A WEB-BASED METHOD FOR SUPPORTING COLLABORATION IN THE URBAN SPATIAL DECISION MAKINGS Ali Fasihi, Ali Mansourian, Mehdi Farnaghi, Mohammad Taleai K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Faculty of Geodesy and Geomatics Eng, Vali_asr St, Mirdamad Cross, Tehran, Iran, P.C. 1969715433,
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[email protected] Abstract. Planning in the real world is a complex and multidimensional process that requires a rethinking of traditional approaches. Today, one of the issues that increasingly searched from urban planners is the realization of participatory planning alongside of E-Planning to provide opportunities to the public at the base of participation. It makes an evolution in the existent top-down planning approaches to effective bottom-up method, with increasing the capabilities of planners in decision making, problem solving and analysis. A WebGIS-based decision support system for urban development control based on real-time planning applications and stakeholders’ preferences is introduced herein. The proposed system, named WPPSDSS- Web-based Public Participatory Spatial Decision Support System, extends the traditional formalization of urban decision making to aid in spatial planning for participatory urban development control. The proposed web-based system is more responsible, capable of organizing a wider range of interests, and should facilitate bottom-up decision making in urban planning. Keywords: Collaboration, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS), Geographical Information System (GIS).
1
Introduction
Spatial planning is a complex enterprise in which the planner (or decision maker) often is not fully aware of the range of factors involved or the implications of each. To any specific planning problem, stakeholders often bring different levels of knowledge about the components of the problem and make assumptions, reflecting their individual experiences, which yield conflicting views about desirable planning outcomes. Also, from a different perspective, urban planning cannot be an individual task. The multiple dimensions of a spatial problem require different areas of expertise to address them [1]. In addition, the consequences of a planning decision call for public involvement in the planning process [2]: public will be those who will have to live with an implemented solution. Thus, both experts and lay stakeholders must collaborate, jointly seeking a solution to their geographical problem. Hence communication is an essential stage in the planning process; only through communication, it is possible to find a solution that adjusts the conflicting objectives that result from different people’s opinions [3]. The current advances in e-Government in many countries contain great possibilities for supporting good governance based on information and knowledge on the one hand and active involvement of the citizens on the other hand. One important precondition for success in this field is a well-informed population with the access to the new communication mediums such as internet. The communication medium Internet has established a new public sphere that makes interaction, debate and new forms of democracy possible [4]. In general, there is a wide consensus that participation is considered as positive and should be supported by new technologies [5, 6]. It is estimated that 80% of data used by managers and decision makers is related geographically [7]. So it is obvious that utilizing of spatially related technologies and tools with the visualized and analysis capabilities in urban planning is necessary and regularly best represented using a GIS. The potential role of such system should help to minimizing conflicts and arrive at decisions that are acceptable to the majority of stakeholders through consensus building approaches based on awareness of the spatial implications of a decision problem. GIS are commonly acquired as a tool to increase internal efficiency among administrative staff especially in regard to planning decisions. The introduction of web-based interfaces makes GIS accessible and available to the public as well. In such applications, standard GIS functionalities such as query, view, inform, measure, can be combined with e-participation functions. The eparticipation functions enable the citizens to communicate with their governmental authorities and enable them to express their opinion spatially. Therefore, the introduction of a web-based GIS application on the level of the government authorities can be advantageous to both the government and the general public. This paper aims to describe how web-based GIS application can, in combination with Multi-Criteria Analysis methods, enhance e-participation and improve interaction with citizens. Also, the paper aim to develop a spatial decision model for collaboration in urban development control. An appropriate decision model using MCDM methods could be developed through e-participation with citizens and establishing a separate decision matrix and map for each participant priority. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and concordance analysis - 262 -
methods are employed to quantify citizen’s preferences as well as perceives and to determine the consensus value of each planning application among stakeholders.
