Article

Spatial Annotation Technology for Public Deliberation

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Abstract

Many public policies and decisions deal with geospatially expressed problems that are complex and controversial in nature. Broad participation of all interested parties in the form of deliberative dialogues is crucial to making trustworthy decisions. However, supporting deliberative dialogues on spatial problems places unique requirements for technology mediation that go beyond the current state of research on public participation geographical information systems (PPGIS) and related tech-nologies. In this article, we analyze the challenges of facilitating effective deliberation processes and highlight the progress needed to support spatially-enabled public deliberation technologies. Then, we present our GeoDeliberative Annotation Tech-nology (GeoDAT) as a framework for addressing the above challenges. GeoDAT uses spatial annotation objects as models for deliberative artifacts, and manages annotations by a spatial data model that reflects the ecological relationships among annotations, visual contexts, discussion threads, spatial referents, and the cognitive states of their holders. As a proof of the concept, we have implemented GeoDelib-erator based on the GeoDAT framework. GeoDeliberator is based on Web 2.0 technology and implemented in AJAX technology, and it offers some unique spatial annotation capture, retrieval and visualization capabilities, such as context memory, reference to multiple geo-objects in one annotation, inferring and visualizing new relations using spatial-temporal and thread-based reasoning, and user-controlled annotation sharing. We demonstrate the utility of GeoDeliberator through a simulated scenario where a community in a university campus deliberates on the alternative courses of actions available for building a smoke-free campus.

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... Participatory mapping utilizes a wide range of restful graphics visualization (Krygier 2002) that encourage participation and facilitate the organization and visualization of spatially referenced community views and deliberation (see e.g. Cai andYu 2009, Rinner 2001). ...
... The potential of maps as an enabler for community groups to explore and synthesize neighborhood issues, can be extracted from work related to the use of physical and paper maps by Chambers (2006) and Rambaldi et al. (2006) as well as work in the use of Web maps for public participation (Cai and Yu 2009, Ghose 2001, Rinner et al. 2008. Chambers (2006) compared the advantages and disadvantages of ground and paper maps. ...
... Rambaldi et al. (2006) provide a descriptive use of ephemeral maps, paper maps, photo maps, and 3D models where communication is a key ingredient for appropriate uses of maps to facilitate group participation. Peng (2001) focuses on the use of Webbased maps for public participation in planning processes, while Rinner et al. (2008) and Cai and Yu (2009) provide assessments on the use of spatial annotation for public participation. Back to the research questions that this study intends to answer (Section 1), there is a need to investigate the effectiveness of activities and interactions such that maps can facilitate participatory decision-making and problem-solving processes. ...
Article
Public participation is required in neighborhood infrastructure planning and problem-solving. Although Participatory GIS methods are considered important to help urban community groups identify problems and express their needs and concerns, usable means to help groups produce their maps remain difficult to be realised. Further, an effective means to facilitate the integration of government spatial plans and participatory maps also remains unclear. This article addresses usability issues in participatory mapping activities by exploring group collaboration mechanics and accomplishing use assessments. The study aims at testing the usefulness and the impact of participatory mapping for community development. User studies including questionnaire surveys, interviews, group usability testing, scenario assessments, and the scaling-up activity were executed. Transparent photomaps, Mobile GIS, and a Web map were implemented and assessed in the study area. A use scenario for community and official spatial data integration was also developed. The results of user studies show that the use of transparent photomaps is more effective to complete group tasks to discuss, draw, and annotate their infrastructure problems. For group participants, the transparent maps are more engaging, easy to learn, and more error tolerant than the use of Mobile GIS. A combination use of simple and advanced PGIS methods is necessary to be implemented to reach informed priority-decision making.
... Wider recognition of a policy area as a health priority may also be necessary for the success of policies, particularly when the issues they address have proved difficult to resolve [3]. While the topic of a policy dialogue is determined in advance, discussion about the appropriateness of the topic and the way issues are characterized and framed can be part of the policy dialogue itself [38,39]. Some disagreements can be resolved with reference to evidence or expert opinion [25], but sometimes there will be disagreement about the validity or appropriate source of evidence [21]. ...
... Deliberation is a form of, or a part of, decision-making which is chiefly characterized by reflective consideration and discussion of advantages and disadvantages of different options [7]. Giving opinions or voting on the best solution to a problem does not amount to deliberation; rather, deliberation involves identifying the full range of reasons for and against different options and reflecting on the relative balance of reasons [38,49,50]. Deliberation should begin with genuine openness about the alternatives under consideration -there should not be a prior presumption of correctness of any option. ...
Article
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Background A policy dialogue is a tool which promotes evidence-informed policy-making. It involves deliberation about a high-priority issue, informed by a synthesis of the best-available evidence, where potential policy interventions are discussed by stakeholders. We offer an ethical analysis of policy dialogues – an argument about how policy dialogues ought to be conceived and executed – to guide those organizing and participating in policy dialogues. Our analysis focuses on the deliberative dialogues themselves, rather than ethical issues in the broader policy context within which they are situated. Methods We conduct a philosophical conceptual analysis of policy dialogues, informed by a formal and an interpretative literature review. Results We identify the objectives of policy dialogues, and consider the procedural and substantive values that should govern them. As knowledge translation tools, the chief objective of policy dialogues is to ensure that prospective evidence-informed health policies are appropriate for and likely to support evidence-informed decision-making in a particular context. We identify five core characteristics which serve this objective: policy dialogues are (i) focused on a high-priority issue, (ii) evidence-informed, (iii) deliberative, (iv) participatory and (v) action-oriented. In contrast to dominant ethical frameworks for policy-making, we argue that transparency and accountability are not central procedural values for policy dialogues, as they are liable to inhibit the open deliberation that is necessary for successful policy dialogues. Instead, policy dialogues are legitimate insofar as they pursue the objectives and embody the core characteristics identified above. Finally, we argue that good policy dialogues need to actively consider a range of substantive values other than health benefit and equity. Conclusions Policy dialogues should recognize the limits of effectiveness as a guiding value for policy-making, and operate with an expansive conception of successful outcomes. We offer a set of questions to support those organizing and participating in policy dialogues.
... How to navigate the history of contributions has been the subject of many recent studies [17][18][19][20]. Several studies have answered this issue by establishing a linear "timeline", as in the first WikiGIS prototype [21] and [5], in OSM by "heat map" [20], in GeoDeliberator [22] and in WikiBio [23]. ...
... The timeline at the bottom right of Figure 4 provides a temporal overview of the track editing of that object [20]. The timeline developed by [22] for GeoDeliberator corresponds to the timestamp of the annotation's creation. This prototype is built on the roots of "Annotation GeoDeliberative Technology (GeoDAT)". ...
Article
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As an emerging complex concept, GeoDesign requires an innovative theoretical basis, tools, supports and practices. For this reason, we propose a new concept, "WikiGIS", designed to answer some dimensions of the GeoDesign process. WikiGIS focuses on the needs of GeoDesign, but we leave the door open for future improvement when tested in other areas that may have additional needs. WikiGIS is built on Web 2.0 technologies—and primarily on wiki—to manage the tracking of participants' editing (i.e., managing the contributions history). It also offers GIS functions for geoprocessing and a design-based approach for sketching proposals. One of the main strengths of WikiGIS is its ability to manage the traceability of contributions with an easy and dynamical access, data quality and deltification. The core of this paper consists of presenting a conceptual framework for WikiGIS using UML diagrams. A user interface is presented later to show how our WikiGIS proposal works. This interface is simply a means to illustrate the concepts underlying WikiGIS.
... The years since those papers were published have seen the importance of public participation and civic engagement in urban development widely acknowledged. Participatory GIS, for instance, has become well established in a variety of contexts (Bugs, Granell, Fonts, Huerta, & Painho, 2010;Cai & Yu, 2009;Dunn, 2007), while scholars have sketched out the diverse rationales, methods, and outcomes of public participation (Fiorino, 1990;Laird, 1993;Rowe & Frewer, 2005;Webler & Tuler, 2002;Webler & Tuler, 2006). While analysis has indicated that the tensions between progressive and reactionary purposes pointed out by Coit (1984) have remainedto the extent that participation has at times been construed as a 'new tyranny' (Cooke & Kothari, 2001) -the benefits of broad engagement in urban decision making remain largely uncontested (Brabham, 2009). ...
