A multistage collaborative 3D GIS to support public participation

What is it about?

This paper presents a collaborative 3D GIS to support public participation. The proposed system is designed to provide coherent support for collaborations in the different stages of public-involved decision making. We differentiate ubiquitous participation and intensive participation and identify their suitable application stages. The proposed system, then, supports both types of participation by providing synchronous and asynchronous collaboration functionalities. Applying the concept of Digital Earth, the proposed system also features a virtual globe-based user interface. Such an interface integrates a variety of data, functions, and services into a unified virtual environment which is delivered to both experts and public participants through the Internet. To evaluate the proposed system, we performed a human participant experiment in a simulated collaborative planning scenario. The experiment demonstrates the good usability of the collaborative 3D GIS.

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Why is it important?

The importance of public participation has been recognized in many decision-making processes, such as urban planning, pollution assessment, and natural resource management. The involvement of the general public (including stakeholders and interested citizens) can help produce decisions that could better serve people's needs. Public participation has also been regarded as an approach toward enhancing democratic governance. In many countries, local authorities are increasingly being required to make planning information publicly accessible to encourage public participation. The proposed 3D collaborative system is an effort towards a better support of the public involvement in decision making.