces higher than 300% in this period and the detection of new urban centres in those municipalities. In the future it is hoped to replicate the techniques presented throughout the AMBA in order to contribute to medium and long-term territorial planning.

We explore the relation between the local fractal dimension and the development of the built-up area of the Northern Margin of the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon (NMAL), for the period between 1960 and 2004. To this end we make use of a Generalized Local Spatial Entropy (GLSE) function based on which urban areas can be classified into five different types. Our analysis of NMAL shows how some of the growth dynamics encountered can be linked to the plethora of social, economic and political changes that have taken place in NMAL (and Portugal), during the last 40 years, allowing for the establishment of urban planning measures to either inhibit or promote sprawl in urban areas.