... As the previous case suggests, the use of IT and multimedia tools is an important development in urban governance, and one which has been widely taken up in the context of public participation (Cai & Yu, 2009;Cockerill, Tidwell, & Passell, 2004;Dunn, 2007;Shen & Kawakami, 2010). Our next case is of a process which builds on these tools to use multimedia and gaming to uncover intuitive, crowd-sourced knowledge: a one day virtual game focused on water and energy trends and organised by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institute for the Future (IFTF). ...
Article
Public participation in urban planning and development is a widely used process which seeks to enable better decision making. In this paper we address critiques of such deliberation – that it relies on the discursive to the detriment of experiential, material or affective modes of expression – and describe three case studies of participation which emphasise, in different ways, ‘material deliberation’. We close by discussing the ways in which such material deliberative practices can best be understood as components of a wider deliberative society.
... On the premise of fairness, public participation refers to empowering citizens with control and delegated power in partnership with other stakeholders (Arnstein, 1969). With the evolution of urban renewal, scholars have sought to understand how to engage public power through negotiation in the planning, decision-making and implementation processes, to achieve social justice in the benefit distribution (Adams, Disberry, Hutchison, & Munjoma, 2001;Bugs, Granell, Fonts, Huerta, & Painho, 2010;Cai & Yu, 2009;Cooke & Kothari, 2001;Webler & Tuler, 2002;Webler & Tuler, 2006;Davies et al., 2012;Tang, 2016;Saharan, Pfeffer, Baud, & Scott, 2019;Rowe & Frewer, 2005;Rasche, 2010;Takazawa, 2011;Mahon & Cinneide, 2009;Tian & Yao, 2018). As multiple stakeholders are involved in the urban renewal negotiation process, institutional strategies to protect and empower residents, including the design of compensation for land expropriation (Li et al., 2014;Tan, 2009), restrictive constraints for private capital (Li et al., 2018), and channels to motivate neighbourhood engagement, are discussed in the literature (Davies et al., 2012). ...
Article
Due to the complexity of stakeholder relationships, social conflicts related to unbalanced benefit distribution hinder the implementation of urban renewal. Based on game theory, this study investigates the bargaining process between developers and residents concerning benefit distribution and considers the government's role in achieving through various regulatory strategies the goals of either fairness or efficiency. The fairness-efficiency solution for both stakeholders in the model is the symmetric Nash bargaining solution with equal information. Urban renewal in China is gradually changing from being efficiency oriented to being fairness oriented, while the issues of vague property boundaries and defective articles remain. To promote cooperation and reduce negotiation costs, the simplification of administration procedures, the establishment of information sharing mechanisms and the introduction of third-party agencies to ensure harmony between developers and residents is recommended.
... In both loops, annotation creates awareness of the findings and insights, and constitutes documentation for the acceptance or rejection of a hypothesis in the knowledge generation loop. Two aspects for efficient use of annotation are: first, guidelines to moderate the usage of annotations, with the lack of them possibly creating an overload of irrelevant contributions (Hopfer & MacEachren, 2007); second, functionality to track existing annotations, create links between annotations to understand their relationships, and synthesize them (Cai & Yu, 2009;Wu, Convertino, Ganoe, Carroll, & Zhang, 2013). ...
Article
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Collaboration across disciplines is recognized as one of the great challenges for research in visual analysis of geographic information (GeoVisual Analytics, GVA). Considering the increasing availability of geodata and the complexity of analytical problems, the need to advance the support for collaborative work is becoming more pressing and prominent. This article contributes to this objective by reviewing the state‐of‐the‐art of the support for collaborative work in GVA systems and by identifying research challenges and proposing strategies to address them. We conducted a systematic review, resulting in the identification of 13 collaborative systems, 6 distinct collaborative techniques, and 3 research challenges. We conclude that GVA is moving toward more effective support of multidisciplinary and cross‐domain collaborative analysis. However, to materialize this potential, research is needed to improve the support for hybrid collaborative scenarios, cross‐device collaboration, and support for time‐critical and long‐term analysis.
... To explore this possibility, we are developing the GeoDeliberator (Cai & Yu, 2009;Kropczynski, Cai & Carroll, 2015), an online tool for place-based deliberation. Figure 8 shows a prototype of the tool that introduces spatial language concepts into deliberative dialogues offered to community members. ...
Chapter
The Internet of Places is a specialization of the Internet of Things. Personal places (like home) and intimate public places (like neighborhood) are comprised of “things”. Such place-things can be instrumentally empowered through sensors, data sharing, and computation, thereby exemplifying and contributing to the Internet of Things. But places are distinctively significant to people in sheltering, in anchoring memories, in evoking meanings, and in providing settings for social interactions and human development. To that extent, the Internet of Places should be analyzed as a special case, and an especially social case of the Internet of Things.
... Geodeliberation is project that aims to expand and deepen civic engagement of local communities in deliberating geographically complex problems. Concerning the characteristics of these problems, we are trying to improve the process by taking advantage of geographical information system and online deliberation technologies [4]. Nevertheless, many of the participants are not GIS experts and they are not incapable of analyzing spatial problems using GIS since GIS is difficult to use for untrained people. ...
Conference Paper
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Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offers a large amount of functions for performing spatial analysis and geospatial information retrieval. However, off-the-shelf GIS remains difficult to use for occasional GIS experts. The major problem lies in that its interface organizes spatial analysis tools and functions according to spatial data structures and corresponding algorithms, which is conceptually confusing and cognitively complex. Prior work identified the usability problem of conventional GIS interface and developed alternatives based on speech or gesture to narrow the gap between the high-functionality provided by GIS and its usability. This paper outlined my doctoral research goal in understanding human-GIS interaction activity, especially how interaction modalities assist to capture spatial analysis intention and influence collaborative spatial problem solving. We proposed a framework for enabling multimodal human-GIS interaction driven by intention. We also implemented a prototype GeoEASI (Geo-dialogue Environment for Assisted Spatial Inquiry) to demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework. GeoEASI understands commonly known spatial analysis intentions through multimodal techniques and is able to assist users to perform spatial analysis with proper strategies. Further work will evaluate the effectiveness of our framework, improve the reliability and flexibility of the system, extend the GIS interface for supporting multiple users, and integrate the system into GeoDeliberation. We will concentrate on how multimodality technology can be adopted in these circumstances and explore the potentials of it. The study aims to demonstrate the feasibility of building a GIS to be both useful and usable by introducing an intent-driven multimodal interface, forming the key to building a better theory of spatial thinking for GIS.
... Although there has been increased attention towards increasing and improving public participation in collaborative governance of public affairs, recent advancements are only the beginning of the work that lies ahead (Fung, 2015). Current work that offers participation through web platforms, social media, and geographical information systems makes it far easier than ever before for citizens to become connected to government (e.g., Cai & Yu, 2009;Nabatchi & Mergel, 2010). The changing of institutional participatory structures and the increasing opportunities for citizen participation draw more attention to the inevitable debate regarding the role of public administration in "transforming" citizens through participatory processes (see Campbell, 2005aCampbell, , 2005bMcSwite, 2005;Miller, 2005). ...
Article
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Public participation affords public officials the opportunity to tap into diverse citizen knowledge that may help solve complex social problems. In order to best understand how to design effective participation, it is necessary to consider the perspectives of both public administrators and citizens; however, public administration literature has focused less on the citizen perspective. This article narrows the gap in the literature by elaborating a citizen perspective of participation and suggesting that identity plays a role in participation. It adopts a social identity approach in order to theorize how citizen identity constructed through participation is best conceptualized as a social identity, and to demonstrate how this social identity relates to citizen motivation to participate. The authors suggest that linking participation to a social identity approach elaborates a citizen perspective of participation and has value for furthering understanding of citizen-administrator collaboration.
... To explore this possibility, we are developing the GeoDeliberator (Cai & Yu, 2009;Kropczynski, Cai & Carroll, 2015), an online tool for place-based deliberation. Figure 8 shows a prototype of the tool that introduces spatial language concepts into deliberative dialogues offered to community members. ...
Chapter
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The Internet of Things integrates entities of the physical world by making them addressable through the Internet, and making the Internet accessible through physical objects. We draw on our own previous design research in community informatics to explore a critical elaboration of the Internet of Things: the Internet of Places (IoP). IoP seeks to support awareness, engagement, and interaction pertaining to individual and collective human experiences, meaning making, activity, intentions, and values by computationally leveraging and integrating a wide range of human data with places to which those data refer. We describe design scenarios, prototypes, and user research at the scale of local community. We identify a critical alternative for humankind of hyperlocal community, enabling greater citizen awareness, engagement, participation, and power. We suggest that the Internet of Places at community-scale is the next generation-infrastructure for community networks in the 40-year tradition of the Berkeley Community Memory.
