1. History, structure and organization of the meeting  3
2. Call for papers 5
3. Participant list 7

4. Summary of critical issues raised in paper sessions 11
5. Breakout group summary reports 13
6. Toward a PPGIS Research Agenda 18
7. Abstracts of papers 22
8. Conclusion 92

 

 
 
 
 
 

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This workshop and its focus on PPGIS have several origins. The concept of Public Participatory GIS came from Initiative 19 GIS and Society: the social implications of how people, space, and environment are represented in GIS held in Minnesota in March 1996 (NCGIA Technical report 96-7). This theme was developed and the term defined at a subsequent meeting held in Orono, Maine. It was at the Orono meeting that the term Public Participation GIS was coined and the concept developed further. A web discussion group was also established. The discourse on GIS and Society of course has a longer antecedence extending back to the NCGIA sponsored meeting at Friday Harbor held in November 1993. The Friday Harbor meeting was organized by Nick Chrisman, John Pickles, Tom Poiker, Eric Sheppard and others and built upon earlier debates at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. Following the Friday Harbor meeting ‘Ground Truth: the social implications of Geographic Information Systems’ edited by John Pickles was published. Soon after came a special issue of Cartography and GIS (CAGIS) edited by Eric Sheppard and Tom Poiker, which contained a series of papers presented at the Friday Harbor meeting. In addition, NCGIA Initiatives 16 and 17 contributed to the focus on the societal impacts arising from GIS use. This literature, and the momentum generated at the Friday Harbor meeting, provided the conceptual base for the Minnesota workshop.

The Minnesota workshop identified three broad conceptual issues that focused on:

1. Epistemologies of GIS
2. GIS Spatial Data Institutions and Access to Information
3. Developing Alternative GIS

At the 1997 UCGIS summer retreat in Bar Harbor, Maine, it was proposed that the idea of PPGIS should be incorporated into the new Varenius initiative. As result, a core planning group and co-leaders was established and a proposal to NCGIA was submitted. From the beginning it was envisioned that the PPGIS initiative would be concerned with field experiences with alternative GIS implementations. There is presently a rapid proliferation of PPGIS in many social contexts. These include urban planning, community development, environmental equity, social forestry, indigenous resource mapping, and third world development. As a result there is a need to take stock of how these GIS are being produced, the successes and failures of PPGIS related projects, and the critical social and technical issues associated with their implementation. All participants recognized that this initiative was important for understanding ‘geographies of the information society’. The rapid diffusion of GIS marginalizes and empowers people and communities simultaneously and one of the workshop’s critical objectives was to understand the social context in which PPGIS are developed and implemented and the social impacts of its use.

Organizationally, the meeting was a combination of both conference and workshop formats. An introductory session preceded the presentation of some 30 papers from the participants. Extensive discussion ensued following each presentation and common themes and issues were identified. During the second day the meeting entered a workshop phase. A summary was presented of the significant questions prompted from the papers and discussion of these provided the focus for four groups to workshop around significant issues of PPGIS. Rapporteurs reported back to the main body in preparation for the final plenary session that focused on establishing a PPGIS research agenda.

This Specialist Meeting is expected to bring together individuals who have a deep experience with PPGIS. It will be a forum for sharing experiences about alternative GIS designs and applications, which better reflect community interests and involve and empower its members. The meeting will also be concerned with ways in which Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) can have unintended consequences by marginalizing people and communities. This initiative will, therefore, explore the contradictory nature of PPGIS design and implementation through presentations of case studies in a diversity of social contexts. A PPGIS research agenda will be developed and plans established for a possible subsequent conference. This follow-up conference would involve community groups, policy makers, planners, government agencies, NGOs, GIS vendors, private sector representatives, and academics that are involved in PPGIS.

Key themes of the Varenius October specialist meeting will include:

• identifying community information needs and how PPGIS might contribute to those needs
• the multiple ways in which PPGIS are being designed and implemented
• the impacts on communities arising from differential access to GIS hardware, software, data, and expertise
• the nature of GIS knowledge distortion and the ways in which socially differentiated communities and their local knowledge might be represented within a PPGIS
• changes in local politics and power relationships arising from the use of PPGIS in decision making
• unintended outcomes of PPGIS implementation, including red-lining, local surveillance, and breaches of confidentiality and privacy
• the potential of PPGIS to empower people and communities

Invited participants should have professional interests relevant to PPGIS design, research, and implementation, have rich histories to relate, and be able to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of that work. We are seeking a diversity of case studies involving, for example, urban neighborhoods, indigenous people, Third World development projects, and environmental movements. Proposals to participate in the specialist meeting should consist of two parts: (1) a 750-1000 word abstract which explains the objectives, participants, methods, and progress of your PPGIS project and (2) a one-page biography or curriculum vitae with up to five selected publications most relevant to the topic. Small project teams are welcome to submit a proposal. Participants will be expected to prepare a research paper for distribution one month prior to the meeting and may be invited to contribute to an edited book on PPGIS.

Completed proposals should be sent to Will Craig at the University of Minnesota by July 17^th 1998, in both hard copy and email formats (ASCII or WORD). Notices of acceptance and travel awards will be issued on August 14th 1998. All submissions will be reviewed by the Initiative co-leaders in consultation with the core-planning group. Participation will be limited to 25-30 people, and will be by invitation only. The project will reimburse reasonable travel and accommodation costs for participants. Please include a quote of lowest available airfare in your application. Funded foreign participants must use U.S. air carriers and meet immigration/visa requirements.

Please direct requests for information to the project co-leaders:

Will Craig, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs,
University of Minnesota,
330 HHH Center, Minneapolis, MN 55455
wcraig@atlas.socsci.umn.edu

Trevor Harris, Department of Geology and Geography,
West Virginia University,
PO Box 6300, Morgantown, WV 26506
tharris2@wvu.edu

Dan Weiner, Department of Geology and Geography,
West Virginia University,
PO Box 6300, Morgantown, WV 26506
dweiner@wvu.edu
 
 

Core Planning Group

Joan Durrance University of Michigan
Helga Leitner University of Minnesota
Bob McMaster University of Minnesota
Michele Masucci Temple University
Nancy Obermeyer Indiana State University
Harlan Onsrud University of Maine
Barbara Poore FGDC
David S. Sawicki Georgia Tech University
Paul Schroeder University of Maine
Susan Stonich University of California, Santa Barbara

IV. Summary of critical issues raised in paper sessions

The formal presentations and the discussions that ensued generated a number of perspectives on the issue of PPGIS. A number of themes became apparent but in many respects the presentations and discussions generated as many questions as they did answers. These questions or issues were collated during the session and then presented as a basis for subsequent breakout group discussions. These questions also begin the process of forming a research agenda.

¨ What are the distinguishing characteristics of PPGIS?

¨ To what extent is PPGIS embedded in politics and power relations in the context of:

- How best can we capture or extract information about a community?

a community PPGIS?

¨ What are the constraints acting against PPGIS?

V. Breakout Group Summary Reports

After the papers were presented and discussed, four breakout groups were formed. Each group was asked to provide their summary of the major issues that emerged and to identify key PPGIS research questions. Summary outlines of the four group reports are presented below:

Group 1

• Core issues for PPGIS

• Start with nature of participation
• Goal is to reduce community marginality with GIS
• complications with introduction of new technology
• enhancing local participation is critical
• generating local data is essential
• Realize that PPGIS may not change balance of power
• Concerns for safeguards
• assessment tools
• examples of best practices
• issues of ethics and privacy
• guidelines; be watchful of abuses

• Empowerment [of community] has long tradition -- older than GIS; so PPGIS needs to work with others

• Other mandates for PPGIS

• Make needs known to software development community
• Lobby for more flexible software
• Educate users and potential users, i.e. the public
• Strengthen systems design to improve access, while still protecting privacy

• What legacy to address?

• Share "lessons learned", as well as "best practices"
• Note outcomes of disempowerment as well as empowerment
• Identify appropriate settings for professional and community interactions

• Need metrics to assess success and failures of PPGIS, both process and product, especially since PPGIS output is input to policy and is a step removed from results

• What is a PPGIS?

• Deals with community (spatial and aspatial issues)
• Addresses a specific scale
• Involves public participation (2^nd cybernetic sense)
• Is pluralistic, inclusive and non-discriminatory
• Includes qualitative and quantitative data
• For and by the community and "indigenous" people – the stakeholders

• What is desired in PPGIS?

