Web-based PPGIS application for participatory spatial planning in context of bikeability

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe spatial planning processes are complex and require public participation to get insights about important problems and development of the neighborhood from the communities during final decision-making. The traditional participatory methods offer limited two-way communication just inform the public rather than to obtain suggestions from them and few public can participate due to time & location restrictions. Due to low public empowerment, they do not know how their participation can influence the spatial planning and decision-making process. This study tries to design and develop the web-based Public Participation GIS application with the integration of the internet, public participation, and GIS technologies to increase public participation during spatial planning and decision-making to overcome the limitations of traditional participatory methods. The web-based PPGIS application development is based on open-source technologies and allows the participants to visualize spatial data layer, perform spatial analyses and contribute to increasing and improving the bikeability of the city. The user study experiment is conducted to evaluate the usability and usefulness of the application. The evaluation results show that the web-based PPGIS application is easy to use with a System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 84.6 and an effective approach to increase public engagement and give suggestions on the spatial planning process and decision making

Transportation Planning Through Mobile Mapping Technology

This report describes the development and testing of the Fix This Tool, a spatial, participatory, active transportation and built environment assessment tool created on an iPhone platform. The goal of this tool development was to create an instrument that could be widely distributed to communities across the country to develop a spatially based assessment of the micro-scaled elements of their local active transportation environment such that public officials and community members could focus energy in making appropriate improvements. The development of this tool emerged out of previous work with such tools built on a GIS platform and a workshop-based format to engage residents in data collection of their walking and biking environments. While this past work proved successful in both data collection tool use and in facilitating community conversations, the technological infrastructure had significant limitations in terms of being able to widely distribute the effort. In a GIS-based approach, GIS technicians must be present and when combined with community training and data processing, the cost of development, collection, and distribution is a significant limit to which communities could adopt such assessment tools for their own use. The Fix This Tool is designed to overcome these distribution and cost barriers by developing a tool that can be easily downloaded by community members using technology they already own. The report that follows outlines the philosophical positioning of a community-based data collection process, describes the tool itself, and provides some reflections between this smart phone based model and the previous GIS-based model of community-engaged active transportation assessment tools

Combining Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with role-playing games for stakeholder engagement in complex transport decisions

Abstract This paper presents a procedure for the structuring of a transport decision-making problem and evaluation of the solutions proposed from a multi-stakeholder multi-criteria perspective. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used as multicriteria decision technique, while a role-playing game is used to reproduce a participatory process where University students act as key stakeholders. The case study regards the building of a new metro station in Catania (Italy), which will be the nearest station to a big University district. A dedicated transit system linking the metro station and the district is under study and four different alternatives have been proposed. Students were initially informed about the objectives of key stakeholders in order to be able to play the different roles. A hierarchy of the problem was built with them and AHP was used to elicit their preferences and evaluate priorities for each stakeholder group. A comparison between a mathematical aggregation of individual priorities and a consensus vote was performed to verify the differences between the two different methods and their compliance with the stated stakeholder preferences. AHP-based participatory procedure proved to be suitable to tackle the complexity of transport decisions

Geoweb 2.0 for Participatory Urban Design: Affordances and Critical Success Factors

In this paper, we discuss the affordances of open-source Geoweb 2.0 platforms to support the participatory design of urban projects in real-world practices.We first introduce the two open-source platforms used in our study for testing purposes. Then, based on evidence from five different field studies we identify five affordances of these platforms: conversations on alternative urban projects, citizen consultation, design empowerment, design studio learning and design research. We elaborate on these in detail and identify a key set of success factors for the facilitation of better practices in the future

DRAFT Report:Community Systems Strengthening Toward a Research Agenda

Communities have a long history of acting to preserve and promote the health of their members. Public health researchers, programmers, and funders are increasingly recognizing that community involvement is essential to improving health, especially among populations that are disproportionately affected by HIV. The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, together with civil society organizations and other development partners, created the Community Systems Strengthening (CSS) Framework to help Global Fund applicants frame, define, and quantify efforts to strengthen community contributions engagement (Global Fund 2011). Although the use of a CSS approach in health programming implementation shows promise, it lacks a theoretical framework to guide collaborations with communities. Additionally, it suffers from a paucity of program designs and evaluation practices, an incomplete evidence-based rationale for investing in CSS, and imprecise definitions (e.g., what is meant by “community” and “CSS”).The purpose of this paper is to highlight promising areas for future research related to CSS. Toward this objective, we propose to lay a foundation for a CSS research agenda by using theories and approaches relevant to CSS, reinforced with evidence from projects that employ similar approaches

Engaging youth in community health needs assessments: what are the opportunities, methodological approaches, contributions, and feasibility?