... Although there has been increased attention towards increasing and improving public participation in collaborative governance of public affairs, recent advancements are only the beginning of the work that lies ahead (Fung, 2015). Current work that offers participation through web platforms, social media, and geographical information systems makes it far easier than ever before for citizens to become connected to government (e.g., Cai & Yu, 2009;Nabatchi & Mergel, 2010). The changing of institutional participatory structures and the increasing opportunities for citizen participation draw more attention to the inevitable debate regarding the role of public administration in "transforming" citizens through participatory processes (see Campbell, 2005aCampbell, , 2005bMcSwite, 2005;Miller, 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Recognizing the current public participation literature predominantly adopting the public administrator’s perspective rather than a citizen perspective, this paper identifies the concept of identity and identity construction as it relates to the public and citizen’s active participation in public administration. We note that the concept of identity within the study of public participation processes, while has been peripherally mentioned, has not been adequately explored and connected to established identity concepts and that clarification of the concept of identity within public participation in a public administration context will provide value to understanding citizen motivations to participate. We proposed a conceptual model based in three propositions regarding the relationships between public participation, identity construction, and motivation. Based on our synthesis of the research and proposed model, we suggest a research agenda to further explore the relationship between public participation and identity. The paper concludes with a review of the theoretical contributions and practical implications of our research, including the proposition that furthering a citizen perspective of public participation incorporating the study of citizen identity construction, the method to expanding our understanding of public administration’s role in addressing the citizenship and democratic deficits in the modern United States.
... Toute une série d'expériences récentes ont ainsi démontré le potentiel du géoWeb et de l'information géographique volontaire pour la mobilisation et la formalisation des connaissances locales (Seeger, 2008 ;Bugs et al., 2009 ;De Longueville et Ostländer, 2009). Des prototypes d'applications cartographiques à vocation décisionnelle se multiplient à l'image d'Argoomaps (Rinner et al., 2008), de GeoDeliberator (Cai et Yu, 2009) ou de MapChat (Hall et al., 2010). ...
... Examples that we are aware of are: (2-i) GeoDF by Tang (2006), and (2-ii) ArgooMap by Rinner et al. (2008), which was a redesigned version of ArguMap, with the addition of decision support system functionality. Further second-generation examples include: (2-iii) the GeoDeliberator by Cai and Yu (2009), (2-iv) the Canela Platform by Bugs et al. (2010), (2-v) MapChat by Hall et al. (2010), (2-vi) WOLPgis by Butt and Li (2012), and (2-vii) Margov by Painho et al. (2013). ...
Article
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Recent advances in Web technologies have opened avenues to create socio-technical platforms that can empower citizens in urban planning processes. The rise of the GeoWeb and the popularity of Web 2.0 collaborative tools can facilitate the development of a new generation of bottom-up Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) platforms that can incorporate user-generated content into Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). New service-based delivery mechanisms can provide architectural flexibility and adaptability, and enable the public to benefit from ubiquitous information access. From an e-participation perspective, Web 2.0 social networking functions support interactive communication among various PPGIS stakeholders, e.g., citizens, planners, and decision makers. The main contribution of this article is to present a reference architecture for e-planning platforms that (1) facilitates effective e-participation by allowing multidirectional map-based communication among various land development stakeholders (e.g., planners, decision makers, citizens, etc.), and (2) enables incorporation of visualization, evaluation, and discussion capabilities to support community planning processes. To achieve this, we developed a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that exploits SDI principles and Web 2.0 technologies. The platform architecture allows heterogeneous data sources, analytical functionality and tools, and presentation frameworks to be plugged into a coherent system to provide a planning and decision support platform. We present two real-world implementations of the proposed architecture that have been developed to support community engagement in the City of Calgary, Canada.
... Although these new cartographic capabilities are driven by consumerist oriented applicationsas illustrated by the very first map mash-up that was designed for house hunting (Crampton 2010)they are also being used to develop new participatory mapping tools applied to different domains such as assisting park management (Elsley and Cartwright 2011) and supporting decision making processes (Rinner et al. 2008;Cai and Yu 2009). ...
Article
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The goal of this second report is to review how social media are changing the way we collectively map the world. To reach this goal I review different collective mapping practices that characterize the social media era. First I examine the situation of community mapping in the context of new cartographic processes and technologies, with a focus on indigenous cartographies. I then review the use of volunteers in the production and representation of geospatial knowledge, with an emphasis on crisis mapping. Finally, I discuss how mapmaking in the social media era reflects major trends in terms of power relationships that occur between the state, its citizens, and the private sector. These trends reveal the replacement of the state as the main reference for the collection and dissemination of cartographic data, by a combination of private interest and individually volunteered contributions. Just as the specific interests of the nation state have largely helped to shape the reality produced by paper maps throughout the centuries, this new convergence of interests is now helping to shape the reality produced by digital maps through geosocial media.
... GIS information at the service of the civic good has been an interest in the research agenda for about two decades, with spatial annotation functions (i.e. the ability of the user to annotate software maps, collaboratively or otherwise) recently gaining gained prominence. User spatial annotation helped transitioning the literature from seeing GIS as an institutional tool (Miller, 1999;Nyerges & Jankowski, 1997;Openshaw, 1996;Schuurman, 2001) to seeing GIS as a citizen tool (Cai & Yu, 2009;Goodchild, 2007;Mooney & Corcoran, 2012;Ostermann, Tomko, & Purves, 2013;Talen, 2000). The increased potential of user control over geographical information (including their production) has given rise to the usual round of enthusiasm (Longley, Goodchild, Maguire, & Rhind, 2005) and subsequent criticism as a "reductionist" and "simplifying" approach (see for example Baykurt (2012) on FixMyStreet). ...
Article
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Since 2012, the authors have been structuring two social sciences courses at the Catholic University of Milan around the practice of building software based on MIT Experience Lab's OpenLOCAST mapping engine. During those courses, social phenomena and theories are discussed and analyzed (and often discovered) as they became pertinent in the process of assembling an application intended to enable users to indicate to the Milan municipality malfunctioning parts of the city. Business plans, demos and prototypes are usually the final product of the course. Drawing upon this experience, the paper first introduces some reflections on the potentialities of the practice of software building as a tool for social research, and the benefits of the support of middleware such as OpenLOCAST. It proceeds to illustrate three key issues pertaining to software-based civic engagement, as they emerged from the course experience: extension and intension of the object of engagement; networking strategy; user base segmentation and expansion. In its final paragraph, the paper discusses the theoretical implications of these issues for broader processes of socio-spatial production. From September to December 2013, a group of 50 under-and postgraduate students collaborated with the authors in the design of Heal The City – Milan (henceforth HTC-M) during a specifically-designed course at the Catholic University of Milan. In this paper, we will present some findings proceeding from our work on HTC-M, as well as some methodological implications of what we call " writing software as a tool for sociological analysis. " We explored this methodology in the context of a broader research effort on the role of ICTs in processes of spatial production (Tarantino & Tosoni, 2013; Tosoni & Tarantino 2013a, 2013b). Before that, however, a description of HTC-M is in order. HTC-M is the name we gave to a spatial annotation platform, based on MIT Media Lab's OpenLOCAST Framework, designed for strengthening civic engagement through citizens' symbolic and emotional involvement with urban space by means of two core functions:
... For example, Rinner et al. (2008) developed an online map-based discussion forum that demonstrated the potential for Internet users to engage in a discussion around a university master plan using place markers as a way to spatially reference arguments and comments. Cai and Yu (2009) developed an approach to spatially-enabled public deliberation of a smoke-free campus policy using annotations, discussion threads, and spatial referents built using Web 2.0 technology. Boulos et al. (2008) used a Web 2.0 mash-up approach to experiment with 3-Dimensional mapping inside the virtual world of Second Life. ...
Article
This article reports on the initial development of a generic framework for integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with Massive Multi‐player Online Gaming (MMOG) technology to support the integrated modeling of human‐environment resource management and decision‐making. We review Web 2.0 concepts, online maps, and games as key technologies to realize a participatory construction of spatial simulation and decision making practices. Through a design‐based research approach we develop a prototype framework, “GeoGame”, that allows users to play board‐game‐style simulations on top of an online map. Through several iterations we demonstrate the implementation of a range of design artifacts including: real‐time, multi‐user editing of online maps, web services, game lobby, user‐modifiable rules and scenarios building, chat, discussion, and market transactions. Based on observational, analytical, experimental and functional evaluations of design artifacts as well as a literature review, we argue that a MMO GeoGame‐framework offers a viable approach to address the complex dynamics of human‐environmental systems that require a simultaneous reconciliation of both top‐down and bottom‐up decision making where stakeholders are an integral part of a modeling environment. Further research will offer additional insight into the development of social‐environmental models using stakeholder input and the use of such models to explore properties of complex dynamic systems.