• Driven by [social] values; treats factual data as well
• Represents both facts and values
• Performs some analysis E
• Leads to decision-making T
• … implementation … H
• … [social] change I
• Evaluation of efficacy C

• Pervasive learning, with feedback loops, throughout process
• Strong ethical/moral tones

• ---

  NB: Group participation changes GIS, which in turn changes group iterative processes

• What are critical GIScience questions in PPGIS?

• How to make a better/new GIS tool (cf social telescope)
• Additional information types required by new GIS tool
• Impact of new GIS tool on social paradigms
• New research domains [unspecified]
• Measurement of change in community

• What are important research topics for PPGIS and PPGIScience?

• Nature of data and information needed Controlled by
• Methods of data and information acquisition Empowerment
• Impacts of communication structures Access
• Models of access Scales
• Visualization and representation Appropriateness
• Metrics of success
• Pedagogical issues

• What are important research topics specific to PPGISystems?

• Handling of qualitative and quantitative data
• Metadata for communities
• Software tool design
• WWW possibilities and impacts
• Performance
• Technology transfer

• PPGIS poses quandaries, for example:

• Multiple dimensions
• Providers/Users of data are one and same, leading to many models of provision
• Many styles and levels of inclusiveness in participation are possible

• Evaluation and Performance measures

• Outreach
• Awareness
• Access to data and information
• Costs of data and information
• Levels of collaboration
• Changes in lifeways, social equity, preservation of values

• Data Representation

• Must be computerized – legitimization issue
• Who collects, filters, and provides data?
• Usefulness of public data at local level [large-scale]
• Scale, and resolution of all types of data and information
• Qualitative/Quantitative dichotomy
• Field verification of data
• Local knowledge: non-standard, fuzzy, spiritual data
• Transformation of cultural concepts across boundaries of language and technology

• Political orientation of PPGIS

• In design Situational context
• In use / outcomes embedded at all levels
• In evaluation

• Interface design issues

• GUI itself
• Artistry
• Multimedia
• Cognitive mapping
• Cartographic concepts
• Technology and people mediate the data

• Other agendas and questions

• How to empower people in public change?
• What is the role of academics, vs practitioners?
• When does GIS matter after all?

• What is PPGIS?

• Multi-dimensional
• Fuzzy – agreement that it could not be precisely defined
• Generated within, or outside, the subject community
• Generated bottom-up or top-down
• At intersection of social science [broadly defined] and GI Science;

• Involves "ladders" – levels – of social empowerment and change:

• What is "special" about PPGIS?

• Social concerns and events are located in space
• Incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data
• "Weird" data - touching, visceral, emotional issues
• Local knowledge transformed back into data
• More interest in social than technical arenas
• Highly interdisciplinary

• What is needed in PPGIS?

• Avoiding "sloppy" social- and GI- science
• Evaluation of both process and outcomes
• Ensuring success – results – as much as possible
• Integration of evaluation techniques from many disciplines

• Interfacing the "whole process"

• Representation of "weird" things
• Design of new tools and facilities
• Education
• Providing a nexus between community members and experts

• Models of institutional structures

• Who does PPGIS, how, and for whom?
• Taxonomy of institutional organizational types, methods
• How is PPGIS structured in different contexts?
• How does participation affect process?

• Data acquisition and collection

• Access! to government, private, sacred, personal, and academic data
• Methods of local knowledge-to-data transformation
• Ramifications of [re]sharing different types of data in the community

VI. Toward a PPGIS Research Agenda

This research agenda grows out of an interest in understanding and improving PPGIS activities in this country and around the world. This agenda is based on the following basic assumptions:

• PPGIS can empower the community and its members.
• Equal access to data and information is a key component of PPGIS.
• Scale of data should match the needs of the community.
• PPGIS use (and research about this use) should be appropriate to the needs of the

• Establishing and maintaining community trust is key for people working with PPGIS.
• PPGIS is purposefully value laden.
• Consequences of PPGIS, both intended and unintended, should be monitored.
• More than most other technology implementations, PPGIS involves ethical issues.

Too little is known about the nature of PPGIS. We need a better understanding of the scope of existing activity. More than that, we need to document successful and unsuccessful activities and the reasons for their level of success. We believe that such studies will lead to a better understanding of PPGIS and stimulate the growth of PPGIS activities that bring more benefits to the community, with fewer negative side effects.

A significant number of PPGIS activities are already underway and both the number and types of such activities are growing. Sawicki has begun to build an inventory of PPGIS suppliers. Our experience in this workshop is that much can be learned from each activity, so it is important to continue to monitor these developments. Such an inventory will allow PPGIS providers to connect with each other, and allow researchers to monitor the size and nature of this ever-changing field.

A guidebook of best practices is needed to assist people attempting to develop PPGIS operations. Too many PPGIS leaders have begun their activities from scratch, with little knowledge of what has gone before. This workshop involved many of the leaders in PPGIS, yet much was learned from what others were doing.

Of course, before such a guidebook is developed, we need to evaluate existing practices so we know what works well and what does not. We know of no formal evaluation of any PPGIS activity, only anecdotal evidence of success or failure. Evaluations will assist in identifying best practices. A series of evaluations in different geographic locations and different substantive areas will uncover commonalties useful to all PPGIS efforts as well as issues that are unique to place and topic.

Before any evaluation can be done, we need to develop evaluation criteria that are germane to PPGIS efforts. Barndt has made a good start on the criteria by describing a range of product, process and sustainability criteria. The evaluations should be both summative and formative. Summative evaluations focus on the end results and will have great value for other organizations. Formative evaluation focuses on intermediate goals, such as the number of people involved, and is useful for the host organization in making adjustments to improve their processes. Because we feel process is as important as product, these formative evaluations will also be useful for others.

Interface and the Process

Through this title we focus on how people connect with technology. One focus is how the community becomes connected with a PPGIS. A second focus is the nature of the technology itself, and the final is on the user interface – both for directing software and for assimilating the results.

When and how is it appropriate for community groups to access GIS to meet their needs? Sieber has begun to study the relationship between a group’s characteristics and the appropriateness of GIS for them. Leitner et al. have begun development of a framework describing how the community might acquire PPGIS capabilities. Further work in these areas will help answer questions about appropriate ways for community groups to access GIS.

While we have used the label PPGIS, where GIS implies existing geographic information systems, we are not convinced that existing GIS technology meets the needs of community groups. An evaluation of GIS functionality against community needs would document the strengths and weaknesses of today’s software; it should also identify missing functionality. We suspect that the Internet meets additional aspects of the community’s needs and that, in fact, it might be the GIS2 we are looking for. Multimedia and other software may also fulfill needs. Research is needed on the appropriateness of these alternatives to meet community needs.

A second aspect of interface includes the user interface and the visual products that result. While desktop GIS packages have made user interface much easier than earlier GIS, they still have a scientific and generic feel that is not friendly to community users. We see a need to study community use of the technology and develop an interface that better represents their view of the world and is therefore more inviting and useful.

Likewise we know little about the appropriateness of standard cartographic products for community needs. Some maps, like parcel maps with building outlines, are at human scale and seem to work for community groups working on local issues. Other issues are not represented well by standard cartographic techniques and new techniques are needed. For example, contour maps of income distribution may not work well for layperson. We need research on visualization techniques that are appropriate to the needs of community

Organizational Issues and Societal Context

What are appropriate ways of organizing PPGIS activities? This question needs to be answered within a societal context. Through the first agenda item, monitoring and evaluation, we should have a good idea of nature of exiting PPGIS activities and knowledge about their success or lack of success. Under this agenda item, we ask for research that will point to ways of improving the chances of success.

One measure of success is whether the effort empowers or marginalizes people in the community. We suspect that certain ways of organizing communities are better than others at being inclusive and helping people feel they can control their own destinies. Much work has been done by social psychologists that is relevant to this discussion, but very little work exists which examines the impact of information technology on these organizations. What organizational aspects might ensure that the community is well represented and few people are marginalized? It is possible for one group within a neighborhood to take control and use PPGIS to promote their interests over the interests of other groups. What are effective ways of protecting the interests of the minority?

Useful research could be done which looks at the ways in which GIScience interfaces with the social and physical sciences through PPGIS. Much is known in these other fields that is relevant to PPGIS (for example, about community empowerment) but neither side is well aware of the other and, more importantly, very little is known about the about how well the theories of those other sciences operate in the PPGIS arena. Meridith, for example, writes about second order Cybernetics where information gained by the community changes the way people behave and thereby the outcome is different from what is predicted by a purely scientific model. How does the PPGIS process empower communities and how does this empowerment induce change?

