Brute force risk assessment of a system as complex as a metropolitan area is beyond the current
computing abilities of even the highest speed clusters: the number and types of agents are too
large and the time to enable such computation too long. The aim has to be to develop intelligent
systems to a) capture the range and correlation structure of the many driving factors of urban
development and b) search mechanisms which are able to identify the range and form of the
joint distribution of the central outcomes in terms of quality of life, urban success, resilience and
robustness. And of course extreme events such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, criminality
and so on.