PPGIS and Public meetings : an evaluation of public participation methods for urban planning

The primary purpose of this study is to compare and evaluate two public participation methods. The two methods are public meetings and Public participatory GIS (PPGIS). Public meetings are an established public participation method for urban planning in Sweden. The thesis aims to test the hypothesis if PPGIS is more effective as a public participation method. The thesis first evaluated the two methods with the help of a framework for evaluating participation methods. The framework defined what effective participation methods were. An effective public participation method was assumed to gather high volumes of data for planners to use and be representative of the respondents. Other key factors for efficiency were cost-effectiveness, independence of respondents and influence of comments on decisions-making. A GIS-analysis to demonstrate the possibilities of a PPGIS was also conducted. Data for this study were gathered with the help of City of Helsingborg. The results suggest that the hypothesis could not be rejected. It was concluded that PPGIS is a more effective participation method, however a combination of both methods would further benefit the public participation.Den här studiens primära syfte är att jämföra och utvärdera två medborgardialogs metoder. De två metoderna är samrådsmöten och Public participatiory GIS (PPGIS). Samrådsmöten är en etablerad metod inom medborgardialog för samhällsplanering i Sverige. Uppsatser syftar till att pröva hypotesen om PPGIS är en effektivare metods för medborgardialog. Uppsatsen utvärderade först de två metoderna med hjälp av ett ramverk för utvärdering av medborgardialogs metoder. Ramverket definierade var effektiva medborgardialogs metoder var. En effektiv medborgardialogs metod antogs vara en metod som samlade stora mängder data från medborgarna samt vara en representativ metod för respondenterna. Andra viktiga faktorer för effektivitet var kostnadseffektivitet, självständighet för respondenter och dialogens inverkan på beslutsfattande. En GIS-analys för att visa på möjligheterna av ett PPGIS genomfördes också. Data för denna studien samlades in med hjälp från Helsingborgs stad. Resultaten visade att hypotesen kunde inte avböjas. Slutsatsen drogs att PPGIS är en mer effektiv medborgardialogs metod. Däremot, en kombination av båda metoderna kan ytterligare gagna medborgardialogen.Asking the public about their opinions in urban planning is a legal obligation for Swedish city council. This is referred to as public participation. The study tries to answer a questions whether public meetings, or map-based surveys (known as PPGIS) is the better participation method. City councils in Sweden are responsible for the planning of their city. In the process, they are also required to consult the public regarding the plans. Apart from the legal obligations, consulting the public may benefit the planners. More perspectives and ideas can give the planners easier and better solutions for the problems. Traditionally, the most common public participation methods in Sweden are public meetings or workshops. But a new method, which is map-based surveys (PPGIS), can challenge the traditional methods. The study is based on a comparison between traditional methods and PPGIS. The comparison is based on several criteria forming a framework for evaluation participation methods. The methods involve also analyses on data gathered from PPGIS-surveys. The results indicated that PPGIS is a better method for public participation than public meetings. PPGIS scored higher on all but one criterion. Additionally, data gathered from PPGIS allows planners for new perspectives and gives better ground. This is a very interesting score which shows that PPGIS should be employed in more consultation processes in Sweden. It is important to remember that PPGIS should not replace public meetings. Instead, a combination of the two methods should be employed

GIS och medborgardialog - En studie av vilken påverkan digitaliseringen av planprocessen kan ha på medborgardeltagandet

The Swedish government has recently been proposing for a digitization of the spatial plans. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how this digitization would affect the public participation during the process of creating a spatial plan. This will be done by testing the theory of Ladder of participation, created by Sherry Arnstein in 1969, and a theory of participation stairs created by Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR). Riges, a cooperation between five municipalities in northern Sweden within digitization of spatial plans, is the main case studied in this paper. But also other minor cases are presented and studied. The methods are mainly literature and interviews. The literature is municipal reports and qualitative interviews with municipal officials within spatial planning and GIS. Main perspective of the collected data in this paper is GIS, since GIS is one of the main tools of digitization. This paper shows that the digitization affects the public participation in a very small extent

Future Swedish 3D City Models : Specifications, Test Data, and Evaluation

Three-dimensional city models are increasingly being used for analyses and simulations. To enable such applications, it is necessary to standardise semantically richer city models and, in some cases, to connect the models with external data sources. In this study, we describe the development of a new Swedish specification for 3D city models, denoted as 3CIM, which is a joint effort between the three largest cities in Sweden—Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Technically, 3CIM is an extension of the OGC standard CityGML 2.0, implemented as an application domain extension (ADE). The ADE is semantically thin, mainly extending CityGML 2.0 to harmonise with national standards; in contrast, 3CIM is mainly based on linkages to external databases, registers, and operational systems for the semantic part. The current version, 3CIM 1.0, includes various themes, including Bridge, Building, Utility, City Furniture, Transportation, Tunnel, Vegetation, and Water. Three test areas were created with 3CIM data, one in each city. These data were evaluated in several use-cases, including visualisation as well as daylight, noise, and flooding simulations. The conclusion from these use-cases is that the 3CIM data, together with the linked external data sources, allow for the inclusion of the necessary information for the visualisation and simulations, but extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes are required to tailor the input data. The next step is to implement 3CIM within the three cities, which will entail several challenges, as discussed at the end of the paper

Future Swedish 3D City Models—Specifications, Test Data, and Evaluation

Three-dimensional city models are increasingly being used for analyses and simulations. To enable such applications, it is necessary to standardise semantically richer city models and, in some cases, to connect the models with external data sources. In this study, we describe the development of a new Swedish specification for 3D city models, denoted as 3CIM, which is a joint effort between the three largest cities in Sweden—Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Technically, 3CIM is an extension of the OGC standard CityGML 2.0, implemented as an application domain extension (ADE). The ADE is semantically thin, mainly extending CityGML 2.0 to harmonise with national standards; in contrast, 3CIM is mainly based on linkages to external databases, registers, and operational systems for the semantic part. The current version, 3CIM 1.0, includes various themes, including Bridge, Building, Utility, City Furniture, Transportation, Tunnel, Vegetation, and Water. Three test areas were created with 3CIM data, one in each city. These data were evaluated in several use-cases, including visualisation as well as daylight, noise, and flooding simulations. The conclusion from these use-cases is that the 3CIM data, together with the linked external data sources, allow for the inclusion of the necessary information for the visualisation and simulations, but extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes are required to tailor the input data. The next step is to implement 3CIM within the three cities, which will entail several challenges, as discussed at the end of the paper