Community organizations will measure their success by the policies they have affected and the resources they have gained. From political science we know something about how interest groups work in the government arena, but we know very little about how PPGIS might impact that work. We know less about how community groups relate to the private and non-profit sectors, and know nothing about the impact of PPGIS on those relationships. Understanding those relationships and the impact of PPGIS can lead to a better understanding of the current social paradigm. It could also lead to recommendations to empower community organizations to bring about social change.

A very important issue is how to develop sustainable PPGIS centers. Leitner et al. have developed models of types of centers with various levels of sustainability, but all have potential problems of funding and sustained interest. More research is needed in this area.

Having established a PPGIS, the community will be faced with a variety of decisions concerning its rights in that system. To what extent is it willing to let outsiders have access to its data and resources. Where do privacy rights give way to community interests? What charges should be made for access? What legal rights does the organization have to its PPGIS? Research on these issues could lead to recommendations for best practices

Data Issues

A wide variety of data issues face the PPGIS community and research is needed to identify ways to maximize opportunities and overcome obstacles.

Acquiring data from others is important because is reduces costs and eliminates disputes about data quality. There are various problems with such acquisition including outright refusal, high cost, lack of documentation, and system incompatibility. Onsrud points out that new federal laws seem to be reducing access to data. Research on these issues could lead to improved sharing of data.

Some of this data held by others is unknown to the community or individuals in it. Worse, that information could be incorrect and inappropriately used against the community. We have ways of knowing about and correcting incorrect credit histories, but these rights do not apply in other areas. This area could benefit from research about the nature and extent of the problem, plus ways of alleviating problems.

Getting community information into a GIS is problematic. Often the information a community wants to add to its database is incompatible with existing GIS technology. Most often it is qualitative information or the information has fuzzy boundaries. Sometimes it is sacred information. New models need to be developed which would allow such data to be represented in a GIS. Sometimes the needed information is distributed across the community and innovative ways of collecting this information could allow it to be used in the GIS. Ways are also needed to validate community information. Research is needed in these areas which will lead to new ways of incorporating and empowering such information.

Finally, we need to know more about the ramifications of making PPGIS data available within the community or to others outside the community. There are clearly times when this sharing will help the community attain its goals, but individuals may suffer as a result. The circumstances of positive and negative effects need to be identified to provide guidelines to communities operating PPGIS.

Scale is a characteristic of data well known to the GIScience community, but we know little about how it affects community understanding of maps and other visual representations. It seems clear that people have little trouble with human scale data; e.g., the trees and houses they see in their everyday environment. We are less clear about how well lay people comprehend block summary data or national distributions.

The abstracts are in alphabetical order by lead author. Full versions of these papers can be accessed online at:

http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/varenius/ppgis/papers/
 

Kheir Al-Kodmany
Urban Planning and Policy Program
University of Illinois at Chicago
 
 

This paper explains how a collaboration of traditional and GIS tools facilitated an environment that fostered public input in participatory design. The project involved a large in-fill residential and commercial development in Pilson neighborhood, Chicago. A GIS image database assisted in visualizing public’s ideas concerning the built environment. The artist, with traditional felt tips and markers, translated and incorporated the audience ideas into papers. The GIS image database tremendously extended the memory of each of the public, planner, and artist. It assisted in visualizing the past and present situation of the neighborhood. It also assisted in engaging the audience in developing alternative solutions that were incrementally visualized by the artist at the direction of the audience.

Key historic images of the neighborhood were "hot-linked" to their geographic locations on the map. These images provided an overview of how the area looked like. Another recent map was also "hot-linked" to current images of the neighborhood. Images were classified in terms of their architectural styles and use. Maps showed the clusters and patterns of architectural styles and landuse pattern in the examined neighborhood. Upon typing the name of an architectural style, images along their geographic locations appeared on the screen. Similarly, images of different functions were readily accessible and related to their geographic locations. Consequently, links between existing images of the neighborhoods to their geographic locations and uses were established. Discussing locations of functions and images empowered understanding of the neighborhood.

For visualizing audience’s ideas about the future development, a GIS image database contained examples of numerous developments near the neighborhood and of key developments throughout the city. Images that represented design examples and prototypes were used as anchor points for discussing development alternatives. As audience suggested solutions, the planner attempted to bring on the screen images closest to the audience’s ideas. Design examples were used to prop the audience’s ideas. For the artist, these images helped to inform memory about how elements look like. For the planner, images helped to assess the contextual fit.

Once participants arrived at agreement on an idea, the artist sketched it on paper. Sketches were immediately projected on a large screen. Computer images’ screen and the artist’s screen were set side-by-side. This positioning allowed the audience to constantly observe how the artist modified images and incorporate them in the design. Everyone was potentially able to voice an opinion or concern. Such setting reinforced the visual environment and minimized reliance on jargons. Consequently, it reduced isolation. As the audience agreed on additional ideas, the artist further developed the sketch.

These processes were repeated incrementally to advance the artists’ sketch. The artist included human figures in all stages of the drawing to keep the sketch on scale; i.e. human scale was used as the basic unit of measurement. When the artist completed the skeleton of the sketch, finely-grain issues were discussed. Participants suggested color, textures, and architectural details. Then the artist included these ideas and finished the sketch. The gradual built up of the artist’s sketch reflected the public collective desire on how the neighborhood should change and how it should look like. Several sketches were developed following the same process.

The artist’s facility to translate ideas graphically under pressure proved to be irreplaceable by machine. A computer could not play the artist’s role who had to quickly translate collective ideas into graphic. Drawing under the direction of many people is a complex task. Responding to people ideas that constantly change proved to be challenging. The skills required to carry on these tasks were unattainable by the computer. Non of the present software possess the artist’s facility of drawing at the direction of the audience at any point in the conversation. The power of talented artists using freehand sketches on the spot seemed to be unique. This suggested that traditional graphic skills are still most useful, relevant, and effective to represent collective ideas. Including the artist in public participation was invaluable.

On the other hand, the extended memory, provided by the GIS image database, was unattainable by human capacity; be it the artist, planner, or the public. Human’s memory suffers serious shortcoming. People have different mental images about the same built environment and its components such as buildings, street, and plazas. Relying on human memory has frustrated people who have been involved in participatory design. Also, the artist was in a better position to incorporate ideas of the presented design examples on a screen rather than to rely solely on memory. Images helped the artist to gain confidence in sketching environmental elements. Furthermore, the audience and planners were better able to congressionally visualize the development of the design. In nutshell, the combination of artists’ facility of drawing and the enormous image memory of the computer resulted in a collaborative environment that bridged some communication gaps.

Some disadvantage of this method must be mentioned. A classical disadvantage of prolonging the process was evident. As tools opened up possibilities and ideas, the process doubled the time. Another disadvantage was that time and effort required for building the image database were enormous. The price of visualizing neighborhood images, past, present, and design examples using the GIS exceeded the budget. One could simply ask; what would it be different if a slide projector were used instead of the GIS image database? Is the service of the GIS in projects of this nature ever needed? Is it worth the trouble? How much this tool improved public participation?

These questions are legitimate. Providing satisfactory answers require rigorous research. However, few advantages for using the GIS image database in the public process of shaping neighborhoods’ images are apparent. First, visualizing images in their geographic context give participants and planners better perspectives and understanding of the context. Showing the location of images in the neighborhood or in the city helps to visualize spatial relationships that are unattainable by using a slide projector. By plotting on the map the locations of a particular architectural style, for example, we are able to show the density of such style, cluster, and pattern. Another advantage of the GIS image database is selectivity and interactivity. Unlike slides that are set in a predetermined path, the GIS image database provides real time pick and display capability. If one asked to see how a particular area looks like at any point in the conversation, it is readily doable.

In conclusion, for participatory design, this project suggested that a collaboration of traditional and GIS tools could be effective. Planners should carefully select the tools they use in public participation. Employed medium must be readily accessible to the public. Visualization seems to be a key for maximizing accessibility. A single medium of traditional or fully computerized may not be adequate for effective participatory design. Instead, a collaboration of traditional and computerized media may dramatically enrich public participation.
 
 

Michael Barndt

University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee

and the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee
 
 

Milwaukee provides an ideal laboratory to test and to evaluate the implementation of GIS tools as working components within community based organizations. The Data Center program of the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee (formerly, Milwaukee Associates in Urban Development) has been a data clearinghouse and GIS service center since 1992. Through direct fees and through a grant to serve Community Development Block Grant agencies, the center has been serving more than 60 organizations each year.

The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee has been able to provide comprehensive services responsive to the needs of community organizations by organizing the program as a part of package of services to nonprofit organizations who are members of the association. Community development objectives are critical to the Data Center design. Training programs, focus groups, extensive consultation, community internships and coproduction opportunities are a part of efforts to build organizational capacity.

