Orchestrating the spatial planning process: from Business Process Management to 2nd generation Planning Support Systems

Metaplanning can be considered as a necessary step for improving collaboration, transparency and accountability in sustainable and democratic spatial decision-making process. This paper reports current findings on the operational implementation of the metaplanning concept developed by the authors relying on Business Process Management methods and techniques. Two solutions are presented which implement spatial planning process workflows thanks to the development of original spatial data and processing services connectors to a Business Process Management suite. These results can be considered as a first step towards the development of 2nd generation Planning Support Systems

Social Media Geographic Information: Current developments and opportunities in urban and regional planning

This paper deals with the convergence of Social Media and Geographic Information and discusses its potential as useful source of knowledge in spatial planning. With the underlying assumption of the acknowledgement of the innovation that digital geographic information- including Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)- is already bringing to urban and regional planning, the authors argue Social Media may also play an important role due to both their pervasiveness in content exchange and their emerging spatial convergence. To support this thesis, a review of best practice examples in different domain is presented in order to understand what tools are currently available and what kind of knowledge can be extracted from Social Media. On the base of this analysis, the paper present an original user-friendly tool developed by the authors to extract information from Social Media and to perform Spatial-Temporal Textual (STTx) analysis. The paper ends with some brief conclusions on the opportunities for the application of STTx analysis in urban and regional planning

Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI): opportunities for spatial planning and governance

The dissertation concerns the opportunities arising from the use of social media platforms as an information resource for supporting design, analysis and decision-making in spatial planning. The widespread diffusion of Web 2.0 technologies and tools such as geobrowsers, Application Programming Interfaces (API), GPS-enabled mobile devices, and recently Location-Based Social Networks are fostering the production, collection and sharing of georeferenced information by the Internet users, namely Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI), which are not only related to measures of the geographical component, but also to user perceptions and opinions on places, localities and daily-routine events. The wealth of VGI and SMGI freely available through the Internet may affect current practices in regional and urban planning, offering opportunities for real-time monitoring of needs, thoughts and trends of local communities. However, several hurdles related to data accessibility and management, as well as to knowledge extraction are limiting a wider use of SMGI in practice. In the light of the above premises, the research goal is to address the different aspects required for properly using VGI and SMGI within the urban and regional planning domains. The methodological approach is developed following two main directions. First, the approach builds on the design and development of ad-hoc tools able to deal with the issues regarding the access, management and analysis of SMGI. Second, the dissertation formalizes a novel analytical framework, called SMGI Analytics, which enables the proficient use of this information in different planning scenarios. Several case studies are discussed in order to evaluate the value of both the developed tools and the proposed framework. Then, the SMGI Analytics framework is applied on a case study concerning the municipality of Cagliari in Sardinia (Italy) investigating and characterizing a specific public space. Finally, the dissertation proposes a critical discussion about the developed tools and instruments’ effectiveness for eliciting knowledge from SMGI. The discussion ends identifying the potentialities of obtained findings to address diverse questions related to spatial planning

Le informazioni geografiche dei social network (SMGI) a supporto della pianificazione del turismo. L’esempio di Cagliari.

Il contributo propone una discussione sul possibile utilizzo delle informazioni geografiche provenienti dai social network nell’ambito della pianificazione del turismo su scala regionale e locale. Il crescente utilizzo dei social network da parte degli utenti in tutto il mondo ha fatto si che queste piattaforme, e soprattutto l’informazione derivante da esse, sia utile per i turisti, che possono facilmente ottenere dati adeguati sulle destinazioni e sui servizi offerti, grazie alle recensioni liberamente condivise dagli altri utenti, e per gli operatori turistici, i quali possono utilizzare queste informazioni per migliorare le proprie strategie di marketing e promozione. Questi dati, comunemente definiti Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI), possono inoltre offrire nuove opportunità per supportare le fasi decisionali nella pianificazione del turismo. Purtroppo la ricchezza di contenuti sulle percezioni e sulle opinioni degli utenti, resa disponibile dalle SMGI, non viene ancora adeguatamente utilizzata dai pianificatori per le analisi territoriali. Lo studio propone un nuovo approccio per analizzare, qualitativamente e quantitativamente, attraverso l’uso delle SMGI, le relazioni che insistono tra il gradimento dei turisti, le località geografiche e l’offerta turistica in Sardegna. La metodologia adottata include la raccolta di dati da Booking.com e TripAdvisor, la loro integrazione ed elaborazione con i dati ufficiali in ambiente GIS, e l’applicazione di tecniche di analisi di statistica spaziale per identificare e valutare i fattori che possono determinare il successo di una destinazione turistica. La metodologia viene applicata alla scala regionale, individuando le aree maggiormente apprezzate dai turisti, ed alla scala locale per la destinazione di Cagliari, per la quale vengono identificati e valutati i principali fattori che ne determinano il successo come destinazione turistica. I risultati ottenuti possono essere utilizzati come base conoscitiva per guidare ulteriori specifiche analisi e per sviluppare strategie di sviluppo sostenibile nell’ambito della pianificazione territoriale e del turismo tramite processi decisionali informati