Design Considerations for Participatory GIS
Steve Robischon, Piotr Jankowski, Timothy L. Nyerges, and David Tuthill
Paper presented at 2nd
Annual Public Participation GIS Conference, July 20-22, 2003, at
ABSTRACT
Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS), unlike standard GIS, rely
on custom-build software solutions for support of a decision problem domain or a
specific decision problem at hand. Many considerations including potential
users, decision problem characteristics, available resources, and the
particulars of human-computer-human interactions must be taken into account to
ensure true decision support functionality of PGIS. Many potential software
engineering approaches exist that can be adapted for a development of PGIS. In
this paper we discuss some of these approaches focusing on trade-offs faced by a
designer(s) of PGIS intended for participatory/group use. We present specific
steps, which in our view are germane to the process of designing PGIS. We
illustrate the steps with an overview of a functional prototype called
WaterGroup. This PGIS was designed to support collaborative water resource
management decision making in the Boise River basin in southwestern Idaho. The
intended users of this system range from policy makers to public citizens with
an interest in water management. This paper should be relevant to anyone in
interested in designing GIS for participatory use.
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