... Further research into this field will help guide future developments and iterations of the GeoTMS interaction environment. New features such as map annotations (Cai & Yu, 2009;Hopfer & MacEachren, 2007), natural language interfaces (Chintaphally, Neumeier, McFarlane, Cothren, & Thompson, 2007;Zhang, Long, Qian, Hu, & Lv, 2007), largescreen display (A. MacEachren, et al., 2006), to name a few, could be future features that could be used to enhance the user experience and align the GeoTMS better with the goals and research out of the GIS field. ...
... We are investigating whether geo-deliberation, integration of community maps with structured discussion could improve community participation and decision-making outcomes. We have in mind a more sophisticated version of what we did in MOOsburg with the Save our Streams group [Cai and Yu 2009]. We are also investigating time banking, community-based volunteering regulated by the amount of time participants spend providing and receiving services; a community brokering entity, a time bank, keeps track of time credits earned and redeemed [Bellotti et al. 2013;Carroll 2013]. ...
Article
HCI can “turn to the wild” but still stay home. Local community life presents a rich context for understanding challenges and possibilities of information technology. We summarize and reflect upon a program of participatory design research in which we facilitated activities and experiences of our neighbors through developing a series of community-oriented programs and information systems through the past two decades. We organize these reflections around five overlapping themes: visibility of community actors, creation of community information infrastructures, the role of place-based identity and activity in community, the effectiveness of participatory relationships, and the research designs and methods appropriate. We frame these reflections around a conceptual model of community, and the suggestion that the local community can be a living laboratory for HCI in the wild.
... Toute une série d'expériences récentes ont ainsi démontré le potentiel du géoweb et de l'information géographique volontaire pour la mobilisation et la formalisation des connaissances locales (Seeger, 2008 ; Tulloch, 2008 ; Bugs et al., 2009 ; De Longueville et Ostländer, 2009). Et les prototypes d'applications cartographiques à vocation décisionnelle se multiplient à l'image d'Argoomaps (Rinner et al., 2008), de GeoDeliberator (Cai et Yu, 2009) ou de MapChat (Brent Hall et al., 2010). ...
Article
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Avec le développement de l'Internet, la géomatique a profondément évolué. La convergence des technologies géospatiales et du Web se traduit aujourd'hui par l'émergence d'une nouvelle forme de cartographie reposant sur les techniques et les principes du web 2.0. Qualifiée de cartographie 2.0, elle se caractérise par une grande interactivité et des contenus géolocalisés générés par les utilisateurs. La mobilisation de ces technologies géospatiales orientées grand public tout comme l'information géographique volontaire dans le cadre de la participation publique constitue un nouvel enjeu pour les gestionnaires des territoires. Et plus largement, de nouvelles possibilités se dessinent pour les SIG participatifs, tant sur le plan des techniques que des méthodes. L'objectif de ce papier consiste précisément à mettre en perspective les potentialités participatives de la cartographie 2.0 avec nouvelles modalités de l'aménagement du territoire à l'heure débat public.
Article
The emergence of Web 2.0 is materialized by new technologies (APIs, Ajax, etc.), by new practices (mashup, geotagging, etc.) an, by new tools (wiki, blog, etc.). It is primarily based on the principle of participation and collaboration. In this dynamic, the web mapping with spatial character or simply called Geospatial Web (or Geoweb) evolves by strong technological and social changes. Participatory GeoWeb 2.0 is materialized in particular by mashups among wikis and géobrowsers (ArgooMap, Geowiki, WikiMapia, etc.). The new applications resulting from these mashups are moving towards more interactive forms of collective intelligence. The Geodesign is a new area, which is the coupling between GIS and design, allowing a multidisciplinary team to work together. As it is an emergent term, the Geodesign has not be well defined and it requires innovative theoretical basis, new tools, media, technologies and practices to fit its complex requirements. In this document, we propose some GeoWeb 2.0 tools and technologies that could support the Geodesign process. The main contributions of the present research are firstly identifying the needs, requirements and constraints of Geodesign process as an emergent fuzzy field, and secondly offering new supports that are best meeting to the collaborative dimension of this process.
Chapter
A social participation system is a combination of human, machines, resources, political structures, and environment that enable citizens, civic leaders, and government officials to come together in public spaces where they can engage in constructive, informed, and decisive dialogue about important public issues. This paper argues for the need to establish cyberinfrastructure enabled GeoDeliberative Social Participation Systems that will improve our ability to better engage people with diverse motivations and experiences to harness remarkable social benefits and to address national priorities. By expanding the scope of geospatial cyberinfrastructure to include social goals and social actions, new requirements are identified that make geospatial cyberinfrastructure more socially relevant. GeoDeliberation is used as a conceptual framework within which the progress of related geospatial information technologies and social computing methods are assessed and the opportunities for cyberinfrastructure design research are identified.
Chapter
Public administrations and cities increasingly use modern information and communication technologies to enhance their processes and services. As the fabric of cities becomes more complex, and collaboration and participation are emphasized, citizens thus need to be empowered to find available engagement opportunities and citizens need to identify those that they want to engage with. We report on the use of an online information platform that offered citizen engagement opportunities in a traditional textual form and via an interactive geo-visualization. The platform was deployed in a real-world study and integral component in a campaign to raise volunteer engagement in a medium-sized German city. We first introduce our approach to letting citizens explore engagement opportunities and follow up with an analysis of how people used the platform. Subsequently, evidence is presented and discussed that spatial visualization and interaction is relevant for informing citizens online. Since we released the information platform as open source, others can easily benefit from our insights.
Chapter
We begin by reiterating the pedagogic benefits of fieldwork and e-Learning individually before demonstrating added value by integrating the two with social networks and a collaborative infrastructure. Utilizing an exercise repeated over 2 days with identical goals but different instructional methodologies, we present the results from students’ engagement within our geocollaborative web map environment. We developed an innovative, award winning fieldcourse experience by building on web-based learning undertaken before the trip, enhanced staff—student communication, reflective learning and inquiry-based learning during the trip through widespread use of mobile technology and social networks.
Conference Paper
Online deliberation is a promising venue for rational-critical discourse in public spheres and has the potential to support participatory decision-making and collective intelligence. With regard to public issues, deliberation is characterized by comparing and integrating different positions through claim-making, and generating collective judgments. In this paper, we examine the claim-making process and propose a conceptual model to manage the knowledge entities (claims, issues, facts, etc.) in claim-making and their relationships. Extending prior works in argumentation models and issue-based information systems, our model is especially capable of depicting the formation and evolvement of collective judgments in deliberation context.
Chapter
Blogs, micro-blogs and online forums are fundamental building blocks of an interconnected world. They provide a mechanism for people to communicate details of their lives and the spatial locations of their activities. Desktop, online and mobile mapping APIs have never been so rich yet this presents challenges to build applications that blend meaningful content with visual appeal. Here, we begin by examining the series of APIs needed to collect this spatial expression of micro-blogging from the social networking tool Twitter. To create cartographically appropriate and semantically relevant ‘twitter maps’ we blend functionality and data from APIs by Esri, Google, Twitter and others. We then demonstrate how to leverage the available APIs to create an interactive application enabling real – time mapping of students undertaking mobile data collection exercises. Two examples are presented: a “race” monitoring application focussing on extracting and mapping temporal variables and a category building, asynchronous collaborative land – use mapping exercise where the semantic content and location of tweets is emphasized.
Article
The use of online forums to support civic discourses on local politics has gained momentum, but it is not clear whether such online conversations generate relevant outcomes for democratic decision-making. Empirical studies in online deliberation suggest that online forums often produce fragmented and unorganized public preferences when conversations occur naturally without facilitation. However, it remains unknown as to what degree an unfacilitated online forum can achieve desired quality. Here we report a detailed content analysis on local newspaper forums to reveal the patterns of progression towards the formation of public preferences in a local planning context. Towards this goal, we developed a new coding scheme that incorporates speech acts as indicators of deliberation quality and a progressive five-phase model of deliberative decision-making. Using this coding scheme, the selected newspaper forum was analyzed using a three-step procedure. Our results pinpoint portions of the observed dialogue where progress is not made towards advanced phases of deliberation due to failure to develop common ground and joint assessment of alternative courses of action.
