An integrated approach for exploring opportunities and vulnerabilities of complex territorial systems

An important problem arising when assessing territorial systems coms from their complexity. This requires a complex multidimensional approach for the evaluation in order to obtain concise final judgments. Moreover, when dealing with territorial systems, the analysis of the geographical patterns of the elements under investigation plays a fundamental role. The paper proposes an integrated approach for the analysis of a complex territorial system based on the methodology of the Multicriteria-Spatial Decision Support Systems (MC-SDSS), which consists in the integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Multicriteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) techniques. In particular, starting from a real case related to a mountain area in Northern Italy, the present paper explores the MC-SDSS methodology for supporting the definition of fu-ture transformation scenarios