2
Methodology and Framework
As was described earlier, MCDM techniques and collaborative framework are two pivotal components required in the development of a web-based system that (1) has the capability of collaborative or bottom-up spatial decision making and (2) act as a step forward to facilitate e-planning development. This section describes the techniques, approach, and methodologies utilized for development of the prototype system. 2.1
E-Planning and E-Government E-government can be described as the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by a public organization to support and redefine information, communication and transaction relations with citizens, companies and in the environment to create increased government access, better service delivery, internal efficiency, supporting public and political accountability, increased public participation [8]. The term E-Planning is no different to E-Government apart from it focuses specifically on the planning domain. Also, it’s necessary to say which unlike E-Government; E-Planning is not a well defined term. An intuitive understanding of the term has lead to confusion in definitions, which doesn’t make it easy to communicate between planners or stakeholders about experiences and ideas about E-Planning. For instance, several experiences around the world claiming that had made the digital plan. Obviously, one can call a HTML-copy of the local municipality plan on the internet a digital plan, but there is more to it than that. While the term E-Planning can encompass a broad range of functions here the focus is specifically on the use of E-Planning to assist and enhance participation in urban planning. More of research efforts over the past 10 years in around the world has mainly focused on the development of a range of technical tools to help support and implement E-Planning and the use of technology to enhance participatory processes [9, 10, 11, 12, 13] . These tools have mainly been GIS focused, although more recently a growing number of these have focused on 3-D visualizations [3]. To date much of the research has focused on the technical development of E-Planning systems, such as Participatory GIS and virtual environments. Recent development in spatial information technologies provide new suitable and effective occasion for public participation in urban planning. Transparent, response and effective service delivery in E-Planning systems have an important role in comfortable access to information and in early communication with decision makers/planners and citizens. 2.2
Spatial Decision Making by Multiple Users Many spatial decision problems are collaborative in nature [14]. By facilitating a collaborative decisionmaking process through information exchange and knowledge, software and model sharing, collaboration can be used to resolve conflicts and reduce uncertainty in spatial decision-making. Malczewski said that Collaborative Spatial Decision Making (CSDM) can be considered as a special case of spatial decision makings in which decisions are being made by a group. In recent years, there is a growing interest in the distributed access to geospatial information and services to decision makers and planners to promote CSDM [15]. This surge of interest in CSDM stems from the growing realization that effective solutions to pervasive spatial decision problems require collaboration and consensus building among people representing diverse areas of competence, political agendas, and social interests [16]. In recent years, a few CSDM support systems have been developed to help decision makers in spatial decision-making. Much work has been developed in the area of group MC-SDSS [16, 17, 18, 19, and 20]. The vast majority of group Multi-Criteria Spatial Decision Support System (MC-SDSS) are used in a face-to-face environment, although some Internet-based developments exist, including Carver and his colleagues’ Open Spatial Decision Making [21, 22, 23], Web-HIPRE developed by the Systems Analysis Laboratory at Helsinki University of Technology [24] and the map-centred exploratory tool, CommonGIS, developed by the German Fraunhofer Institut [19, 25, 26]. In all these systems, the emphasis has been given to the use of the web and spatial information technologies such as SDSS and Collaborative GIS to disseminate information in order to facilitate community awareness, promote discussion and provide vehicles for fully public participation.
3
A Model for Collaborative Urban Development Control in Web Environment
The WPPSDSS illustrates a mechanism to represent the model of stakeholders’ participation in urban development control. It offers a collaborative environment for public to offer criterion ranking in issuing a planning permission which is in conflict with urban detailed plans and also study the impacts of such ranking on - 263 -
landuse allocation. A decision on how current planning application should be changed depends on legal, environmental, and regulatory constraints as well as governmental detailed plans and public preferences. In particular, detailed plan alteration involves considerations of the development proposal report (which named detailed plan) and the interactions of local decision makers and public participants at multiple scales. The multiple dimensions of a spatial problem require different areas of expertise to address them [1]. In addition, the consequences of a planning decision call for public involvement in the planning process [2]: public will be those who will have to live with an implemented solution. Thus, both experts and lay stakeholders must collaborate, jointly seeking a solution to their geographical problem. Hence collaboration is an essential stage in the planning process; only through collaboration, it is possible to find a solution that adjusts the conflicting objectives that result from different people’s opinions. In this research, we extend the popular collaborative planning model to construct a decision framework. So the process of GIS-based collaborative spatial planning which utilized in this framework is described by Figure 1. As was depicted in figure 1, any participant at public participation stage uses a MCDM technique (AHP) for alternative evaluation and at the time view its raster-based decision result layer. The result is a rankking parcel layer which any parcel based on AHP analysis has a value of fittness. So participant‘s decisions (Decision 1 to n) which are based on spatial decision analysis will be submited. At the backward local planning authorities and decision makers employ another MCDM technique (concordance analysis) for participant’s preferences survey and collaborative decision making.