I have grown increasingly interested in the question of how to evaluate community GIS services within the community development paradigm. I gave a presentation on this point at MIT in April and will speak to the issue at URISA in July. Often efforts by universities to help communities fail to have longer term effects because there is limited attention to these issues. As collaboration between universities and the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee increases, I am also more aware of the cultural differences between these two environments.

With the commodification of GIS tools, to what extent will use become common place among laypersons? This question is being tested at many levels in Milwaukee. Experiences range from full empowerment of community organizations to use GIS as a routine tool, to more traditional provision of services at the request of individual organizations by staff with professional GIS skills, to preparation of reports that organize and analyze data for distribution to the community.

The most ambitious project began last winter. Six grassroots neighborhood organizations pooled their resources to pay a programmer to develop an MIS program for organizer based groups. This project has been dubbed – INIS – the "Integrated Neighborhood Information System". The MIS program is designed as a "CIS- Community Information System" with substantial links between client and member addresses and a property – parcel/ unit frame using City of Milwaukee data. The Nonprofit Center program has been assisting with design, training and support. ESRI has contributed Arcview software. The INIS program creates queries which can be mapped on a parcel file map base. Much of the support work involves organizing map layers and property information to fit well within the system. It is already clear that implementation will depend upon the individual response of staff within these small organizations. How can this degree of change become "institutionalized" within these organizations?

The Nonprofit Center is increasingly involved in community indicators efforts beginning in Milwaukee. This is best manifest by a partnership with the Milwaukee Health Department. The Nonprofit Center has been geocoding vital statistics and other databases to support the development of a "data warehouse" within the Health Department. The Health Department is interested in producing neighborhood health profiles – on prenatal care, infants, immunization, lead, children as victims of violence, etc. The challenge will be to structure access to this detailed information to help community groups to recognize the "local" character of these concerns. With programs addressing child violence and lead exposure, there will be a need to share detailed information with neighborhood based programs. Indicators efforts that end with undifferentiated annual trends do not provide the tools for program planning and implementation. A more complete and flexible access system is being developed – including protocols to address confidentiality concerns.

The Nonprofit Center has been providing free GIS services to Community Development Block Grant organizations for nearly three years. The growing capacity of some organizations to use this data well can be contrasted to other organizations where the use was entirely episodic – often stopping entirely when a key person left. Building the capacity for organizations to become effective consumers of maps and data may be more important than to expect a full technology transfer to these organizations as envisioned in the INIS model above.

Broadening the use of data and GIS tools requires attention to the technology, access to organized data, work with organizational environments, transfer of skills to professionals in other fields and a qualitative change in the political environment of community systems.

Community coalitions concerned for an advanced role for local stakeholders in public policy are perhaps the best allies in efforts to change the political climate. In Milwaukee there are several scenarios where organizations working collaboratively are seeking more comprehensive, information-driven approaches. Groups are working to implement neighborhood strategic planning, to find new solutions to community violence, to explore new approaches to housing redevelopment, and to mobilize neighborhood level assets to work with youth.

I propose to conduct a process level evaluation of the experiences in Milwaukee. There are three broad questions to evaluate:

What is the value of the results? Is information appropriate, accurate, "actionable" and a fit to local activities and priorities? Does it offer insight? Does it combine qualitative and quantitative information? Are outcomes different?

Is the process managed well? Can the work be replicated in a cost- and time-efficient manner that can be sustained by those who need the information?

Does the process support a community building agenda? Is the capacity of local organizations enhanced? Is access to information ensured? Does system wide collaboration around the organization and assessment of information increase?

My participation in the NCGIA Initiative 19 was an opportunity to participate in the conceptual development of the PPGIS paradigm. I have been involved in presentations, articles and actual testing of the opportunities and limits of the idealized model. This is an appropriate time to look more closely at experiences with implementation.

The challenges to implementation of the effective use of local data resources within a data warehouse and GIS environment will be magnified at the neighborhood level. This will be complicated by the additional constraints upon small neighborhood based urban organizations. The proposed followup meeting for this initiative is the critical one. I am particularly interested in participation from networks such as the Urban Institute National Neighborhood Indicators project, the HUD Community 2020 initiative, the "Information for Change" conferences in Minneapolis-St. Paul and the Association for Community Networking. Each of these organizations is just beginning to experience the difficulty with broadening the use of these tools.

Mark Bosworth

John O. Donovan

Metro, Regional Government of Portland
 
 

Summary

Metro has developed a nationally recognized GIS and related socioeconomic information system known as the Regional Land Information System (RLIS). Over the course of an intensive public outreach and long-range planning process known as the 2040 Framework, Metro has put the power of the RLIS system into the hands of citizens. These applications have clearly illustrated the possible ramifications of land-use policy decisions in a map-based format that provides a vast amount of information in an accessible manner. This abstract will focus on three specific public participation tools that Metro has created using GIS.

Background

Metro is the directly elected regional government that serves more than 1.3 million residents in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties and the 24 cities in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. According to a voter-approved 1992 home-rule charter, Metro’s top priority is managing the urban growth that the region is experiencing. The Growth Management Services Department is responsible for working with citizens and local governments to seta clear course for the region’s future. Since 1991, Growth Management staff has implemented an intensive public involvement and rigorous planning effort for the next 50 years, called the 2040 Framework. The 2040 Framework is a series of policies and guidelines that will help the region’s communities deal with the challenges of growth and enhance livability.

Regional Land Information System (RLIS) was created by Metro's Data Resource Center (DRC) which maintains a wealth of information about the Portland metropolitan region’s land, population and economy. The center is part of Metro's Growth Management Services Department. RLIS and related socioeconomic information are at the heart of the DRC. RLIS has been in development since 1989. RLIS consists of Arc\Info coverages and grids with related databases.

The real strength of RLIS lies in its analytical capabilities. Each layer can be used by itself or in combination with other layers. This ability allows the user to produce new and unique layers and data bases from many combinations. Metro data and map coverages are seamless across the region, eliminating problems that arise from data gaps and overlaps at city and county boundaries.

Applications

"URSA-matic" – Metro is required by Oregon land use laws to designate areas adjacent to the metropolitan urban growth boundary as urban reserves. Urban reserves are areas that are determined as the most appropriate places for urban expansion when the region falls short of a 20 year supply of developable land inside the existing UGB. Metro spent 16 months examining possible areas for urban reserve designation, called Urban Reserve Study Areas (URSAs) before selecting 18,600 acres as urban reserves in March 1997. As part of the analysis of URSAs, Metro created a tool, dubbed "URSA-matic", that merged GIS mapping information of the areas with a spreadsheet that allowed comparative analysis of the URSAs based on state-required factors for selection of urban reserves. These factors included: orderly and economic provision for public facilities and services; maximum efficiency of land uses within and on the fringe of the existing urban area; environmental, energy, economic and social consequences; retention of agricultural land; and compatibility of the proposed urban uses with nearby agricultural activities.

"URSA-matic" allowed planners, elected officials and citizens to compare the suitability of the URSAs by weighting the different factors in different ways. "URSA-matic" could be loaded onto a laptop computer and projected through a LCD projector so that groups of officials and citizens could test various scenarios "on the fly" in the course of meetings or hearings. The specificity of the application allowed citizens to learn whether individual taxlots were "in" or "out" of the URSAs and whether they were likely to be included or not in the final selection of urban reserves. Through "URSA-matic", citizens could understand and be part of the decision making process, breaking out of the traditional "black box" technical environment that involved planners, lawyers and elected officials.

Stream and Floodplain Protection Workshops – Metro recently completed a public outreach effort tied to new regional land-use policies on protection of areas along rivers, streams, floodplains and wetlands to protect water quality and reduce future risk of flood damage (in accordance with Oregon state land use goals). Metro created new data layers for RLIS representing protected areas where the new policies would be applied throughout the region. The public outreach effort included workshops conducted around the Portland metropolitan area to inform citizens about the proposed policies and how the policies would affect communities and specific properties in these protection zones. Metro staff loaded the desk-top version of RLIS, called RLIS-Lite, on to three laptop computers and set up "one-on-one" stations at the workshops. Citizens could sit down with a planner to look at specific sites and examine the proposed overlay zones. They were also given a hard copy map to take home with them. Additionally, both planners and citizens could fill out forms to request changes, with suitable documentation, to the maps if there were errors or omissions in the Metro data. Again, the decision making process was open to any interested citizen, not just technical and elected officials.

