CI-TEAM Demonstration Project: Enhancing Stakeholder Participation in Environmental Planning with Visualization Tools that Support Complex Systems Learning and Spatial Thinking

这一提议汇集了城市规划者和环境科学家、科学和政策应用程序的复杂性建模和空间分析专家、研究技术如何增强认知和决策过程的学习型科学家，以及关注可视化和视觉分析的计算机科学家。其目的是加强现有的可视化工具及其嵌入的社会进程，以更好地支持解决复杂环境问题的参与式规划。这些问题的复杂性使得很难通过相互作用的网络来追踪因果影响，包括个人决策对共享自然资源质量的影响。虽然可视化工具旨在帮助利益攸关方为这些问题制定计划，但它们通常非常精细，需要训练有素的协调员来管理他们的输入和解释他们的输出。同样，存在着越来越多的相关传感器和模拟数据，但其形式对于这个社区来说是不可访问或不可用的。结果，利益相关者被隔离在决策所需的信息之外，取而代之的是基于无效的知识和未经检验的假设。他们正在提取利益相关者的需求和偏好，以建议和测试替代用户界面来支持利益相关者？在参与性规划的社会背景下，输入专业知识和价值观，解释产出，并协作使用工具。他们还在探索如何利用社交网络技术的数据和观点共享潜力来增强利益相关者？使用这些工具进行集体学习和计划。因此，让实际的利益相关者参与设计过程极大地增加了软件和学习结构在部署后最终被目标人群采用的机会。这项研究的副产品包括评估材料，以检查每个工具如何支持对复杂环境问题的不同方面的视觉思考，以及它们如何为解决这些问题的规划判断提供信息。评估类似过程的研究人员对此很感兴趣。从这些领域处理环境问题为为公众和规划从业者创造基础设施提供了适当的范围，以前仅限于专家。更广泛的影响主要目标是培训公民有能力对他们面临的环境问题进行空间和复杂的系统概念化，并使他们能够规划自己的未来，更充分地了解其决定的影响。根据定义，参与式规划在定义问题和提出解决方案时寻求不同的声音。这项工作正在为有效的参与性可视化软件和学习活动制定指导方针，使利益攸关方成为围绕复杂环境问题进行批判性审议所需工具的积极建设者和积极使用者。通过授权不同的代表参与相关信息和建议的产生，该项目旨在抵消往往困扰政策和计划制定的权力失衡，在这种情况下，只有少数人能够获得关键信息。第二个目标是开发课程和教学材料，以培训计算机科学学生为此目的创建有效的可视化软件和界面，并让城市规划学生利用这些工具进行参与性过程。

This proposal brings together urban planners and environmental scientists, experts in complexity modeling and spatial analyses for science and policy applications, learning scientists studying how technology enhances cognitive and decision-making processes, and computer scientists concerned with visualizations and visual analytics. The aim is to enhance existing visualization tools and the social processes in which they are embedded to better support participatory planning addressing complex environmental problems. The complexity of such problems makes it hard to trace causal impacts through the web of interactions, including the effects of individual decisions on the quality of shared natural resources. While visualization tools have been designed to assist stakeholders to plan for these problems, they are usually very elaborate, requiring trained facilitators to manage their inputs and interpret their outputs. Similarly, an increasing amount of relevant sensor and simulation data exists, but in a form that is not accessible or usable for this community. As a result, stakeholders are insulated from the very information they need for their decisions, basing them instead on invalid knowledge and unexamined assumptions. This study will allow us to design tools that bring forward the spatial relationships and interactions that are hidden in the complexity of environmental problems, yet making them accessible to stakeholders for routine use in the planning decisions shaping the environmental future of places across the U.S. To achieve these aims this team is working with existing agent-based modeling and geographic information systems software, applying Design-Based Research and Participatory Design methods to create software and evolve the collaborative learning structures needed for its use in this context. They are distilling stakeholder needs and preferences to propose and test alternate user interfaces to support stakeholders? input of specialized knowledge and values, interpretation of outputs, and collaborative use of the tools in the social context of participatory planning. They are also exploring ways to capitalize on the data- and opinion-sharing potential of social networking technology to enhance stakeholders? collective learning and planning with these tools. Engaging actual stakeholders in the design process thus greatly increases the chance that the software and learning structures will be ultimately adopted by the target demographic upon deployment. A by-product of this research includes the assessment materials to examine how each one of these tools supports different aspects of visual thinking about complex environmental problems, and how they inform planning judgments to address them. This is of interest to researchers evaluating similar processes. Approaching environmental issues from across these fields provides the appropriate scope for creating infrastructure for the public and for planning practitioners in a way formerly limited to specialists. Broader Impacts The main goal is to train citizens with the ability to engage in spatial and complex systems conceptualization of the environmental issues they face, and empower them to chart their own future with a fuller understanding of the impacts of their decisions. By definition, participatory planning seeks different voices to be heard in defining a problem and in suggesting solutions. This work is developing guidelines for effective participatory visualization software and learning activities so that stakeholders are active constructors and engaged users of the tools needed for critical deliberation around complex environmental problems. By empowering diverse representatives to take part in the production of relevant information and recommendations, the project aims to counteract the power imbalances that tend to plague policy and plan making, where only a few have access to key information. A second goal is to develop the curricular and pedagogical materials to train Computer Science students to create effective visualization software and interfaces for this purpose, and Urban Planning students to conduct participatory processes with these tools. A future implementation stage will build on this work to deploy the software, accompanying social practices and supporting cyber-infrastructure in other stakeholder communities dealing with a variety of complex environmental problems, and to incorporate the training modules in the Urban Planning and Computer Science curricula at UIC, which serves one of the most diverse student bodies in the US