Design Considerations for an Internet Portal to Support Public Participation in Transportation Improvement Decision Making

Recent research about “analytic-deliberative” decision processes shows that meaningful public participation is possible, and decision outcomes are improved. The analytic component provides technical information that ensures broad-based, competent perspectives are treated. The deliberative component provides an opportunity to interactively give voice to a diversity of values, alternatives, and recommendations. Unfortunately, such public participation has been expensive and time consuming, and thus involved small groups. An Internet system that combines geographic information system technology, decision modeling technology, and communications technology into a geospatial portal to support analytic-deliberative processes might be one way to facilitate meaningful participation in large groups as a way for agencies to more effectively engage a public who wishes to participate. The core research question underpinning our work on system design is: What system design considerations for various analytic-deliberative capabilities will foster support of structured and flexible, analytic-deliberative, transportation improvement decision processes?

Multcriteria Decision Analysis for Collaborative GIS

This chapter provides a critical review of GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) for supporting group (collaborative and participatory) decision making. The review is based on a survey of referred papers that have been published over the last 15 years or so. The chapter offers a classification of the GIS-MCDA approaches for group decision making. First, the articles are classified according to the generic elements of the MCDA methods. Second, the GIS-MCDA methods are classified according to the various perspectives on collaborative decision support. These taxonomies of the GIS-MCDA approaches provide a background for an evaluation of the contribution of MCDA to GIS-based collaborative decision making.

Simulation Modelling within Collaborative Spatial Decision Support Systems Using "Cause-Effect" Models and Software Agents

Solutions to spatial environmental problems often require the integration of dynamic simulation models within GIS to create spatial decision support systems (SDSS) that can generate responses to theoretical ”What if?” scenarios. Extending this paradigm to a collaborative spatial decision support system, however, faces significant challenges. This includes the inability of computationally intensive models to provide real-time results, and the inability of novice end users to effectively parameterize the models. Effective solutions to these problems proposed here include the use of ”cause-effect” models to link inputs to outputs for a limited number of scenarios, as well as utilizing software agents that assist novice users in determining the correct input parameters for the models. Examples from the St-Esprit watershed SDSS serve to elucidate the proposed solutions.

Argumentation Mapping in Collaborative Spatial Decision Making

Collaboration and decision-making of humans usually entails logical reasoning that is expressed through discussions and individual arguments. Where collaborative work uses geospatial information and where decision-making has a spatial connotation, argumentation will include geographical references. Argumentation maps have been developed to support geographically referenced discussions, and provide a visual access to debates in domains such as urban planning. The concept of argumentation maps provides for explicit links between arguments and the geographic objects they refer to. These geo-argumentative relations do not only allow for cartographic representation of arguments, but also support the querying of both space and discussion. Combinations of spatial queries and retrieval of linked arguments provide a powerful way of analyzing and summarizing the current state of a debate. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the original argumentation model, and we discuss related research and application development. We also link argumentation mapping to related concepts in geographic visualization, spatial decision support systems, and public participation GIS under the umbrella of collaborative GIS.

Collaborative Geographic Information Systems and Science

The relevant research literatures, together with the issues articulated by chapter authors in this book, are used to characterize some of the conceptual and technical hurdles of collaborative GIS. The intention is to examine how collaborative GIS can consolidate and expand its reaches in research and applications. This is necessary, given the increasing complexity of environmental and societal problems. Three areas for future research explorations are synthesized. These areas encompass scale effects, system modeling, and distributive planning. While there may be other equally valid research areas, the focus is to encourage a transdisciplinary infusion to enrich collaborative GIS. With a transdisciplinary approach, integrated solutions can be developed that use the best available knowledge to narrow conceptual gaps between technical experts and the general public, towards more effective planning, problem solving, and decision-making. Game theory, ontological engineering, and agent technology are proposed as transdisciplinary means to enrich current collaborative GIS research and applications.