MetroMap – MetroMap is a simplified version of the RLIS Lite data base provided to the public on Metro’s website. The application displays layers of geographic information and be viewed and printed individually or in combination by anyone who has internet access and a web browser. Boundary information can be generated in a list form and includes the following major categories:

Liza Casey

Director of Enterprise GIS

City of Philadelphia

Tom Pederson

Cartographic Modeling Lab

University of Pennsylvania
 
 

Like other large American cities that were built on a manufacturing economy, in the last 50 years Philadelphia has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs and people. A growing percentage of its population is living in poverty in neighborhoods that are filled with vacant buildings and trash strewn lots. Poverty and the attributes of poverty such as lack of education, unemployment, crime, and drugs are a barrier, making the people who live in these neighborhoods marginalized communities. For the last five years, the City of Philadelphia has been working to bring GIS technology to activists and planners in these neighborhoods, hoping to initiate with them a Public Participation GIS. While successful in generating enthusiasm for the applicability of GIS for this purpose, use of the technology in the neighborhoods is still minimal.

A 1995 paper by these authors documented a project sponsored by Philadelphia's Office of Housing and Community Development (OHCD) to give PCs, GIS software (ESRI's ArcView), data, and training to six neighborhood organizations called Community Development Corporations (CDCs). The vision was that, by now, scores of neighborhood planners and interested citizens would be sitting at PC's in the CDC offices using GIS to both query the information regarding the particulars of their environments and to perform "what if" scenarios to assist with strategic planning. This has not come to pass. If bringing that vision to reality were the only measure of the project's success, it failed. But it did not fail; it changed. The 1995 paper particularly focused on the limits of existing mapping techniques and symbology for mapping urban neighborhood environments.

This problem still exists. There are no standards and no "symbology vocabulary" for mapping features of urban neighborhoods in the way that exists in cartographic tradition for road maps or maps of natural features such as hills or grasslands. With or without GIS technology this limits the effectiveness of the maps. However, this was not the reason why the CDCs are not successfully using GIS. The more profound problem was that the skill level needed to manage and analyze the spatial and attribute data using the GIS software just did not exist in the CDCs and these groups could not afford to allocate any more of their meager resources for mapping.

New technologies, which allow GIS to be deployed over the Internet, had an impact on both of these problems. This technology allows the data to be managed centrally and an interface, which is much easier to use than PC based GIS software, to be created. The user, who has tools to pan and zoom to various extents on the map, can create maps by turning on and off preset map layers. Since the themes, symbology and classifications will all be pre-set and unalterable, they will de facto become standards. Since the data is managed centrally and the interface is user-friendly the need for GIS skills in the CDCs is eliminated.

However, the new technology introduces other problems and brought our attention to the fact that there were really two different types of systems which we distinguish as Public Records GIS and Neighborhood Planning GIS. Public Records GIS is the distribution of data that is recorded by the City or another government body in the course of administering its functions such as recording a property's change in ownership, or data that it collects for a purpose such as the Census or crime statistics. A Public Records GIS has a preset interface which would allow a user to view the data in various aspects and perform certain preset analyses but the user does not have wholesale access to the data and GIS software tools.

A Neighborhood Planning GIS needs to incorporate all the data of a Public Records GIS and it needs two additional aspects: community-based data and the facilities for manipulating and analyzing the data. The things of value in a neighborhood such as architecture or home grown community gardens, as well as the things of negative value such as garbage-strewn playgrounds and crack houses, are not line items in a city database. In order for neighborhood planners to effectively portray neighborhood features they need local data. They also need the ability to manipulate the data as part of the planning process. They need to be able edit the data to show the impacts of changes in the neighborhood. And they need access to the whole gamut of GIS tools for analysis and display.

While both of these systems have usefulness to marginalized communities, there are problems with each in terms of meeting the needs of Philadelphia's CDCs. This paper documents the progress of the City's continued efforts to give its neighborhoods access to its GIS resources and the impact on that effort of new technologies. Our theme is that although the City may now be in a much better position to distribute its GIS data through less expensive easier to use interfaces, the difficulties of effectively mapping urban neighborhoods still exist.

Alberto Giordano

Department of Geography

Syracuse University
 
 

In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident (March 28, 1979), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) adopted new emergency planning procedures. As a result, current population evacuation plans are based on the concept of Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ), an area that covers a 10-mile radius around a nuclear plant. One issue raised by the new procedures concerns the response to the accident of the people living in the EPZ. It has been shown (see, for example, Lindell and Eartle, 1983) that the public’s perception of nuclear risk differs considerably from the experts’ perception in the sense that most people tend to view nuclear accidents as more likely to occur and more drastic in their consequences than do nuclear experts. This disparity in perception suggests that people living close to a nuclear plant tend to overreact to an accident, and leave the area when not directed to do so. This was the case in the TMI accident, when almost 150,000 people chose to leave the area even though no formal evacuation order had been issued (Slovic, 1995, p. 466).

To explore how people would react to a nuclear accident, I surveyed residents in the EPZ of the Nine Mile Point nuclear complex, located in Oswego County, New York. Between September and December 1997, I mailed out two surveys to a sample of people living in the EPZ. The surveys asked residents how they would react to accidents of different magnitudes. To account for variations in residents’ responses to different accident scenarios, I also included questions related to the socio-demographic and risk perception characteristics of the respondents.

The most important findings indicated that in general people were not familiar with the county’s emergency plan, were not aware of the health consequences of an accident, and tended to disobey emergency planners’ directives. All three findings point at one major problem in the management of nuclear risk in Oswego county, namely, the communication to the public of the hazards of nuclear energy production. Once a year, the county sends all residents of the EPZ a booklet describing the procedures that will be taken in the event of an accident at Nine Mile Point. Clearly, this effort is not working as planned and hoped. One problem is that the booklet is a unidirectional communique, from the "experts" to the "people," with little or no input from those living in the EPZ. The attitude among the planners is that there are too many "misconceptions" about nuclear energy production, and that the public needs to be educated. They have little sympathy for the public’s fear of an accident, which they regard as highly improbable if not impossible.

The GIS can help overcome the lack of communication between experts and the public, and improve the understanding between emergency planners and people in Oswego County. In this sense, I believe my research plan fits well into the scope of the Initiative on PPGIS. In particular, the GIS implementation I am working on relates to at least two of the topics for the conference, namely:

• The implications of conflicting knowledge and multiple realities for spatial decision making. In case of an accident at Nine Mile Point, the difference in the perceptions of nuclear risk between planners and respondents, evident in the answers to my survey, is likely to have a negative effect on the emergency response activities implemented by local, state, and federal public officials. The role I envision for the GIS is that of a tool for educating the planners, in the modalities presented later in the proposal.
• The ways in which socially differentiated communities and their local knowledge are or might be represented within GIS. The respondents to my survey represent a cross section of a community that shares a great concern for the safety and the future of the nuclear complex. The GIS can help studying this community, by looking at how social and economic characteristics, attitudes and worldviews may contribute to explain possible responses to a nuclear emergency. In this sense, the knowledge that the planners acquire using the GIS may contribute to more effective efforts for communicating risk.

In the future, and should I receive positive feedback from the first presentations, I plan to show the GIS to selected groups of citizens. In the area, there are different organizations, and even individuals, who are strongly concerned about the presence of the plant, and who in general do not trust either the plant personnel or the local planners. These groups need to be reached and involved in the discussion on nuclear emergency response procedures, and the GIS might just be the right tool to do so.

Lindell M.K., Earle T.C., "How Close is Close Enough: Public Perceptions of the Risks of Industrial Facilities," Risk Analysis 3-4(1983): 245-253.

Slovic P., "Risk Perception and Public Response to Nuclear Emergencies", in D. Golding, J.X. Kasperson, R.E. Kasperson, eds., Preparing for Nuclear Power Plants Accidents, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995): 449-475.

Trevor Harris

Daniel Weiner

Department of Geology and Geography

West Virginia University
 
 

‘Community-Integrated’ GIS

Community-Integrated GIS (CIGIS) seeks to broaden the use of digital spatial data handling technologies with the objective of increasing the number and diversity of people who are capable of participating in spatial decision-making. This necessitates that the production of GIS is made inclusive. As a result, Community-Integrated GIS:

• is likely to be agency-driven, but it is not top-down nor privileged toward conventional expert knowledge
• assumes that local knowledge is valuable and expert
• broadens the access base to digital spatial information technology and data
• incorporates socially differentiated multiple realities of landscape
• integrates GIS and multi-media
• explores the potential for democratic spatial decision making through greater community participation
• assumes that spatial decision-making is conflict-ridden and embedded in local politics

Community-Integrated GIS should be capable of incorporating information and knowledge in alternative forms that are not dependent on the map as the sole mode of representation. Much has been written about the privileged position of the cartographic map and the dominance of spatial primitives in the representation of geographic information. The technical capability now exists to combine GIS to other forms of representation as well as to other media. Linking narratives, oral histories, photographs, moving images, and animation, to GIS provides enormous capability to increase not only the richness and diversity of the information available but more closely parallels the ways in which communities know or conceive their space. The linkage between GIS and multi-media systems is an obvious connection in this context and holds considerable potential for extending the knowledge base of GIS.