Article
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Geographic information is commonly disseminated and consumed via visual representations of features and their environmental context on maps. Map design inherently involves generalizing reality, and one method by which mapmakers do so is through the use of symbols to represent features. Here we focus on the challenges associated with supporting mapmakers who need to work together to reach consensus on standardizing their map symbols. On the basis of a needs assessment study with mapmakers at the US Department of Homeland Security, we designed a new, mixed-method symbol standardization process that takes place through a web-based, asynchronous platform. A study to test this new standardization process with mapmakers at DHS revealed that our process allowed participants to identify many issues related to symbol design, meaning, and categorization. The approach elicited sustained, iterative engagement and critical thinking from participants, and results from a post study survey indicate that participants found it to be useful and usable. Results from our study and user feedback allow us to suggest multiple ways in which our approach and platform can be improved for future applications.
Article
Online forums support civic discourses on local politics, but it is not clear whether they generate decision-relevant outcomes. Using deliberative democracy as a theoretical lens, this paper proposes a coding scheme for understanding the progress of citizens' deliberation through content analysis from a naturally occurring online discussion of a local planning project. By comparing patterns of this online discourse with normative views of deliberative dialogues, we found that important indicators of the deliberative ideal are missing. Our results show that citizens were not able to move towards advanced phases of deliberation as prescribed by deliberative democracy theory; and explain why it failed to develop common ground and joint assessment of alternative courses of action. We further explore possible causes of such patterns and identified a number of barriers that make online discussions less optimal to achieve common ground and collective judgment. Based on such findings, we suggest ways to improve deliberative outcomes by introducing active facilitation and advanced information support.
Article
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Map-based interfaces have been developed to support collaborative control of unmanned vehicles (i.e., robots). Annotation on the map (or geospatial annotation) has been proposed as an effective way to support team collaboration; however, there is a lack of research focused on the design of geospatial annotation tools to promote usability and task performance. The utility of location reference in geospatial annotations for communication and information sharing is the focus of this article. Two annotation tool designs were developed. The annotation contents were directly anchored on the map in the first design, whereas in the second design annotations were summarized in a separate panel on the interface. Evaluation participants followed instructions from a simulated team leader and assigned unmanned vehicles to different tasks for two simulated scenarios that include searching for victims and collecting hazardous materials samples. The results demonstrate the potential of using geospatial annotations to enrich communication and support map-based unmanned vehicle control. Participants appreciated the direct location reference feature of the first design and had generally shorter response time, but felt that the second design provided better usability and lower task workload. These results suggest that the user experience depends on the manner of obtaining information from the annotation tools, and the integration of the tool with user's task flow and other interface components, such as the map display. The presented results can be used as a basis for designing geospatial annotation tools for team collaboration that better fit user needs and preferences.
Article
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Decision making groups are fundamental building blocks and at the same time agents of change within organizations and society. Examples include groups mired in public land planning controversies such as hazardous waste cleanup and habitat redevelopment. Geographic information systems (GIS) have been suggested as support technology for collaborative decision making in public planning contexts. Understanding the complexity of GIS use during collaborative decision making motivates empirical research which in turn motivates a search for a theoretical framework to sort through some of the complexity. A theoretical framework that treats the convening aspects, process aspects and outcome aspects of collaborative efforts can help guide the articulation of research questions for empirical studies, uncovering the process and contributing to our understanding of GIS use. In this article we develop a framework based on twenty-one aspects identified from a wide array of theoretical contributions concerning GIS use, collaboration, negotiation, and communication. The aspects are used to assess each of the theoretical contributions to identify a candidate as a suitable starting point for a theory of GIS-supported collaborative decision making. Adaptive structuration theory (AST), addressing fifteen of the aspects and developed with advanced information technology in mind, is identified as the most promising theory with which to start. The fifteen aspects together with the remaining six aspects coming from a combination of collaboration theory, political negotiation theory, and participatory negotiation theory are used to develop enhanced adaptive structuration theory (EAST). The constructs and premises in EAST motivate and frame research questions to guide empirical studies about GIS-supported collaborative decision making. Research questions are suggested for three different levels of investigation, intra-organizational groups, organization-wide groups and inter-organizational groups. We conclude the discussion by describing how the questions are different, but complementary, in addressing the complexity of GIS use in collaborative decision making. © 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands under license by Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
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Spatial analysis assists theoretical understanding and empirical testing in the social sciences, and rapidly expanding applications of geographic information technologies have advanced the spatial data-gathering needed for spatial analysis and model making. This much-needed volume covers outstanding examples of spatial thinking in the social sciences, with each chapter showing some aspect of how certain social processes can be understood by analyzing their spatial context. The audience for this work is as trans-disciplinary as its authorship because it contains approaches and methodologies useful to geography, anthropology, history, political science, economics, criminology, sociology, and statistics.
Article
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Participatory GIS (PGIS) applications provide tools that allow underprivileged groups to make a case for recognition, participation, and political access. These community-based applications have therefore become the focal point for claims about public participation and empowerment. However, empowerment is a difficult and complex process necessitating the transformation of bureaucratic organizations into flexible institutions that address the concerns of marginalized groups in society. This process involves shifts in power relations during which PGIS organizations confront deeply embedded structures and vested political interests. Opposition from local leaders, unfamiliar customs and rituals, and lack of infrastructure and skilled GIS personnel impede successful participation and empowerment. Additionally, reliance on external sources of funding and expertise for PGIS projects severely limits their long-term sustainability. To date, PGIS applications have produced case studies about attempts to empower communities, but few studies have focused on how the community-based organizations and the contexts of PGIS applications mediate the community empowerment process. This article explores ways in which the internal and external environments of a PGIS organization influence the community empowerment process. Experiences from PGIS studies in southern Ghana are used to illustrate the constraints that these factors impose on community empowerment.
Article
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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?
Article
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Link to this article is http://rdcu.be/mFeU Over the last 40 years there has been a movement to increase opportunities for public participation in the decision and policy-making processes for design and planning projects. The emergence of online digital mapping systems and enhancements in Web technology to support sharing and collaboration have allowed the general public to generate their own spatial content via Web applications and other geospatially enabled devices. The resulting data from this recent phenomenon has been called Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). When facilitated through digital mapping interfaces, VGI can provide landscape architects and allied design professionals with local, detailed and spatial information that can be used to create a more informed design solution. This paper describes several digital interfaces the author has developed to elicit facilitated-VGI (f-VGI) over the past decade, and examines their use in community design projects and their lessons for implementing future f-VGI initiatives.
Article
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This article describes a range of currently available and developing technologies for creating and presenting annotations, glosses, and other comments on digital documents. The potential applications of these tools for providing feedback to student writers, supporting extended group discussions around digital texts, and facilitating research and reading-to-write tasks are discussed. Different software programs are compared and evaluated and composition researchers are urged to engage in research that will influence the design of future annotation technologies.
Article
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This paper describes an interactive Web-based survey tool that was developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago to advance a community planning process. The team used a process taken from the work of Jack Nasar (1998) that involves surveying residents to create an “evaluative image” of the community that could guide future design and development. While Nasar’s original method used a phone survey, UIC researchers developed a Web site through which participants interacted with a map that was linked through a server to a GIS program. This project builds upon an earlier version of the survey by increasing the complexity and the coverage area of the interactive map (Al-Kodmany, 2000).
Article
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Technologies associated with the second-generation of the World-Wide Web enable virtually anyone to share their data, documents, observations, and opinions on the Internet. In less than three years, mapping platforms such as Google Maps have sparked an exponential growth in user-generated geographically referenced content. However, the “serious” applications of Web 2.0 are sparse and this paper assesses its use in the context of collaborative spatial decision-making. We present an online map-based discussion forum that enables Internet users to submit place-based comments and respond to contributions from other participants. We further use the geographic references in a thread-based master plan debate for a university campus to simulate this debate in the map-based forum. This allows us to demonstrate how the online map provides an overview of the status and spatial foci of the debate, and how it can help us understand the spatial thought processes of the participants.