Internet-Based Spatial Decision Support Using Open Source Tools

In the last half decade, there has been growing interest in the concept of collaborative geographic information systems (GIS) in support of decision making, especially in the context of various domains of planning. This interest has spawned an already substantial literature in what is now becoming popularly known as public participation GIS (PPGIS) or community GIS. A central and general objective of PPGIS is to encourage the use of GIS technology by broadly based and geographically dispersed nonexpert users. In the context of planning decision support, this involves creating software with map-based functionality that is responsive to the needs of user groups that have limited experience with computers and only a rudimentary knowledge of even simple spatial analysis concepts. This functionality should be designed to enable these individuals to communicate and interact with higher level users and agencies on an equal footing so that all participants can be both better informed of each others perspectives and more involved in decision-making processes that involve land and resource use planning and management. This chapter considers the general issue of PPGIS in the context of use of the Internet and the World Wide Web as a means of achieving broad participation and collaboration in decision making among dispersed participants with a diversity of backgrounds and competencies in using spatial concepts and analyses. The chapter also considers the role that open source software tools can play in crafting accessible and highly customizable solutions using an example for assessing the quality of primary-level education in Peru.

Collaborative Mapping and GIS

The collection and dissemination of geographic information has long been the prerogative of national mapping agencies. Nowadays, location-aware mobile devices could potentially turn everyone into a mapmaker. Collaborative mapping is an initiative to collectively produce models of real-world locations online that people can then access and use to virtually annotate locations in space. This chapter describes the technical and social developments that underpin this revolution in mapmaking. It presents a framework for an alternative geographic information infrastructure that draws from collaborative mapping initiatives and builds on established Web technologies. Storing geographic information in machine-readable formats and exchanging geographic information through Web services, collaborative mapping may enable the “napsterisation” of geographic information, thus providing complementary and alternative geographic information from the products created by national mapping agencies.

Beyond the Public Meeting

This chapter describes how community-based qualitative information about local land use is being incorporated into a Participatory Geographic Information System (PGIS) for the Cheat Lake Planning District of Monongalia County, West Virginia. The research demonstrates how PGIS can be an effective methodology for promoting community input into land use planning and for augmenting spatial decision-making for “smart growth.” The Cheat Lake PGIS is field-based and provides residents with an opportunity to discuss and map their priority land use issues and to identify land use hotspots in a way that is not typically possible in a general public meeting. This project also provides a useful example of the integration of academic PGIS research with an emerging county planning infrastructure and related set of regulations. This is achieved through multimedia representation of local knowledge with formal spatial information; for example, traditional GIS raster and vector data, community narratives, mental maps, GPS transect walks, geo-referenced photos, and sound. The Cheat Lake PGIS pilot project also offers important lessons for participatory land use planning.

Usability Dimensions in Collaborative GIS

Collaborative GIS requires careful consideration of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability aspects, given the variety of users that are expected to use these systems, and the need to ensure that users will find the system effective, efficient, and enjoyable. The chapter explains the link between collaborative GIS and usability engineering/HCI studies. The integration of usability considerations into collaborative GIS is demonstrated in two case studies of Web-based GIS implementation. In the first, the process of digitising an area on Web-based GIS is improved to enhance the user’s experience, and to allow interaction over narrowband Internet connections. In the second, server-side rendering of 3D scenes allows users who are not equipped with powerful computers to request sophisticated visualisation without the need to download complex software. The chapter concludes by emphasising the need to understand the users’ context and conditions within any collaborative GIS project.

Bridging the Gap

Internet GIS provides a collaborative communication environment for sharing data, information, and knowledge. Mobile GIS can add both geospatial information and global positional systems (GPS) coordinates from remotely located field-based personnel to spatial decision support systems (SDSS). By adopting broadband wireless telecommunication technology for connecting Internet GIS and mobile GIS devices, decision makers can gather near real-time information from field personnel and, equally quickly, distribute updated information back to the field. This chapter introduces a collaborative GIS prototype that demonstrates an interoperable framework for combining Web-based GIS technologies and wireless mobile GIS applications. The integrated framework provides real-time or near real-time GIS data update functions (such as adding new spatially located map features or GPS tracking locations) between mobile GIS devices and Internet GIS servers. Although these real-time GIS functions can be very important during time-urgent emergencies, they can be equally beneficial and highly cost effective during routine field activities.