There are obvious questions regarding not only the construction of a Community-Integrated GIS but also its sustainability. We do not assume that all communities would want, nor indeed warrant, a GIS. Such systems would not be applied universally but selectively, contingent upon a mix of social, historical, and political factors. The Internet and the availability of interoperable GIS and media systems, along with initiatives such as the NSDI spatial data clearinghouse, will increasingly rely on the Internet as a means of accessing and enabling distributed GIS and will provide empowering conditions for community access discussed above. However, we assume there will continue to be resource and humanware issues to overcome. What we are proposing therefore, is not a complete replacement of existing agency responsibility for local GIS but a redefining of what such systems might ‘look’ like and how they might be extended into communities for greater public participation and ownership.

A Case Study from Mpumalanga, South Africa

The Mpumalanga project is a collaborative effort with the South African Department of Land Affairs (DLA) and contributes toward participatory land reform. The project seeks to maximize the participation of a diversity of communities in GIS production by drawing on relevant experiences, perspectives and skills. Participants include: land reform beneficiaries; non-beneficiaries of land reform from the former homelands; white farmers; black farm workers; chiefs and their patrons.

As part of this study several critical research issues are being pursued as they impact land reform:

1. The historical geography of forced removals: The key issue here is to broadly identify sub-regional histories of forced removals and to better understand overlapping land claims.
2. Differential perspectives on land potential: Land users have differing perspectives on the criteria and location of ‘high’, ‘medium’, and ‘low’ potential land. This is dependent on the local community’s own perception of what land potential means and how land should be used.
3. Socially appropriate and inappropriate land use: We are concerned here with understanding land use from the perspective of peoples’ needs and to go beyond the very narrow focus on need from a ‘market-led’ perspective. This includes identifying and questioning the use of state land, underutilized land, the inappropriate location of forestry or other land uses on high potential land, as well as perspectives on land for game tourism.
4. Politics of access to natural resources: This issue explores access to land, water and biomass as social and political processes.
5. Identification of areas where land reform should take place: The purpose here is to better use local knowledge in the identification of potential land reform projects. At present, willing sellers (at often-inflated prices) are dictating where land reform can take place.
6. Participatory land use planning: Land reform beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries produce their own land use plans.

1. Production of Traditional GIS Coverages

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

These include: hydrology and dams; transportation; contour and elevation; land cover; nucleated settlement; land types and land quality; political and recreation boundaries; cadastral; state and public lands; forestry plantations and species type.

2. Participatory Mental Mapping

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Participatory mental mapping involves the use of tracing paper overlaid on topographic map sheets and GIS map products. Each social group is interviewed, and their views about the key questions are recorded. The local people themselves undertook the selection of group members after the mapping procedures were explained. Groups of men and women were interviewed separately.

The mental mapping exercises were taped and are being transcribed. Video recordings and photographs were also taken. This information is being integrated into a GIS multi-media system which provides an innovative tool for decision-making around land reform.

3. Participatory Land Use Planning

(a) participants who have already benefited from the land reform program.

(b) participants who have submitted their claims and are yet to benefit.

(c) non-beneficiaries.

Conclusion

Community-Integrated GIS assumes that specific GIS applications proceed with active community consultation. It compares and contrasts ‘expert’ and ‘local’ understandings of local and sub-regional landscapes. Furthermore, it is assumed that one important objective of community-integrated GIS is to facilitate socially appropriate land use. The concept of CIGIS assumes the contradictory nature of the technology and the political economy of data, hardware and expertise access. It is an attempt to more realistically conceptualize how GIS might support the struggles and aspirations of participating communities.
 
 

LeRoy A Heckman

Urban Design and Planning

University of Washington
 
 

Knowledge is built on a body of evidence. This body of evidence results from analyzing, comparing, and synthesizing sets of empirical findings. This paper discusses a concept-driven attempt at empirical research in group use of GIS, specifically geographic visualization in neighborhood planning. Systematic, practical and applicable research regarding the use and role of GIS as adopted and adapted by different and diverse group participants in various stages of a live planning process could benefit future collaborative neighborhood planning efforts, as well as enhance our understanding of Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) processes and products.

Public participation and empowerment are central to urban planning. If the use of GIS is an effective means for facilitating, increasing or enhancing meaningful participation and individual and community empowerment (as is oft asserted), then this is something planners (among others) ought to know, understand and actively encourage. This pilot study of GIS use in a Seattle neighborhood's planning process is a step in that direction. Objectives included: first, the development and testing of an appropriate research program to explore the linkage(s) between GIS/visualization, participation, empowerment, and collaborative decision making; and second, the development of a classification scheme of visualization aids organized by their purpose and use in planning processes. This paper discusses the first objective.

Visualization is at the heart of this research. Drawing on the work of DiBiasi and MacEachren, visualization of geographic information is interpreted as a process ranging from personal to public, and one of exploration, analysis or communication. These interpretations are important because a majority of urban planning information is spatially related or inherently geographic; interpretations also influence the design and function of GIS (as a tool or process of exploration, analysis and presentation), and shape our understanding of how and why people use GIS or other spatial decision aids.

Effectively visualizing information is especially important within a collaborative planning context. First, there are multiple participants, which as individual citizens or as organizations’ representatives, can be categorized as concerned citizens, experts and technicians, or decision and policy makers. Depending on previous life experience, multiplex identity, and expertise (with the decision making/planning process, the decision/problem at hand, or interaction with information technology), each participant may perceive and employ visualization differently. Second, participants refer to places in temporal terms (i.e., past, present, and future). Visualization should support temporally oriented discourse. Understanding the range and diversity of visualization is a key to understanding participation and empowerment in neighborhood planning.

Interpreting PPGIS as a variation of Spatial Decision Support Systems for Groups (SDSS-G), this study benefited from previous research in Group DSS and SDSS. Enhanced Adaptive Structuration Theory (EAST), an emergent framework based on a structuration model, governed the research. EAST assumes that the uses and effects of technology emerge based on complex social interactions among its users, and that groups are organized around practices that are task-related and social in character. Decision processes previously treated in the literature as intelligence, design, and choice are (re-) interpreted as the process aspects of: 1) convening a collaboration, 2) collaboration as a group process, and 3) collaborative process outcomes. Convening constructs are appropriated during the collaborative decision making process; this in turn influences group processes, leads to emergent sources of structure, and ultimately leads to decision outcomes and new social structures. Seven theoretical premises relate the framework’s constructs; these premises can be interpreted as research questions or further refined as hypotheses. The constructs themselves and their constitutive characteristics can be seen as meta-variables and variables. In addition to the initial premises, research questions, decision context and domain, a research program is also defined by the level and unit of analysis, meeting venue, choice of research designs, and specific data collection techniques. Each is briefly discussed, along with validity and triangulation.

The planned research program for the pilot study is presented, followed by a discussion of implementation problems. Of those, the lack of researcher distance and objectivity was the most damaging. In this pilot, active participation replaced observation. Inspired by the notion of praxis, this researcher consciously traded the objective demands of scientific study for the opportunity to assist, which included serving as de facto GIS work session facilitator, project coordinator, and all-around technical support for planning participants. While such participatory activity may appease the community activist within, it does little to further this research project in the eyes of the academic community. As a consequence, this pilot project was judged both a failure and success.

To be sure, there is a story to be told, and there is plenty of evidence to tell it. It is a story of neighborhood residents individually and collectively participating in the process of geographic visualization to explore, discover, analyze, understand, and communicate; it is a story of neighbors coming together to share ideas and concerns, reach consensus, and forge working partnerships. It is a story of individuals working collaboratively and establishing connections that might develop into lasting relationships. It is a story about social and physical community building, and empowerment. Alas, the story is not "valid." It is only anecdotal.

Between the loss of validity and the expression of activism, there must be a valid yet meaningful middle road. Finding that research path is one of the major challenges for future research. This student researcher is convinced that to meaningfully further PPGIS research in a neighborhood planning context, the traditional positivist influence and the orthodox scientific method of research should be replaced with a critical social perspective and a research program informed by participatory action research (PAR). This approach would permit one to help participants help themselves learn more about neighborhood planning and collaborative decision making, use GIS and other visualization tools, and seek answers to pressing research inquiries that they themselves generate. Indeed, PAR would ensure that real issues – such as public participation and empowerment - are made explicit, and that explicit steps would be taken to encourage and enhance them. This need not result in sloppy social science or shoddy geographic science; a well-planned and faithfully implemented PAR-derived research program could satisfy the demands of both the academic and neighborhood communities.
 