Book
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This groundbreaking book defines the emerging field of information visualization and offers the first-ever collection of the classic papers of the discipline, with introductions and analytical discussions of each topic and paper. The authors' intention is to present papers that focus on the use of visualization to discover relationships, using interactive graphics to amplify thought. This book is intended for research professionals in academia and industry; new graduate students and professors who want to begin work in this burgeoning field; professionals involved in financial data analysis, statistics, and information design; scientific data managers; and professionals involved in medical, bioinformatics, and other areas. * Full-color reproduction throughout * Author power team - an exciting and timely collaboration between the field's pioneering, most-respected names * The only book on Information Visualization with the depth necessary for use as a text or as a reference for the information professional * Text includes the classic source papers as well as a collection of cutting edge work
Article
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This paper addresses a key problem in the development of visual‐analytical collaborative tools, how to design map‐based displays to enable productive group work. We introduce a group communication theory, the Collective Information Sharing (CIS) bias, and discuss how it relates to communicative goals that need to be considered when designing collaborative, visually enabled, spatial‐decision‐support tools. The CIS bias framework suggests that key goals for developing such tools should be: (a) the harnessing of a group's collective knowledge emerging from collaborative discussions and (b) reducing the repeat of information that has already been shared within the group. We propose that web‐accessible, map annotation tools are ideally suited to advancing these goals and outline how the CIS bias framework informs how geospatial annotation tools can maximize the potential of collaborative efforts. We offer design recommendations for annotation tools that function to: (a) facilitate access to and recall of geographically referenced discussion contributions, (b) document ideas for private as well as public discussion spaces, and (c) elicit all group members to contribute information in a given collaborative effort.
Article
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Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) is a field of research that, among other things, focuses on the use of GIS by non-experts and occasional users. These users tend to have a diverse range of computer literacy, world views, cultural backgrounds and knowledge. These aspects require that the systems used within PPGIS are accessible and easy to use. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and the related usability evaluation techniques focus on how to make computer systems more accessible, while focusing on user needs and requirements. Thus, the synergy between PPGIS and HCI seems natural. In this paper, we discuss the aspects of this synergy, building on our experience from three workshops. We demonstrate how usability evaluation can contribute to PPGIS research, and how PPGIS research can contribute to the HCI aspects of GIS in general. We conclude this paper with a call for a user-centred design approach to PPGIS projects.
Article
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SUMMARY Collaborative decision-making usually entails argumentation - the exchange of personal views on certain topics, in particular using logical reasoning. Argumentation is often structured into discussions with contributions by individual participants responding to each other. In spatial decision situations, most discussion contributions will contain geographic references. Argumentation Maps were developed to support geographically referenced discussions by cartographic visualization and query functionality. This concept makes geographic references in discussion contributions explicit and uses them for linking text messages to maps, and vice-versa. Based on an analysis of previous work on discussion and decision support in spatial planning, we propose a set of requirements and design guidelines for implementing Argumentation Maps. These guidelines are centred on two main issues: user friendliness and support of open standards. A prototype which implements interoperability specifications of the Open Geospatial Consortium demonstrates the usefulness and usability of Argumentation Maps for public participation in spatial planning.
Article
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Internet GIS, serving spatial data and GIS functionality on the web, offers a special and potentially important means to facilitate public participation in the planning and decisionmaking process. In this paper I discuss a framework for the design of a web-based public participation system (WPPS) that integrates Internet GIS, Internet communications, and scenario-building tools. The design framework is based on a taxonomy that is created to describe the level of services in serving public participation according to the information content, level of user interactivity, and system functionality. The system is designed to enhance public participation in the planning and decisionmaking process by providing the general public with data, analysis tools, and a forum to explore knowledge, express opinion, and discuss issues. The unique feature of the WPPS using Internet GIS is that it provides users not only the option of evaluating, commenting, and selecting alternatives, but also the capability of forming their own alternatives. I also discuss system components and design issues in the WPPS.
Article
While the integration of GIS in the planning process is becoming more commonplace for efficient description of basic facts, it has not been widely used by planners for the incorporation of local knowledge. This article describes a new approach, termed 'Bottom-Up GIS' (BUGIS), in which GIS is placed in the realm of expression and used as a means of expression. The advantage of using GIS in participatory planning activities is that it provides spatial complexity, spatial context, and interactivity and interconnection in the articulation of viewpoints. Thus, BUGIS can be an effective tool to deepen our understanding of residents' perceptions of local issues and preferences.
Article
Article
While the integration of GIS in the planning process is becoming more commonplace for efficient description of basic facts, it has not been widely used by planners for the incorporation of local knowledge. This article describes a new approach, termed “Bottom-Up GIS” (BUGIS), in which GIS is placed in the realm of expression and used as a means of expression. The advantage of using GIS in participatory planning activities is that it provides spatial complexity, spatial context, and interactivity and interconnection in the articulation of viewpoints. Thus, BUGIS can be an effective tool to deepen our understanding of residents' perceptions of local issues and preferences.
Article
Current research examining the potential of the World-Wide Web as a means of increasing public participation in local environmental decision making in the UK is discussed. The paper considers traditional methods of public participation and argues that new Internet-based technologies have the potential to widen participation in the UK planning system. Evidence is provided of the potential and actual benefits of online spatial decision support systems in the UK through a real environmental decision support problem in a village in northern England. The paper identifies key themes developing in this area of Web-based geographical information systems (GIS) and provides a case-study example of an online public participation GIS from inception to the final phase in a public participation process. It is shown that in certain UK planning problems and policy formulation processes, participatory online systems are a useful means of informing and engaging the public and can potentially bring the public closer to a participatory planning system.
Article
cdv, a cartographic data visualizer, is a piece of demonstration software designed for research and teaching. It uses established symbolism techniques for displaying spatially referenced information, and adds newer dynamic capabilities that are suitable for exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) The software takes advantage of the symbolism, dynamism and inherent spatial information afforded by the Tcl/Tk language and comprises interpreted scripts which provide a flexible environment for prototyping and extension. This introduction to the software and approach outlines some of the rationale behind the development and contains an overview of the cartographic and statistical ESDA functionality. The distributed scripts produce concurrent linked views of enumerated data sets. Views are available for statistical and geographic visualization of univariate, bivariate and multivariate distributions. These include dotplots, scatterplots, polygon maps population cartograms and parallel co-ordinates plots. Each view is extremely dynamic so that transient maps can be produced to highlight specific cases and to focus on points of interest to suit the researcher. The ideas are applied to procedures for determining locality and assessing the characteristics of local variation, and some examples of dynamic graphical local indicators are provided. The examples and images provide a flavour of the approach and the dynamic and flexible nature of the software. One of the advantages of the approach is that, as the software is free and accessible on the Internet, the author is not restricted to static black-and-white graphics for communicating dynamic colourful ideas. Larger colour versions of the images can be downloaded to support the paper.
Article
The heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control”, and “maximum feasible involvement of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. To encourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of citizen participation is offered using examples from three federal social programs: urban renewal, anti-poverty, and Model Cities. The typology, which is designed to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the plan and/or program.
Article
This is the advice of a committee of leading American experts, chaired by Harvey Fineberg from the Harvard School of Public Health. It represents the fifth report in a series, commissioned by the US National Research Council, that considers how society can understand and cope with decisions about risks. The Committee's remit was to provide advice on risk characterisation, defined by the Research Council as the translation of `the information in a risk assessment ... into a form usable by a risk manager, individual decision maker, or the public'. In this book, the Committee has responded to the challenge clearly and authoritatively, beginning with a profound re-definition of `risk characterisation' that forms the basis for all that follows. In the view of the Committee, risk characterisation is a process. It is a process which starts before quantitative analysis of the risks, because it includes defining what risks to assess, and how most appropriately to assess them. It is an iterative process, in which assumptions are challenged and re-worked, and new information may be incorporated. It is a process in which qualitative judgements contribute to the fuller understanding of the problem; where quantitative scientific estimates, although important, contribute only a part. Most fundamentally, it is a process which, in a democratic society, needs to involve all those affected by the perceived problem and consequent decision. In the words of the Committee: `Experience shows that analyses, no matter how thorough, that do not address the decision-relevant questions, use reasonable assumptions, and meaningfully include the key affected parties can result in huge expenses and long delays and jeopardise the quality of understanding and the acceptability of the final decisions.' In other words, until or unless we expand our understanding of risk characterisation to include the process of defining the assessment itself, we are unlikely to make progress in gaining public acceptance for major decisions on health or environmental issues. For those without sufficient time to read the book, the ten-page summary provides a succinct overview of the Committee's advice, complete with bullet points and emboldened key phrases. However, the main body of the book (and particularly Appendix A, which discusses a number of case studies) is well worth scanning for its well-reasoned and well-structured discussion of the issues and the suggested way forward. Nor is the Committee lost in an `academic ivory tower'. It recognises that involvement of all those with vested interests cannot ensure a rapid or consensus solution or preclude some groups `dropping out' and choosing the route of litigation. It also recognises that allowing a `voice' for a wide range of interest groups can be time consuming and difficult to manage. However, the Committee argues: `While we are sensitive to concerns about cost and delay, we note that huge costs and delays have sometimes resulted when a risk situation was inadequately diagnosed, a problem misformulated, key interested and affected parties did not participate, or analysis proceeded unintegrated with deliberation. We believe that following [our] principles can reduce delays and costs as much as or more than it increases them.' So what are the Committee's principles? Getting the science right - any quantitative science that is undertaken must be of the highest standards. Getting the right science - this ensures that all the relevant risks are considered. Getting the right participation - this ensures that all those affected have a `voice' in the process. Getting the participation right - this ensures that the process is responsive to the needs of all the participants. Developing an accurate, balanced and informative synthesis - this should include a balanced understanding of the uncertainties in current knowledge, encompassing ignorance and indeterminacy as well as more quantifiable uncertainties. Again, in the words of the Committee: `These criteria are related. To be decision-relevant, risk characterisation must be accurate, balanced and informative. This requires getting the science right and getting the right science. Participation helps ask the right questions of the science, check the plausibility of assumptions, and ensure that any synthesis is both balanced and informative.' In order to set up an appropriate risk characterisation process, the Committee recommends that those responsible for it should `begin by developing a provisional diagnosis of the decision situation' in order to identify potential participants, allocate resources and structure the process. However, in doing so, they should `treat the diagnosis as tentative and remain open to change, always keeping in mind that their goal is a process that leads to a useful and credible risk characterization'. The Committee also stresses the need for those responsible for the process to `develop the capability to cope with attempts by some interested and affected parties to delay decision, and to develop a range of strategies for reaching closure'. This is likely to require the development of new skills and may require organisational changes `to improve communication across sub-units and to allow for the flexibility and judgement necessary to match the process to decision'. This balanced, reasoned and authoritative book is, in my opinion, a `must for all those involved in informing societal decision on risks.
