Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) for regional and environmental planning: reflections on a decade of empirical research

The term public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) was conceived to describe how GIS technology could support public participation with the goal of including local or marginalized populations in planning and decision processes. Based on experience with more than 15 PPGIS studies, the central thesis of this paper is that PPGIS has not substantively increased the level of public impact in decision making because of multiple social and institutional constraints. Following a review of a decade of empirical PPGIS research, this paper explores why government and nongovernment organization (NGO) adoption of PPGIS for environmental planning decision support has lagged. Despite methodological advances in PPGIS, agency barriers to effective public participation have not been fundamentally altered by PPGIS. For PPGIS to have a sustained impact on regional and environmental planning, agencies must meaningfully encourage and involve the public in planning processes irrespective of the GIS component

Public Participation GIS in the UK and USA: A cross cultural analysis

March 19-2

The use of GIS in Brownfield redevelopment

In recent years, the issue of Brownfield site development - the re-use of previously used urban land - has gained a significant place in the planning agenda. However, not all Brownfield sites are derelict or contaminated land, some are significant as environmental amenities - be it part of wider ecosystem or a green area for the local population. The growing concern to include environmental aspects into the public debate have lead the Environment Agency, the Jackson Environment Institute and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis to commission a short term pilot study to evaluate the contribution of a GIS for decision support and for "discussion support".In this paper, we describe how the state-of-the-art in geographic information (GI) and GI Science (GISc) can be used in a short term and limited project to achieve a practical and usable system. We are drawing on developments in information availability, as made accessible through the World Wide Web and research themes in GISc ranging from Multimedia GIS to Public Participation GIS

Participation and Watershed Management: Experiences from Brazil

Public participation is emphasized in many new institutional approaches to resource management, especially watershed governance. The implementation of participatory management frameworks, and capacity-building for civil society participants, deserve close attention. This paper reports on an ongoing project in Sao Paulo State, Brazil, which is designed to strengthen the ability of local and NGO representatives to participate in democratic water management structures.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Can Comparative Risk Be Used to Develop Better Environmental Decisions?

This thesis investigates the design of atria for daylighting in large scale buildings. Athree dimensional test building with a central atrium was constructed and various parameters of the atrium altered. The impact of these changes was studied through computer simulations of annual daylight distribution by implementing state of theart software. Daylight autonomy is simulated for an annual climate file for Stockholm, Sweden. In the thesis, notion is made of basic daylighting concepts, the importance of bringing daylight into buildings is argued, and the daylighting criteria of three environmental certification tools introduced. Furthermore, a detailed comparison is made on several well known daylight simulation tools. A newly developed, state of the art, daylight simulation tool called Honeybee, is used in the simulation process. The tool utilizes the calculation engines of wellknown daylight simulation software Radiance and Daysim, which apply backward ray-tracing to reach accurate results. Honeybee is coupled to the graphical algorithmeditor Grasshopper for Rhinoceros 3D, which allows for an efficient way of parametric modelling. The comparison of five different daylight simulation tools showed that Honeybee outweighs the capabilities of many of them by offering a wast range of simulation capabilities and also giving the user exceptional control of result data within multiple zones of the test building. The results of the daylight study have been compiled into a document which purpose is to serve as early stage design guidelines of atria for architects. Many factors have been shown through simulation to have a dramatic impact on daylighton an annual basis, and several suggestions have been made on how to maximize the quantity of daylight within buildings containing atria