Figure 1. Collaborative spatial decision making model in WPPSDSS
Our model is based on the two MCDM techniques: Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Concordance analysis. The AHP is a flexible and yet structured methodology for analyzing and solving complex decision problems by structuring them into a hierarchical framework [27]. The AHP procedure is employed for rating/ranking a set of alternatives or for the selection of the best in a set of alternatives. The ranking is done with respect to an overall goal, which is broken down into a set of criteria (objectives, attributes). The AHP procedure involves three major steps: (i) developing the AHP hierarchy, (ii) pairwise comparison of elements of the hierarchical structure, and (iii) constructing an overall priority rating [28]. The pairwise comparison is the basic measurement mode employed in the AHP procedure. The procedure greatly reduces the conceptual complexity of a problem since only two components are considered at any given time. It involves three steps: (i) generation of the pairwise comparison matrix, (ii) computation of the criterion weights, and (iii) estimation of the consistency ratio [14]. The pairwise comparison method employs an underlying semantical scale with values from 1 to 9 to rate the relative preferences for two elements of the hierarchy (Table 1).
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Table 1. Scales of pairwise comparisons –Adopted from [27]. Intensity of importance
Verbal judgment of preferences
1
Equal importance
3
Moderate importance
5
Strong importance
7
Very strong importance
9
Extreme importance
2,4,6,8
Intermediate values between adjacent scale values
In this model the Landuse Fitness map is generated by a simple weighted addition of the criteria (Formula 1). As was highlighted above, for calculating relative importance of the criteria we are introducing the AHP pairwise comparison method for collaborative decision making in the web environment. The derived criteria and alternative maps are available at remote servers. n
LF j = ∑ ( S ji × Wi )
(1)
i =1
Where LF j = Landuse Fitness for alternative j, S ji = Score of jth alternative with respect to the ith criterion, and Wi =Weight for ith criterion. For deriving the decision map we add one SDSS shell in between the final output and data servers. The SDSS shell developed by using ASP.Net provides a lighter version and does not require any plug-in software at the client end. The SDSS shells calculate overall priorities of alternatives using AHP, and send it to a GIS server as input for deriving Landuse Fitness map. All the processing is done on the real-time basis so that concurrent users can do the same analysis with the same data sets. The final output is fully dependent on the participant’s choice, preferences and field knowledge. Also, as was described earlier, our model is based on the two MCDM techniques: AHP and Concordance analysis. AHP as an appropriate MCDM technique was used for stakeholder participation analysis. But one can expect that how any human judgment was used by local planning authority for final decision making. The concordance analysis, which is the most common technique based on pairwise comparison, determines the ranking of alternatives by means of pairwise comparison. The comparison is based on calculating the concordance measure which represents the degree of dominance of alternative i over alternative i ′ for all of the criteria for which i is equal or better than i ′ , and the discordance measure which represents the degree of dominance of alternative i ′ over alternative i for all the criteria for which i ′ is better than i [29]. The calculations of concordance and discordance measures are carried out in concordance analysis for every pair of alternatives. Based on these measures the differences between alternatives are quantified and a final score is calculated for every alternatives. The final score is then used to rank the alternatives from best to worst [30]. As depicted in Figure 1 after the AHP-based collaboration, at the result we have public preferences (decisions form 1 to n) which each preference contain ranking of criteria. So for final decision making, concordance analysis makes the final criteria weights and rankings based on participant’s preferences. Also, in the same way, the final Landuse Fitness map is generated by a simple weighted addition of the criteria which is based on stakeholders’ preferences.