Community engagement in health assessment enables researchers to better understand and prioritize community needs. The value of community engagement is increasingly documented; however, few studies engage youth. Research and assessments are often done for youth, but not with youth. Youth bring a unique contextual lens to community issues; without engagement, the likelihood that resultant efforts would be accepted by or appropriate for youth decreases. This dissertation explores opportunities and methodological approaches for, and contributions and feasibility of engaging youth in non-profit hospital community health needs assessments (CHNAs) mandated through the Affordable Care Act. This study has three specific aims, utilizing multiple methodological approaches: • Aim 1: Assess the current level of youth engagement, and prevalence of youth-focused priority areas in Massachusetts CHNAs. CHNAs were reviewed and analyzed using the Community Health Improvement Data Sharing System’s community engagement template. • Aim 2: Compare assessment results of focus groups and participatory photo mapping (PPM) in documenting youth observations of Boston community conditions. Three focus groups and PPM processes engaged 46 high-school age youth. Data were qualitatively compared, with attention to youth-identified community assets, concerns, and recommendations. • Aim 3: Compare youth results with existing CHNAs and identify potential contributions of youth engagement. Using the social determinants of health framework, youth recommendations were compared to Boston hospital community health improvement (CHI) publications to observe the convergence and divergence of priorities. While all MA hospitals minimally complied with required CHNA community engagement criteria, there was no standard practice or approach. 20% of CHNAs engaged youth, primarily through focus groups; yet, 80% of CHNAs that identified priorities included youth-focused priorities. Youth-driven results focused upon social determinants of health factors; furthermore, PPM results provided more detailed and granular CHI recommendations. Youth-identified CHI recommendations complemented those identified by hospitals, indicating that youth engagement can potentially strengthen CHI priorities and identify salient strategies for addressing youth health, specifically. Findings can be extrapolated to the many institutions conducting assessments, including health departments and Community Action Agencies. Findings will be disseminated through a series of practice briefs that make recommendations to hospitals, assessment practitioners, and youth organizations to consider for future efforts

VGI BASED URBAN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Recent advances in information technology have made geographic information system (GIS) a powerful and affordable tool for planning and decision making in various fields such as the public transportation. These technologies such as the social network (e.g. face-book, twitter), new technologies such as ubiquitous, mobile, Web 2.0, geo tagging and RFID can help to create better shapes and forms of the communication and geo-collaboration for public. By using these, user-generated content and spatial information can be easily and quickly produced and shared in a dynamic, interactive, multimedia and distributed environment. The concept of volunteered geographic information (VGI) has been introduced by the transaction from consultation to content interaction. VGI describes any type of content that has a geographic element and has been voluntarily collected. In other words, ordinary users; without a professional training, can participate in generating and using the spatial information. As a result, the gaps between the producers and users of GIS and spatial information, has been considerably reduced. Public transportation is one of the most important elements of the transportation system. Rapid growth of the cities has resulted in high increase of demand for the public transportation which created new challenges. Improvement of the desirability of public transportation can increase its efficiency, reduction of the environmental pollution (such as air and noise pollution), traffic problems, and fuel consumption. Hence, development of an urban public transportation system which is responsive to citizen's need and motivates them to use public transportation system is one of the most important objectives and issues that urban planners and designers are concerned about. One solution to achieve this, goal is to develop public transportation system by assistance from the system users. According to approach, users are considered as the valuable resources, because people who are in constant contact with the system can have detailed and updated information about the problems, solutions and they are affected by the related implemented policies. Thus user involvement is an essential part in public transport decision making process. Although GIS in transportation (GIS-T) has been used for data collection, spatial analysis, and spatial modeling, due to recent promotions, GIS-T is moving towards the use of capabilities of VGI to user-centric services. The main goals of this paper are two as follows: First is to survey and review the key concepts of the geo-collaboration, to introduce and present fields to utilizing the VGI in the public transportation system to improve the performance of that system. The Second goal is to propose a VGI-based public transport conceptual framework. in this paper in the first part capabilities of VGI is explored, and areas of public transport that can utilize the public involvement is assessed and classified. Then, by surveying the related works in this context, a classification based on the models of participation is provided. Finally, a VGI-based conceptual framework for organizing a public participation for performance measurement of urban public transport for Tehran city is proposed. Results of this paper show that utilizing VGI presents an efficient solution for public transport problems