Article
cdv, a cartographic data visualizer, is a piece of demonstration software designed for research and teaching. It uses established symbolism techniques for displaying spatially referenced information, and adds newer dynamic capabilities that are suitable for exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA). The software takes advantage of the symbolism, dynamism and inherent spatial information afforded by the Tcl/Tk language and comprises interpreted scripts which provide a flexible environment for prototyping and extension. This introduction to the software and approach outlines some of the rationale behind the development and contains an overview of the cartographic and statistical ESDA functionality. The distributed scripts produce concurrent linked views of enumerated data sets. Views are available for statistical and geographic visualization of univariate, bivariate and multivariate distributions. These include dotplots, scatterplots, polygon maps, population cartograms and parallel co-ordinates plots. Each view is extremely dynamic so that transient maps can be produced to highlight specific cases and to focus on points of interest to suit the researcher. The ideas are applied to procedures for determining locality and assessing the characteristics of local variation, and some examples of dynamic graphical local indicators are provided. The examples and images provide a flavour of the approach and the dynamic and flexible nature of the software. One of the advantages of the approach is that, as the software is free and accessible on the Internet, the author is not restricted to static black-and-white graphics for communicating dynamic colourful ideas. Larger colour versions of the images can be downloaded to support the paper.
Article
Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) pertains to the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to broaden public involvement in policymaking as well as to the value of GIS to promote the goals of nongovernmental organizations, grassroots groups, and community-based organizations. The article first traces the social history of PPGIS. It then argues that PPGIS has been socially constructed by a broad set of actors in research across disciplines and in practice across sectors. This produced and reproduced concept is then explicated through four major themes found across the breadth of the PPGIS literature: place and people, technology and data, process, and outcome and evaluation. The themes constitute a framework for evaluating current PPGIS activities and a roadmap for future PPGIS research and practice.
Article
This article presents results of an empirical study about the use of a group-based geographic information system (GIS), called WaterGroup, developed as a collaborative spatial decision support system. WaterGroup was designed to enable stakeholder groups to participate in the solution of conjunctive water resource administration decision problems being addressed by the Idaho Department of Water Resources in the Boise River Basin of southwestern Idaho. The decision situation, software development, and empirical investigation are described within the context of other research activities/literatures related to group/community/public geographic information systems, helping us sort through the burgeoning terminology of this continually emerging field. We used Enhanced Adaptive Structuration Theory 2 to motivate research questions investigated by way of a field experiment research design. Decision process is characterized in terms of human-computer-human interaction coding. We used a technique called “interaction coding” to compile three streams of data from videotapes as a record of interaction in two stakeholder-oriented decision workshops. Coded data are examined using nonparametric, exploratory sequential data analysis. Additionally, we used questionnaires to gather data regarding participant perceptions of WaterGroup and the decision process. The findings of this study indicate that different technology configurations foster a different balance between analytic and deliberative activities within phases of a conjunctive administration decision process. A low-technology, chauffeur-driven configuration in a phase encourages more deliberation, and a medium-technology, participant-driven configuration in a phase encourages more analysis. We discuss the findings and their implications for group-based GIS decision support. This article will be of interest to researchers involved in group-based GIS decision support software design, in empirical studies of stakeholder group-based decision support, and facilitators desiring to gain deeper insight into field settings involving group-based GIS decision support.
Article
One of the potential problems of volunteered geographic information (VGI) is ensuring its quality. Innocent mistakes and intentional falsehoods can reduce not only the quality of the information, but also people’s confidence in VGI as a legitimate source of data. We present a case study in VGI that addresses the quality problem by aggregating input from many different people. Specifically, we present a technique to maintain a comprehensive list of points of interest (POI) for digital maps. This is traditionally difficult, because new POI are created, because some POI are known only locally, and because some POI have multiple names. We address this problem by exploiting map annotations contributed by regular, online map users. Our institution’s mapping Web site allows users to create arbitrary collections of geographically anchored pushpins that are annotated with text. Our data mining solution finds geometric clusters of these pushpins and examines the pushpins’ text and other features for likely POI names. For instance, if a given text phrase is mentioned frequently in a cluster, but infrequently elsewhere, this increases our confidence that this phrase names a POI. We tested the quality of our results by asking 100 local residents whether or not the POI we found were correct, and our user study told us we were generally successful. We also show how we can use the same user-annotated pushpins to assess the popularity of existing POI, which is a guide for which ones to display on a map.
Article
Participatory spatial planning and decision making requires a combination of software tools for group decision support, individual decision support and geographic analysis and presentation. This article presents a respective approach that integrates two software tools which were originally developed independently. One tool, Dito, is a Java application for the World Wide Web designed to facilitate structured argumentation and discourses. The other tool, CommonGIS, provides Java-based web-enabled services for the interactive, explorative generation and analysis of thematic maps, and it also supports multi-criteria decision making. The evolution of the integrated system is reviewed from first experiments in 2001, the resulting requirements and a succession of prototypes up to the latest solution. The focus of the article lies in the design of this solution.
Article
A tension exists at the heart of efforts to support collaboration with GIS. Many scholars and practitioners seek to support two separate objectives: (1) problem solving and (2) the exploration of diverse problem understandings. GIS applications designed for problem solving often pre-define the problem space by structuring the kind of information that can be considered or the way in which the problem is conceptualized. In doing so, they necessarily privilege particular perspectives and understandings of the problem while marginalizing others. As a result, these initiatives undermine their second objective. This is problematic in the context of contentious environmental decisions which have broad-reaching impacts on people with diverse perspectives and interests. In such contexts, I argue that equitable collaboration is impossible without first emphasizing the exploration of diverse problem understandings. I support this argument theoretically by turning to the literatures on collaborative planning and spatial decision support, and empirically in my analysis of a case study of an effort to construct a GIS for supporting collaborative water resource management in rural Idaho. Reflecting upon the case, I provide a set of recommendations to those seeking to better negotiate the tensions of supporting collaboration with GIS in the context of contentious environmental and natural resource decisions.
Article
Annotation Technology is a systematized set of recommendations for design of successful advanced annotation software covering the architectural, functional and user-interface aspects. It is grounded in a careful examination of 17 existing systems accompanied by our own empirical study of annotation types, applications and desired functionality. To validate the recommendations of Annotation Technology, we have also developed Annotator, a system for making on-line annotations on arbitrary hypertext documents. Annotator offers some capabilities unavailable in existing systems. It has a proxy-based architecture for annotating documents over the web and sorting the comments in an annotation database.
