Participatory Interaction Modeling of Online Geographic Decision Making

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

Public participation, for example participating in public decision making contexts meant to choose among alternatives for land, transportation, water resource improvements within a community, is an important part of exercising democracy. Unfortunately, few people participate because of time and meeting constraints. Online geographic information systems technologies have held great promise for enabling larger groups of residents to engage in decision making; however, designs for software systems have been ad hoc, thus few successes have been demonstrated and/or reported for measuring participation to large numbers of people. Dr. Timothy Nyerges at the University of Washington will develop a framework for participatory interaction modeling of online public geographic decision making by using three objectives: (1) developing a computationally-based model of public participation that characterizes human-computer-human interaction (HCHI) processes, (2) refining geovisual analytic technique called a 'grapevine' for evaluating participatory HCHI data, and (3) developing scaling metrics and performance indicators that quantiatively characterize public participation HCHI processes. The computational model is being developed using a database system that stores data from two previous field experiments. A 'grapevine' prototype visualization software is being extended to broaden and deepen representations of HCHI process. Scaling metrics and performance indicators for public participation are being developed that provide a quantitative assessment of the success for online public participation. This project benefits society by developing a framework that will help software designers and practitioners construct cyber-enabled geographic decision support systems that can scale potential group participation out to very large groups of people, up to larger and more diverse parts of society over wider geographic areas, and greater to include more robust technical competence within the technical content of the discourse being offered. In addition to those broad-based impacts, the project includes graduate and undergraduate student researchers in geography seminar classes in analysis and overall evaluation about how participatory systems can support disadvantaged and traditionally underrepresented groups. Results of the study, in terms of data, presentations, preliminary reports, and publications, are being disseminating via a project web site.