Congestion management systems development and implementation : four case studies

To address concerns of poor air quality, congested highways and the need to manage and plan for transportation within budgetary constraints, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) mandated the development and implementation of a Congestion Management System (CMS). Primarily, a CMS will fuel transportation decision making with information on system performance and alternate strategies to alleviate congestion and enhance mobility. Efforts through ISTEA are expected to produce a more efficient American transportation system -- this thesis takes a look at the preparatory activities. It is based on a federally funded project with metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in Albany, New York; Dallas, Texas; Seattle, Washington and the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. The thesis examines the approach to specific elements of CMS implementation and identifies factors contributing to their effectiveness. As expected, coordination and cooperation among participants has presented the greatest challenge. With regards to data collection, performance measures and the application of new technology, MPOs report that building on existing analytical efforts and strengthening inter- agency relationships has been the best strategy. Stepping back from the findings of the case studies, the author concludes that this information may arrive to states and localities with very little lead time to be effective technical assistance. Arguably, the case studies may provide insight into CMS as a whole and possibly predict the effectiveness of ISTEA. In that regard, this thesis is expected to aid future transportation policy making efforts

Making a Case for Social Innovation as a Structural Counterpart to Public Participation in Regional Planning

Multi-locational living – working, shopping, playing, learning and commuting across administrative and, sometimes even political boundaries is an essential aspect of metropolitan living. Although it is anticipated that everyday experiences of the physical, social and economic inter-connectedness between urban communities and peri-urban hinterlands would automatically engender a regional outlook in planning and governance, it is currently not the case. In the New York City region, a lived regional experience does not translate into support for a regional governance structure. While strong legislative support has ensured the public its rightful place within metropolitan regional planning, it has regrettably bred a procedural focus that has reduced public participation to an end in itself. Current approaches to public participation at the metropolitan scale limit the extent to which the public can meaningfully engage with issues of regional import, contribute their experiential knowledge towards envisioning solutions, and impact plan outcomes. This thesis presents a structural approach to public participation that redresses the current procedural focus by emphasizing the significance of the interlinkages between the governance structure, planning process and public participatory process in determining the quality and outcome of public participation in planning processes. Applying the structural approach to the case of metropolitan transportation planning (MTP) in the United States, this thesis provides a comparative analysis of the public participation exercises conducted by two Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) in the New York - New Jersey – Connecticut Tristate region, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) and the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA). The NJTPA and NYMTC, despite being neighboring MPOs that share a common regional legacy, have responded differently to the region’s dynamics and evolved to be MPOs with very disparate organizational characteristics and regional impact. An in-depth study of newspaper articles, plan documents and government reports, and interviews of key office bearers demonstrate how this disparity impacts the design and implementation of the respective MPO’s public participation exercises. The structural approach demonstrates that lack of a direct relationship, such as a regional tax base or regional service provision, is an impediment to public perception of and active participation in regional governance. In the absence of opportunities for direct relationship with the regional public, engaged leadership and robust inter and intra-regional partnerships emerge as significant factors for fostering public participation in metropolitan planning processes. This thesis identifies best practices for successful engagement of the regional public –adapting to emerging (millennial) modes of engagement, appropriate messaging of complex, large-scale problems in personally relatable terms and convening the public on a regional scale - exemplified in NJTPA’s public outreach strategy. Six indicators of regional governance capacity from a public participatory perspective are proposed to raise awareness and address the lack of metrics for evaluating structural support for public participation in regional planning contexts. Finally, the structural approach demonstrates how the MPO governance structure and MTP planning process prioritize public participation as an accessory to decision making thereby undermining its potential for problem solving and social innovation. Addressing this lack, this thesis advocates for recognizing public-led social innovation as a structural counterpart to public participation for devising visionary solutions to regional scale issues. It concludes that public participation in regulatory planning tasks such as allocation of funds for transportation improvement programs is the right mechanism to implement solutions but not necessarily the right one for devising solutions