A look at the curious complexities of spatial problems.

Practically, from the spatial designer’s perspective, “spatial problems” include designing buildings, planning neighborhoods, building complicated physical infrastructure, or even optimizing global supply chains. Even the seemingly simple problems are complex.

But yes, even supply chains can be viewed as spatial puzzles, as they involve managing the ever-changing capacities to store and move goods through land, oceans, and airways, with fluctuating degrees of control and predictability. For companies, spatial AI might aim to help generate optimal solutions for the individual behaviors of ships and trucks. For nations, spatial AI could simulate different rules of trade, including import duties, tariffs, international laws, etc., and perhaps contribute to new policies.

Board games are inherently spatial; players control pieces that traverse a finite board governed by formal rules. Different rules makes for different experiences. Spatial AI could model players’ decision-making but also recommend strategies for game designers, who explore and invent rules and mechanics for new games.

One common theme among spatial problems is that even the simplest ones can still involve balancing numerous complex and competing factors.

In urban environments, spatial AI could generate plans for directing city services, anticipating and scheduling repairs, determining levels of investment, or coordinating agencies to minimize traffic and neighborhood disruptions. Planners could consider different systems, compositions of, and incentives for urban mobility, balancing pedestrian traffic, electric scooters, bicycles, and motor vehicles, autonomous and otherwise.

Politics can be regarded spatially. Concretely, the geopolitics of an election campaign amounts to a strategic territorial puzzle. Abstractly, politicians talk about how to “navigate a political climate” and the like. If we can formally define the qualities of such a climate, spatial AI could devise strategies to influence it.

How quickly a pathogen traverses a population depends on its mode of transmission and rate of replication, but also the characteristics of the environment it infects, including the density of the population, presence of fomites, airflow, temperature, and other factors.

Entrepreneurs and marketers talk about “entering a space” to mean “sell to a new customer segment.” Or they say “a space is crowded” to convey a sense that “too many competitors to sustain another.” Is there something inherently “spatial” about a market then?