CI-TEAM Demonstration Project: Enhancing Stakeholder Participation in Environmental Planning with Visualization Tools that Support Complex Systems Learning and Spatial Thinking

University Of Illinois At Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal brings together urban planners and environmental scientists, experts in complexity modeling and spatial analyses for science and policy applications, learning scientists studying how technology enhances cognitive and decision-making processes, and computer scientists concerned with visualizations and visual analytics. The aim is to enhance existing visualization tools and the social processes in which they are embedded to better support participatory planning addressing complex environmental problems. The complexity of such problems makes it hard to trace causal impacts through the web of interactions, including the effects of individual decisions on the quality of shared natural resources. While visualization tools have been designed to assist stakeholders to plan for these problems, they are usually very elaborate, requiring trained facilitators to manage their inputs and interpret their outputs. Similarly, an increasing amount of relevant sensor and simulation data exists, but in a form that is not accessible or usable for this community. As a result, stakeholders are insulated from the very information they need for their decisions, basing them instead on invalid knowledge and unexamined assumptions. This study will allow us to design tools that bring forward the spatial relationships and interactions that are hidden in the complexity of environmental problems, yet making them accessible to stakeholders for routine use in the planning decisions shaping the environmental future of places across the U.S. To achieve these aims this team is working with existing agent-based modeling and geographic information systems software, applying Design-Based Research and Participatory Design methods to create software and evolve the collaborative learning structures needed for its use in this context. They are distilling stakeholder needs and preferences to propose and test alternate user interfaces to support stakeholders? input of specialized knowledge and values, interpretation of outputs, and collaborative use of the tools in the social context of participatory planning. They are also exploring ways to capitalize on the data- and opinion-sharing potential of social networking technology to enhance stakeholders? collective learning and planning with these tools. Engaging actual stakeholders in the design process thus greatly increases the chance that the software and learning structures will be ultimately adopted by the target demographic upon deployment. A by-product of this research includes the assessment materials to examine how each one of these tools supports different aspects of visual thinking about complex environmental problems, and how they inform planning judgments to address them. This is of interest to researchers evaluating similar processes. Approaching environmental issues from across these fields provides the appropriate scope for creating infrastructure for the public and for planning practitioners in a way formerly limited to specialists. Broader Impacts The main goal is to train citizens with the ability to engage in spatial and complex systems conceptualization of the environmental issues they face, and empower them to chart their own future with a fuller understanding of the impacts of their decisions. By definition, participatory planning seeks different voices to be heard in defining a problem and in suggesting solutions. This work is developing guidelines for effective participatory visualization software and learning activities so that stakeholders are active constructors and engaged users of the tools needed for critical deliberation around complex environmental problems. By empowering diverse representatives to take part in the production of relevant information and recommendations, the project aims to counteract the power imbalances that tend to plague policy and plan making, where only a few have access to key information. A second goal is to develop the curricular and pedagogical materials to train Computer Science students to create effective visualization software and interfaces for this purpose, and Urban Planning students to conduct participatory processes with these tools. A future implementation stage will build on this work to deploy the software, accompanying social practices and supporting cyber-infrastructure in other stakeholder communities dealing with a variety of complex environmental problems, and to incorporate the training modules in the Urban Planning and Computer Science curricula at UIC, which serves one of the most diverse student bodies in the US