4
Development a Prototype Web-based System: Case Study
A prototype system is developed as part of this research in order to investigate and demonstrate the proposed Web-based spatial decision making model, which is a collaborative urban development control system. WPPSDSS is based on state-of-art client/server computing technology. The schematic representation of WPPSDSS overall logical architecture is shown at Figure 2. Figure 2 demonstrates the structure of a web-based system including two subsystems which execute specific functions while at the same time have interaction with each other. The proposed web-based system is designed to incorporate the functions of online application registration, information dissemination, monitoring of application status, participation and consequently spatial decision making based on participatory planning approach. The system can be divided into two broad categories, i.e., client and server. The client side contain two classes—(i) public participant clients and, (ii) local planning authority clients. Web environment of WPPSDSS - 265 -
is a webGIS based application where most of the GIS functions are available on the web browser. After the user‘s pairwise comparison, the SDSS shell calculates the overall priorities of the alternatives and sends it to GIS server; GIS server launches this output for the web browser by using the available map service in the service registry of the GIS server. The ASP.Net is used for connectivity between a GIS server and a web server (IIS). In an ASP based application most of the programming is done using the server side programming language. On the client side, public clients require only a browser installed on the machine to access WPPSDSS.
Figure 2. Overall logical architecture of the WPPSDSS
Figure 3. Schematic representation of WPPSDSS architecture: web environment
Also as mentioned above, all geospatial information is stored in a SQL server database managed by GIS gateway and this information is accessed by map server. The WPPSDSS gives its output in two ways, i.e., one in web-based GIS environment and another in LAN-based GIS environment. GIS environment of WPPSDSS provides GIS tools for geospatial analysis and querying such as panning, zooming, query builder, measurements and identify tool. For examining the system, a subregion of Mashhad (a city in north-east Iran) is selected as case study area. In Iran, municipalities are principle proctor for urban planning and specifically development control activities. In fact, municipalities are dealing with enormous number of applications submitted by citizens to obtain permission to develop their own land and building or make some alterations. This is as a day-to-day and tedious process with the minimum efficiency and improper citizen participation in decision making. As explained above, participation can increase the success of urban planning as well as development control - 266 -
activities. Considering the spatial nature of city structure, utilizing SDSS and collaboration approach in egovernment can support generation of WPPSDSS to facilitate implementing of an urban e-planning system. The initial architecture of such a system is illustrated in figure 2 and 3.
Figure 4. Screenshot of the geo-referenced discussion forum embedded in WPPSDSS
Figure 5. Web page that displays the feasible sites classified with users’ submitted weights for the four decision criteria. Users can refine their classification by changing and resubmitting sets of weights, which updates the map.
Citizens can use the WPPSDSS for online registration of their planning application or participation on planning activities (Figure 4, 5). At the web environment, after online registration, the planning application will send to planner to take the decision. If the application was rejected, the result and suggestions will be exposed to applicant by WPPSDSS. Also citizens or stakeholders who interested to participate in planning process can search registered applications and collaborate in decision making. Web-based GIS will be used by system as a SDSS generator and reference point in evaluating of planning applications and collaboration of citizens. Planners - 267 -
can use the WPPSDSS to update and modify primary urban detailed plan, based on registered applications and legal, environmental, and regulatory constraints as well as community feedbacks and preferences. The webbased GIS with the suitable tools for application registration and spatial analysis can generate and support such processes. Within the case study area, after the criteria ranking and pairwise comparison, parcels was classified to 10 classes which more feasible parcel has a more saturated color (Figure 5). Within the WPPSDSS, users must be able to generate and evaluate as many solutions (classifications of feasible parcels) as needed until they obtain a solution that matches their ideas.
5
Conclusions
Improved decision-making is perhaps the most promising element in e-planning, and the central idea in all decision-making is how to make the optimum solution and how to get acceptance by the citizens. The current paper has demonstrated how the use of geospatial information and advanced spatial decision making methods can improve the technical foundation for the urban decision, and how to involve the citizens in the decision making process. In this paper, we extend the popular collaborative planning model to construct a decision framework for more active involvement of the citizens by letting the citizens to make decision directly on the Internet using the Web-GIS application. The urban development control at the Planning Department of municipality of Mashhad (a city in Iran) was selected as a case study for examining the proposed decision framework. The proposed framework is a means to facilitate broad-based stakeholder representation, participation, and for structuring the resulting planning process on the Web. An important feature of the framework is that it accommodates interactions among many levels of participants and decision makers to develop effective solutions to spatial planning challenges.
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