 

City of Seattle. 1997. City of Seattle Data Viewer: A Neighborhood Information System (Brochure). Seattle, WA: Office of Management and Planning and Neighborhood Planning Office, May, 1997.

DeSanctis, Geraldine and Marshall Scott Poole. 1994. Capturing the Complexity in Advance Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory, Organization Science 5(2): 121-147.

Nyerges, Timothy L. and Piotr Jankowski. 1997. Enhanced Adaptive Structuration Theory:

A Theory of GIS-supported Collaborative Decision Making, Geographical Systems 4(3): 225-257.

Daniel Howard, AICP

Department of Geography

State University of New York at Buffalo
 
 

Public participation has long been recognized as an important component of the community planning process. A legislative requirement for many public-planning activities, pursuit of meaningful public participation is a mainstay of the planning profession. Community planning is a spatially oriented activity that focuses on many forms of geography (landforms, parcels, structures, and other geographic units, i.e. census tracts). The spatial nature of planning offers an opportunity to use automated geographical information processing systems to enhance participatory activities. The most powerful of these tools is the geographical information system (GIS); the use of GIS to support the community planning process is becoming more common in many communities.

Despite the power and promise of GIS, citizens who attend planning meetings often experience difficulty understanding the spatial relationships portrayed on maps, plans, or projection screens. This occurs regardless of the media (paper or digital) employed. The resulting frustration leads to miscommunication and mistrust amongst all stakeholders including citizens, developers, planners and politicians. Spatial cognition, the knowledge of local geography, can be improved through the use of GIS. As with any computer technology, however, information from the "black box" is often viewed with suspicion and doubt. The use of sophisticated GIS alone may not engender the trust and consensual participatory environment that fosters a representative planning process.

Geographers and planners have begun to consider the practical and societal impacts of using GIS to support public participation (NCGIA 1995, 1996). Under a research initiative entitled Public Participation GIS (PPGIS), their focus is typically traditional GIS. Planners have developed several public participation techniques to elicit public involvement and facilitate public discourse about planning issues. These techniques range from media campaigns and public meetings to design charettes and simulation exercises. Shiffer (1992, 1995), and more recently Hundt (1997) and Pieplow (1998) have demonstrated that several other geographical information technologies (GIT) are capable of delivering audio/visual and multimedia presentations in support of traditional public participation techniques. Arguably these other information technologies are geographic communication tools rather than GIS; however participatory planning is a communicative process. Their ability to convey spatial information and their compatibility with traditional public participation techniques are worthy of research.

Forester (1989), Innes (1995, 1998), and others suggest the emergence of communicative action theory as a paradigm of planning practice. A key assumption of this theory is the formation of a communicatively rational process that is based upon the principle of an ideal speech situation. The ideal speech situation assumes the equitable dissemination of information that can be validated through examination of "speakers claims" (Innes 1998 60). The ideal speech situation enables stakeholders to be empowered through a discursive process that fosters a common understanding of planning information. Communicative action theory may offer a theoretical framework for researchers to consider issues such as empowerment and marginalization that result from participatory applications of GIS and other GITs.

Given the spatial nature of planning information, combinations of geographic information technologies (GIT) and public participation techniques are capable of "spatially empowering" the planning process. Spatially empowered stakeholders’ posses a better understanding of local geography that enhances the discourse necessary for collaborative decision making. Based upon his personal experiences as a professional community planner, the author assesses the ability of several GITs to spatially empower public participation techniques. Using a table wherein the techniques are arrayed against the technologies, subjective assessments are made to initiate consideration of the appropriate uses of GIT with common participation techniques. The author concludes that the criteria needed to make these assessments, and ultimately the design of a communicatively rational participation program should be the subject of research based upon case studies of several applications.

The need for research and case studies with GIT is timely. As information technology advances, there are corresponding public expectations of its application in participatory activities. In Amherst, New York (a suburb of Buffalo), GIT has been successfully used to assist with planning and policy activities. Three applications of GIT supporting: zoning reviews; park planning activities; and wildlife management are presented to demonstrate how participants were empowered by improving their spatial cognition. When considered in the context of communicative rationality, these applications demonstrate how GIT and public participation techniques helped to create an ideal speech situation that enhanced the ability of stakeholders to participate in the formulation and implementation of Town plans.

There are a variety of information technologies that possess the ability to convey spatial information, however, their use can lead to frustration and mistrust. Similarly planners can employ many public participation techniques to involve stakeholders in the planning process, however without an adequate understanding of the local geography their participation may be confused and their input ineffective. What is needed is participation programs that:

1. spatially empower the participation process by employing appropriate geographic information technologies; and
2. employ those technologies with public participation techniques that enable spatially empowered stakeholders to engage in meaningful discourse about planning issues.

References

Forester, J. (1989). Planning in the Face of Power. Berkley: University of California Press.

Forester, J. (1993). Critical Theory, Public Policy, and Planning Practice. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Innes, J. (1998). Information in Communicative Planning". Journal of the American Planning Association. Vol. 64, No. 1: pp.52-63.

Department of Agriculture & Forestry

Newton Rigg College

University of Central Lancashire
 
 

This paper is based on work that was conducted whilst working with the People and Resource Dynamics Project (PARDYP), at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu.

Introduction

Community Forestry is one form of ‘social’ forestry, that has its roots in the change in development theory from industrial forestry towards local level forestry, geared towards the subsistence needs of local communities. It is a classic example of the transition from top-down development to bottom-up people orientated forestry. It has been said that community forestry has more to do with people than trees, and this has been reflected in an approach traditionally dominated by the social sciences. Participatory techniques have been the primary tool for obtaining community and resource information, and participation, empowerment and facilitation of the Forest User Group (FUG, a village based forest management committee) the main objectives.

Increasingly there has been a need for obtaining more quantitative information for forest management purposes. There are a number of reasons for this:

• to assess responsible (‘sustainable’) forest management
• to allow a sustainable yield of timber to be calculated
• for local specific needs
• to examine tenure rights and rights to resources
• for conflict resolution purposes
• for compensation claims
• for monitoring biodiversity
• to meet the requirements of other International agreements
• for identifying potential economic Non Timber Forest Product’s (NTFP’s)

A PPGIS is felt to be an ideal way to collate, examine and aid dissemination of the information. The construction of the GIS database is not considered to be as important an issue as identifying the community information needs, the means of collecting the information, and how to meet the information needs.

Objectives

1. Identify information needs. This uses the classic RRA techniques of focus groups, semi-structured interviews, group walks and participatory mapping.

2. Obtain the necessary information using general participatory techniques, geomatics techniques (participatory photo mapping, participatory GPS), and participatory inventory techniques.

3. Analyse information and present it in a format and language that is appropriate for FUG’s.

4. Feed it back to FUG’s and determine the usefulness of the information to them.

5. Examine the potential and problems of the PPGIS as an empowerment tool for FUG’s.

Participants

The key participants of this work are FUG’s in the Yarsha Khola watershed, Dolakha District of Nepal. There are a variety of ethnic groups, including Brahmins and Chettri in the lower altitudes and Sherpas at higher levels. An FUG’s is a representative bodies from a village, which includes all forest users of a community forest. It has a committee which liaises closely with the local forest ranger and the District Forest Officer (DFO), both from the Nepalese Department of Forests. The FUG has to demonstrate a capacity to conduct forestry operations in order for the DFO to authorise forest management practices. A limiting factor for the FUG is the availability of management information about the forest, and spatial information on the extent of the resource. Hence the potential of PPGIS for empowering the FUG.

It should also be noted that this work also looks at the information needs of other stakeholder groups, including the DFO, National policy makers, and international monitoring organisations. The PPGIS is designed to provide information to all these diverse stakeholders, at an appropriate level.

Methods

The methods are broadly covered under objectives, but combine the use of social science participatory techniques with geomatics technology and participatory assessment procedures. The methodology is interdisciplinary, and on the interface between social approaches to community forestry and more traditional quantitative techniques to resource assessment. This is regarded as an essential approach owing to the increasingly demanding and diverse information needs for community forestry in Nepal. It should be noted that a greater emphasis is placed on the means of collecting and disseminating information than the technical design of the GIS database, as it beleived that a PPGIS is fundamentally dependent on obtaining community needs, perceptions and ideas.