Book
Many advances in the integration of group spatial modeling, geographic information systems (GIS), and the Internet have occurred in recent years, however there is a lack of materials to highlight the transdisciplinary characteristics and impacts of this convergence while providing a uniform and consistent treatment of this expanding field of research. Collaborative Geographic Information Systems identifies unifying concepts in the field and presents them in a single volume, providing a comprehensive treatment of collaborative GIS focusing on system design, group spatial planning and mapping, Internet and wireless applications, and more. This book also details the theories, processes, and tools for designing and implementing collaborative GIS, and explores collaborative GIS methodologies currently being used or developed. Collaborative Geographic Information Systems is of immense value to academic researchers, planners and policy makers, graduate students, and individuals working in GIS, geography, environmental science, urban planning, computer supported cooperative work, and information technology.
Article
In the mid-1990s, several critical texts raised concerns about the social, political, and epistemological implications of GIS. Subsequent responses to these critiques have fundamentally altered the technological, political, and intellectual practices of GIScience. Participatory GIS, for instance, has intervened in multiple ways to try to ameliorate uneven access to GIS and digital spatial data and diversify the forms of spatial knowledge and spatial logic that may be incorporated in a GIS. While directly addressing core elements of the 'GIS & Society' critique, these reconstructions of a critical GIScience introduce their own ambiguities with respect to access, equity, digital representation of spatial knowledge, and epistemologies of new GIS research practices. In this paper, I examine some of the new and persistent ambiguities of participatory GIS that bear inclusion in future critical GIScience research.
Article
There are many interface schemes that allow users to work at, and move between, focused and contextual views of a dataset. We review and categorize these schemes according to the interface mechanisms used to separate and blend views. The four approaches are overview+detail, which uses a spatial separation between focused and contextual views; zooming, which uses a temporal separation; focus+context, which minimizes the seam between views by displaying the focus within the context; and cue-based techniques which selectively highlight or suppress items within the information space. Critical features of these categories, and empirical evidence of their success, are discussed. The aim is to provide a succinct summary of the state-of-the-art, to illuminate both successful and unsuccessful interface strategies, and to identify potentially fruitful areas for further work.
Article
The authoritative appearance of modern maps belies their inherent biases. To use maps intelligently, the viewer must understand their subjective limitations. Each of the modern maps discussed in this paper makes its own claim to special accuracy, and yet the results could hardly look more dissimilar. This is the contradiction maps present: a claim to represent objectively a world they can only subjectively present, a claim made to win acceptance for a view of the world whose utility lies precisely in its partiality. Given that the usefulness of maps derives from their bias and subjectivity, these are qualities to be highlighted and celebrated. The future of carography lies in transcending the dichotomy between the utility of the subjective and the authority of the objective. Beyond lie maps that will be ever more useful because they will be more open about their real relation to the world. -from Author
Article
This chapter provides an overview of Information Visualization and visual data mining techniques and illustrates them using a few examples. The application of Information Visualization methods provides new ways of analyzing geospatial data. Exploring and analyzing the vast volumes of data has become increasingly difficult. Information visualization and visual data mining can help to deal with this flood of information. Visualization techniques have been developed over the last two decades to support the exploration of large data sets. Visual data exploration usually follows a three-step process: overview first, zoom and filter, and then details-on-demand. The advantage of visual data exploration is that the user is directly involved in the data mining process. Visualization technology may be used for all three steps of the data exploration process. Visualization techniques are useful for showing an overview of visualization and allowing the user to identify interesting subsets. In this step, it is important to keep the overview visualization while focusing on the subset using another visualization technique. An alternative is to distort the overview visualization to focus on the interesting subsets. This can be performed by dedicating a larger percentage of the display to the interesting subsets while decreasing screen utilization for uninteresting data.
Chapter
Never before in history has data been generated at such high volumes as it is today. Exploring and analyzing the vast volumes of data has become increasingly difficult. Information visualization and visual data mining can help to deal with the flood of information. The advantage of visual data exploration is that the user is directly involved in the data mining process. There are a large number of information visualization techniques that have been developed over the last two decades to support the exploration of large data sets. In this article, we provide an overview of information visualization and visual data mining techniques, and illustrate them using a few examples. We show that an application of information visualization methods provides new ways of analyzing geography – related data.
Article
Much progress has been made in the past two decades, and increasingly since the popularizing of the Internet and the advent of the Web, in exploiting new technologies in support of the dissemination of geographic information. Data warehouses, spatial data libraries, and geoportals have proliferated, and today's users of geographic information have a wealth of potential sources that can be searched for suitable data sets. Standards have been established, issues of syntactic interoperability have been largely addressed, and rich descriptions are available in metadata to allow the suitability of a given data set to be assessed. Table digitizers used to be an essential asset for any spatial data center in the days when most sources of geographic information were in the form of paper maps, and skill in digitizing was a major part of any introduction to geographic information systems (GIS). Today, however, users rely heavily on digital sources, and virtually all digitizing is heads-up on-screen. Despite this picture of progress, however, there remain many issues in the development of spatial data infrastructures, and these of course form the primary rationale for this journal and for projects such as INSPIRE (http://inspire.jrc.it). Surveys by Masser (1998, 2007), Burrough and Masser (1998), Onsrud (2007), and Goodchild, Fu, and Rich (2007) have addressed the thorny problems of semantic interoperability, the economics of spatial data sharing, and legal issues, among others. What is largely missing from these discussions, however, is a concern for the basic supply of geographic information, and trends affecting the processes by which it is acquired and compiled. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has revolutionized the processes of surveying, allowing the rapid and accurate determination of absolute position on the Earth's surface, and remote
Article
Information technology plays a growing role in planning procedures. A procedure step which has not been supported by specific computer tools up to now, is asynchronous discussions. Such discussions can occur in public participation as well as between planners during plan design. In this paper I introduce argumentation models as a way of structuring debates, and review existing tools for recording argumentation. A limited number of tools support design-related or map-related discussions. Their short-comings for analyzing geographically referenced arguments are discussed. Finally, the concept of 'argumentation maps' is described, which combine the strengths of rigorous argumentation modeling and detailed geographic location to support map-based discussions in on-line planning.
Article
This paper examines the increasing use of geographic information systems (GIS) to support the project of ‘collaborative’ planning. Specifically, I explore the ways in which the use of GIS in collaborative planning programs works to counteract and/or reproduce patterns of marginalization always present in local political struggles. Through a review of the literature and an analysis of a case study of the use of GIS in rural water resource management, I argue that the discourse and practices of collaboration can often lead to a problematic depoliticization of GIS. Furthermore, I show how this depoliticization can normalize both uneven power dynamics and the marginalization of alternative and oppositional perspectives. I employ this case study as a backdrop to propose an alternative practice of participatory GIS motivated by Mouffe’s notion of ‘agonistic pluralism’. This practice of agonistic participatory GIS is designed to foreground, rather than obscure, the politics of spatial knowledge production by explicitly juxtaposing alternative understandings of space and spatial problems. I conclude by discussing the importance of this work to the critical and participatory GIS research agendas.
Conference Paper
A useful starting point for designing advanced graphical user interfaces is the visual information seeking Mantra: overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand. But this is only a starting point in trying to understand the rich and varied set of information visualizations that have been proposed in recent years. The paper offers a task by data type taxonomy with seven data types (one, two, three dimensional data, temporal and multi dimensional data, and tree and network data) and seven tasks (overview, zoom, filter, details-on-demand, relate, history, and extracts)
Article
INTRODUCTION Geographic information systems (GIS) and geographic information technologies (GIT) are increasingly employed in research and development projects that incorporate community participation. For example, there are now applications involving indigenous natural resource mapping in arctic and tropical regions within the Americas (Marozas, 1993; Cultural Survival Quarterly, 1995; Bond, this volume). There is also a rapidly growing network of planning professionals interested in how GIS can merge with community participation in the context of neighborhood revitalization and urban planning (Aitkin and Michel, 1995; Craig and Elwood, 1998; Leitner et al., this volume; Sawicki and Peterman, this volume; Talen, 1999, 2000). Environmental groups are experimenting with community GIS applications to promote environmental equity and address environmental racism (Sieber, 2000; Kellog, 1999). Furthermore, NGOs, aid organizations, and governmental agencies are linking communities with geogr
Article
We present a novel tree browser that builds on the conventional node link tree diagrams. It adds dynamic rescaling of branches of the tree to best fit the available screen space, optimized camera movement, and the use of preview icons summarizing the topology of the branches that cannot be expanded. In addition, it includes integrated search and filter functions. This paper reflects on the evolution of the design and highlights the principles that emerged from it. A controlled experiment showed benefits for navigation to already previously visited nodes and estimation of overall tree topology.
Marginalization and Public Participation GIS National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, Varenius Project Report Dykes J 1998 Cartographic visualization
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