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Urban land use planning in hill areas: A case study of Shillong
116
Book Reviews
be useful when optinr~sing deliveries to customers. Exercise 9 - Vinyl Wallpapers. A Quality Control exercise with the aim of minimising the number of defects that a:e sold unwittingly in wallpaper shops. Actually, this aim is defined rather sketchily, but students are only expected to write a draft report advising the company how to approach their problem. It will be useful for evaluating students" understanding of the OR approach; but it is hard to believe that such an inefficient company could continue to exist for long in real life! The problem is described extensively as well as subjectively which seems right for a problem that involves quality. Exercise 10 - Lune Chemicals. This incomplete exercise contains some quite comprehensive reports of interviews with staff members of the chemical company; they are arranged in chronological order. Also, there are some notes on forecasting demands for the company's products which were written by its OR officer who died whilst still working on this case. Obviously, there are problems of forecasting supplies, production control and inventory, but the students are not told exactly what is expected of them. This practical book illustrates the kind of work being done at the University of Lancaster in the O.R. department and how it is being used for teaching purposes. P.R. A T T W O O D Untversit.v of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands
J.P. SINGH
Urban Land Use Planning in Hill Areas: A Case Study of Shillong Inter-lndia Publications, Delhi, 1980, i~2 pages, RS 80.00 The book title is misleading because it covers only specialised urban land use in one hill area of India and planning is based upon a few general observations. The hill town in question is Shillong, an administrative centre set up in Assam during the days of the British Raj. It is a pity that the author did not develop a model for predicting urban growth patterns from the mass of relevant information that he accu-
mulated. If only he had described his methods for collecting it, he would have helped other researchers simplify the tedious task of fact-finding. Unfortunately, he stopped at this stage; whereas, a true O.R. man should have been in his element then, eagerly anticipating the results of statistical analysis, programming, or simulation. Most value will be obtained from this book by secial and economic geographers or historians, I fear; however, an O.R. analyst would enjoy himself devising a model for forecasting urban land use when planning a new administrative town in a developing country! As someone who knows the problems of urban development in the Third World, I found the book readable and interesting for the w:.~ng reasons.., as a reminder of past frustations, of quaint use of the English language, and of difficulties associated with planning in unreliable environments! In this book, urban planners will find the comprehensive list of references a big time-saver and practical O.R. workers will be able to widen their horizons. P.R. A T T W O O D University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands
Borivoj MELICHAR
Nonprocedural Communication between Users and Application Software IIASA, Laxenburg, 1981, v + 35 pages, $5.00 The study of Melichar can be characterized as a comprehensive review of user-friendly communication languages between user and computer. Cheap hardware (micro-computers) will only bring new possibilities when nonskiUed operators can easily communicate with an interactive data-processing system. High level programming languages like ALGOL, FORTRAN, COBOL etc. or even machine-like languages are by far not appropriate for this aim. The development of nonprocedural languages instead of programmingoriented languages is highly desirable. One might think that natural languages will be most appropriate. However, there are serious problems to overcome in implementing these languages (for instance, linguistic problems, ambiguous sentences). Formal nonprocedural languages have
Book Reviews
be useful when optinr~sing deliveries to customers. Exercise 9 - Vinyl Wallpapers. A Quality Control exercise with the aim of minimising the number of defects that a:e sold unwittingly in wallpaper shops. Actually, this aim is defined rather sketchily, but students are only expected to write a draft report advising the company how to approach their problem. It will be useful for evaluating students" understanding of the OR approach; but it is hard to believe that such an inefficient company could continue to exist for long in real life! The problem is described extensively as well as subjectively which seems right for a problem that involves quality. Exercise 10 - Lune Chemicals. This incomplete exercise contains some quite comprehensive reports of interviews with staff members of the chemical company; they are arranged in chronological order. Also, there are some notes on forecasting demands for the company's products which were written by its OR officer who died whilst still working on this case. Obviously, there are problems of forecasting supplies, production control and inventory, but the students are not told exactly what is expected of them. This practical book illustrates the kind of work being done at the University of Lancaster in the O.R. department and how it is being used for teaching purposes. P.R. A T T W O O D Untversit.v of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands
J.P. SINGH
Urban Land Use Planning in Hill Areas: A Case Study of Shillong Inter-lndia Publications, Delhi, 1980, i~2 pages, RS 80.00 The book title is misleading because it covers only specialised urban land use in one hill area of India and planning is based upon a few general observations. The hill town in question is Shillong, an administrative centre set up in Assam during the days of the British Raj. It is a pity that the author did not develop a model for predicting urban growth patterns from the mass of relevant information that he accu-
mulated. If only he had described his methods for collecting it, he would have helped other researchers simplify the tedious task of fact-finding. Unfortunately, he stopped at this stage; whereas, a true O.R. man should have been in his element then, eagerly anticipating the results of statistical analysis, programming, or simulation. Most value will be obtained from this book by secial and economic geographers or historians, I fear; however, an O.R. analyst would enjoy himself devising a model for forecasting urban land use when planning a new administrative town in a developing country! As someone who knows the problems of urban development in the Third World, I found the book readable and interesting for the w:.~ng reasons.., as a reminder of past frustations, of quaint use of the English language, and of difficulties associated with planning in unreliable environments! In this book, urban planners will find the comprehensive list of references a big time-saver and practical O.R. workers will be able to widen their horizons. P.R. A T T W O O D University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands
Borivoj MELICHAR
Nonprocedural Communication between Users and Application Software IIASA, Laxenburg, 1981, v + 35 pages, $5.00 The study of Melichar can be characterized as a comprehensive review of user-friendly communication languages between user and computer. Cheap hardware (micro-computers) will only bring new possibilities when nonskiUed operators can easily communicate with an interactive data-processing system. High level programming languages like ALGOL, FORTRAN, COBOL etc. or even machine-like languages are by far not appropriate for this aim. The development of nonprocedural languages instead of programmingoriented languages is highly desirable. One might think that natural languages will be most appropriate. However, there are serious problems to overcome in implementing these languages (for instance, linguistic problems, ambiguous sentences). Formal nonprocedural languages have