Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

ParticipatoryGIS: A Web-Based Collaborative GIS and Multicriteria Decision Analysis

2010; CRC Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1045-8077

Soheil Boroushaki, Jacek Malczewski,

Land Use and Ecosystem Services

INTRODUCTION Citizens are increasingly demanding greater public participation in shaping public policy decisions that affect their lives. A variety of participatory procedures exist that aim at involving the public and integrating the local knowledge and preferences with the scientific inputs of the experts (e.g., planners) within the decision process (Dunn 2007, Rinner et al. 2008, Jankowski 2009). However, the capabilities of traditional methods of public participation and collaboration (e.g., public meetings) are limited because of their synchronous and place-based nature. The conventional models of public participation often have been criticized for their deficiencies in representing certain interest groups and local residents; this is because some individuals and groups cannot be present at a specific time and location, and may be reluctant to voice their preferences among other community members (Dragicevic and Balram 2004, Jankowski 2009). To facilitate effective public participation, the spatial planning and decision-making procedures should be collaborative and distributed over an extended period of time (Carver and Peekham 1999, Jankowski and Nyerges 2001, Dragicevic and Balram 2004). The rapid improvement and innovation in the geographical information software and related computing hardware have made GIS the main tool for spatial planning and decision making. Nonetheless, the progress in using GIS to improve public collaboration in spatial decision making has been rather limited (Sieber 2006, Dunn 2007). While the planners and decision makers have full access to relevant spatial data/information, as well as to spatial planning tools such as GIS and related technologies, there are relatively few spatial planning and decision-making tools available to the general public (Pickles 1995, Carver 1999, Carver and Peekham 1999, Dragicevic 2004). GIS typically has been a centralized, exclusionary, expensive, and technocratic tool requiring expert users to maintain effective and efficient operations (Dragicevic 2004, Miller 2006). The system has been criticized as being an elitist technology that widens the gap between expert users and the general public when employed for planning and decision-making applications (Pickles 1995). The main challenges of GIS-based spatial decision-making applications reside in bridging this gap by providing a tool for enhancing public participation and addressing the issues of access and equity. Implementing GIS within the World Wide Web environment and integrating its capabilities with multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods can provide a mechanism for bridging the gap between the general public and experts. Web-based GIS (WebGIS) can offer solutions that are accessible to nonexperts; moreover, online tools, such as discussion forums, can provide an alternative to the traditional place-based planning (for example, public meetings/hearings and open houses) for they do not require in-person attendance. Ultimately, by operating on the Internet, the access to GIS is not restricted by time or location (Carver 1999, Jankowski and Nyerges 2001, Dragicevic 2004, Dragicevic and Balram 2004). In addition, the integration of GIS and MCDA facilitates the participation decision-making process by allowing participants to explore different aspects of a decision problem and articulate their preferences (Carver 1999, Malczewski 2006a). MCDA provides a mechanism for expressing the participants' preferences and objectives for generating a compromise solution. Furthermore, MCDA can offer a structured environment for investigating the intensity and sources of conflicts among different participants. It also can improve communication and understanding among multiple decision makers, which, in turn, pave the way for converging preferences and building a consensus in such a way that a minimum conflict solution can be generated (Feick and Hall 1999, Jankowski and Nyerges 2001, Malczewski 2006a, b). …