Progress of PPGIS

The information has been collected and entered into the PPGIS, which is now functional as a pilot version. For a given FUG it has a georeferenced boundary of the community forest, with the area of the forest (something that is in itself often unavailable for community forests), internal community designated boundaries, and associated basic information. Files can be called up for each internal compartment that have information on the sustained yield, recommended management practices, community uses and importance of that part of the resource for the community. Additionally the raw inventory data is available for researchers and policy makers who wish to examine biodiversity issues, slope angles or other issues. For the FUG’s who have no access to IT, the appropriate images and management information are used to form the basis of a visual report which the FUG committee can use for its forest management. Feedback on these reports has been received, which will be discussed.

Overall, this paper will discuss an interesting, and generally successful, application for PPGIS. Issues such as the lack of access to GIS for FUG’s, and the limitations and potential problems posed by this will also be discussed. Additionally, this paper presents a systematic methodology for developing a PPGIS, and provides an indication of potential means of evaluation for a PPGIS.

Karl Kim

Department of Urban and Regional Planning

University of Hawaii at Manoa
 
 

Hawaii provides an interesting place to examine politics and power relationships arising from the use of GIS technologies. As an island setting, isolated from other communities, it is perhaps easier to trace the development of an innovation such as GIS and to identify how systems have been designed, implemented, and used. Because of a highly evolved planning regime including state and local land use laws, environmental impact assessment procedures, coastal zone management regulations, locally elected neighborhood boards, and other planning apparatus, GIS has been widely embraced. Hawaii is a culturally diverse environment, containing a mix of high and low density urban, rural, and suburban development. Examples of public, private, and non-profit sector uses of GIS in Hawaii are summarized. Government in Hawaii has played an important role in initiating GIS through strategic investments in hardware, software, databases, as well as efforts to standardize collection and use of spatial data At the same time, large landowners, developers, utilities, and various non-profit organizations have also developed their own systems using a combination of public and proprietary data.

This paper consists of three parts. First, a survey of GIS uses in Hawaii will be conducted. The survey will serve two purposes: 1) to present an overview of typical applications in Hawaii; and 2) to summarize who has access to the technology and control over uses of hardware, software, and databases. Second, three case studies involving the development and uses of GIS will be conducted. Third, the role of GIS in community empowerment in Hawaii will be assessed, focusing both on the overview of its uses as well as on the specific findings arising out of the three case studies.

The University places an important role in facilitating the diffusion of GIS technologies through training and education, development of appropriate methods and applications, and serving as a clearinghouse for data. The University also occupies a unique position in terms of its ability to leverage and acquire resources for GIS. Issues such as hardware, software, data use, confidentiality and release of sensitive information, as well as standard concerns regarding the quality and accuracy of information arise within the context of public participation and community empowerment. Efforts to work with marginalized groups in Hawaii, including Native Hawaiians; communities opposed to development or siting of unwanted land uses, and environmental groups demonstrate the nature of conflicts and agreements over the intended and actual uses of GIS technologies and data.

Empowerment through GIS technologies raises many important considerations for communities. How are community interests defined? Who really has access to GIS technologies? How much of the technical knowledge pertaining to mapping (scale, projection, addressing, accuracy, etc.), GIS, and related technologies (e.g. GPS) can be communicated throughout the community? How is knowledge and understanding conveyed between parties who have divergent socio-economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds? What is the appropriate role for technical experts, consultants, special interest advocates, GIS industry representatives, and others drawn into a specific, contested space? Perhaps answers to these questions might be found by examining three different cases in Hawaii where GIS technologies have been utilized in efforts to empower community groups.

In Hawaii, community-based traffic safety programs have provided an important way of introducing mapping and GIS technologies into the community. In addition to providing resources for mapping and identifying problem areas, these programs have also enhanced efforts to promote alternatives to driving, to reduce traffic speeds using strategies such as traffic calming, and to promote more village-scale design of walkable communities.

Protection of endangered plant and animal species has been an important concern in Hawaii, not just for the public and environmental groups, but also, increasingly for many of the large private landowners in Hawaii. Several different stakeholders including the Department of Land and Natural Resources, State of Hawaii, the Nature Conservancy, and various landowners have invested heavily in GIS technologies. Issues related to development, resource extraction, and long-term management of land demonstrate not just how GIS technology has evolved, but also how some of the issues regarding proprietary data, data sharing, and uses of data have been resolved. While the state government maintains a GIS-based environmental hotspots database, other GIS applications to support logging activities, re-zoning and development of conservation lands, and other commercial interests persist.

There are many different struggles that pit the community against developers in Hawaii. Recent cases involve golf course and resort development, the siting of prisons or other objectionable land uses, and other projects often have involved the uses of GIS technology. The electric utility in Hawaii has announced plans to install 100-foot tall transmission towers carrying high voltage 138 KV transmission lines through residential areas. GIS technologies have been used by both the utility in the preparation of an environmental impact assessment and by community groups opposed to the project. An examination of how the utility has used GIS and the community response reveals both "state-of-the-art" practices and how communities can balance power relationships with GIS.

These three cases provide interesting, yet different views of how PPGIS are designed, implemented, and used in Hawaii. While there may be a relatively high degree of agreement over the uses and benefits of a GIS to enhance safety and quality of life in neighborhoods, conflicts intensify as the interests of either regulatory agencies versus developers or utilities and communities widen. In a pluralistic society, with increasingly divergent viewpoints, it may be difficult to reach agreement over how GIS should be used and by whom. Also, when the stakes are great, issues regarding accuracy, quality, and appropriate uses of data become increasingly prominent. Community access to GIS, however, may help to balance power relationships both by providing a new means of critiquing plans and studies, but also in developing reasonable alternatives not yet on the bargaining table.

Richard Kingston

School of Geography

University of Leeds
 
 

Current research examining the potential of the World Wide Web (WWW) as a means of increasing public participation in environmental decision making through the use of the internet is discussed. Example on-line spatial decision making systems in the UK have been developed using real environmental decision making problems. Many GIS have appeared on the Web (Carver, in press) in recent times although the level of functionality among them is variable ranging from simple demonstrations through to more complex on-line GIS and spatial decision support systems. This research has identified key threads developing in this area and a case study example of an on-line PPGIS from inception to its final phase in a public participation process has been undertaken.

By providing access to appropriate data, spatial planning models and GIS via user friendly web browsers the WWW has the potential to develop into a flexible medium for enhanced public involvement in the planning process. In order to achieve increased levels of involvement in environmental decision making the public need to be provided with systems which allow them to create virtual spaces. Such systems should allow participants to proceed through the following four-stage model:

1. explore the decision problem;
2. experiment with choice alternatives;
3. formulate one or more decision choices; and
4. provide feedback and evaluation of the system.

1. test basic theories/hypotheses regarding their decision alternatives;
2. develop decision models and/or pathways applicable to the decision problem; and
3. approach consensus and/or compromise through comparison and trade-off with users’ ideas.

The research outlined here is on-going and several important issues concerning public access to the WWW are possibly more important than the actual ability to develop systems which the public can understand and use. It needs to be recognised that access to the WWW is still relatively limited in the UK although the potential for increasing this appears to becoming a reality. If planning authorities and other decision making organisations wish to see an increase in public participation they have to realise the need to provide facilities whereby the general public can gain access.

Further questions are often raised about peoples understanding of maps. Many studies have investigated the way people perceive and relate to information displayed on a map and how maps can interpret and display information in different ways (Keates, 1996, Wood, 1993). Evidence from this research so far has suggested that this has not been too much of a problem. It is suggested that in particular planning problems and policy formulation processes participatory on-line systems will become a useful means of informing the public and to allow access to data and planning tools such as on-line GIS as an additional means of public participation in the planning process. These will provide mechanisms for the exploration, experimentation and formulation of decision alternatives by the public in future planning processes and have the potential to move the public further up the participatory ladder.

References

Department of Geography

SUNY Buffalo
 
 

Recent interest in GIS and Society has focused attention on Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) conceived broadly as an integrative and inclusive process-based set of methods and technologies amenable to public participation, multiple viewpoints, and diverse forms of information. A closely related research topic is Public Participation Visualization (PPVIS). Visualization is defined as map use involving high human-map interaction wedded to exploratory analyses. Rapid advances in technology - and the World Wide Web (WWW) in particular - is allowing a much broader array of users to engage in visualization-type map use. Users not only access geographic information, but can interactively explore 'what if' scenarios and amend and add information to publicly accessible WWW sites. My work on Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) and what I am calling Public Participation Visualization (PPVis) consists of