Methods and participatory approaches for identifying social-ecological hotspots

The collection of spatial information through public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) is most frequently implemented using either point or polygon spatial features but the research trade-offs between the two methods are not well-understood. In a quasi-experimental PPGIS design, we collected four attributes (aesthetic, recreation, economic, and biological values) as both point and polygon spatial features in the same PPGIS study. We then used Monte Carlo simulation methods to describe the relationship between the quantity of data collected and the degree of spatial convergence in the two methods for each of the four PPGIS attributes. The results demonstrate that the same PPGIS attributes identified by points and polygons will converge on a collective spatial ‘truth’ within the study area provided there are enough observations, however, the degree of spatial convergence varies by PPGIS attribute type and the quantity of data collected. The use of points for mapping PPGIS attributes and aggregating areas through density mapping constitutes a conservative approach to spatial inference about place significance, but the data demands for point collection are considerably higher than for polygon features. Based on our results, we provide heuristic guidelines for future PPGIS research when using point or polygon spatial attributes. We argue that other variables such as the cognitive complexity of the PPGIS mapping process and stronger claims of external validity favor the use of point features, but these advantages must be weighed against the significantly higher sampling effort required.

An empirical evaluation of workshop versus survey PPGIS methods

A large proportion of American Indian reservation lands are owned by non‐Indian entities. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a powerful tool for visualising land tenure changes, and public participation GIS (PPGIS) is one approach for using spatial technologies to facilitate the identification and reacquisition of reservation lands by tribes. While some tribes have successfully harnessed GIS for land management and for systematically identifying lands for reacquisition, others struggle to implement land management systems such as GIS for these purposes. This paper situates PPGIS in relation to other forms of participatory action research and outlines our use of a PPGIS framework to engage undergraduate geography students in the mapping of land tenure status on ten rural Minnesota Indian reservations as part of a collaborative partnership with the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF). A PPGIS framework allowed us to collaboratively define research goals in response to tribal community needs and provided structure for student work with partner reservations to develop and implement tailored mapping and analysis techniques. Two sets of findings are significant. First, the assembly of a standardised set of maps for American Indian reservations in Minnesota provides a tremendous visual and analytical resource for ILTF and individual tribes to pursue land reacquisition within reservation boundaries. Second, from a PPGIS perspective, we found that working with a coordinating or ‘bridging’ organisation provided key benefits by enabling education of both the student–faculty partners and the individual tribes. The PPGIS model empowered both partners by allowing tribes to harness a powerful technology to assist in visualising land‐based assets and allowing students to contribute to native land reacquisition efforts through application of their GIS skills. This mapping helps facilitate economic and cultural viability in tribal communities by providing an important visual catalogue of existing land‐based assets, in support of future land acquisition and economic development planning.

In the last half decade, there has been growing interest in the concept of collaborative geographic information systems (GIS) in support of decision making, especially in the context of various domains of planning. This interest has spawned an already substantial literature in what is now becoming popularly known as public participation GIS (PPGIS) or community GIS. A central and general objective of PPGIS is to encourage the use of GIS technology by broadly based and geographically dispersed nonexpert users. In the context of planning decision support, this involves creating software with map-based functionality that is responsive to the needs of user groups that have limited experience with computers and only a rudimentary knowledge of even simple spatial analysis concepts. This functionality should be designed to enable these individuals to communicate and interact with higher level users and agencies on an equal footing so that all participants can be both better informed of each others perspectives and more involved in decision-making processes that involve land and resource use planning and management. This chapter considers the general issue of PPGIS in the context of use of the Internet and the World Wide Web as a means of achieving broad participation and collaboration in decision making among dispersed participants with a diversity of backgrounds and competencies in using spatial concepts and analyses. The chapter also considers the role that open source software tools can play in crafting accessible and highly customizable solutions using an example for assessing the quality of primary-level education in Peru.

This paper analyses public use in the Ebro Delta Natural Park using PPGIS (public participation geographic information system) methodology. An online survey was designed using Google Maps API, HTML, and JAVASCRIPT. Respondents were asked to place and rate thirteen items on an interactive map to characterize and georeference public use with regard to accessibility, facilities and services, signposting, safety and security, and leisure activities. In total we collected 209 valid surveys and mapped 2617 georeferenced opinions. Facilities and services were rated highly by users (72.46% were “very satisfied”). These were followed by accessibility (61%, “very satisfied”) and signposting (60.2%, “satisfied” or “quite satisfied”). Safety and security items were hardly rated perhaps because users do not feel insecure in the area. Respondents’ mapping of opinions and experiences, which are heterogeneous and were well rated, enabled us to visualize areas that might be understood as social hotspots. Our results show that PPGIS is an effective procedure for measuring public use in protected areas and may be a valuable tool for park managers and planners.

Over the past century, severe wildfire events have been recorded globally due to climate change. Changes in climatic conditions may change forest landscape by modifying rates of vegetation formation, shifts in temperature and tree species shift. There was a near-complete loss of native tree species in some affected areas and loss of these species were most strongly linked to burn frequency. Many questions remain regarding how these changes will occur across landscapes and how disturbances such as wildfires may interact with changes to climate and vegetation. Forest management is used to proactively modify forest structure and composition to improve fire resilience. Yet, research is needed to assess how to best utilize the resources to reduce damages due to forest fires. Human communities also exist within these landscapes, and decision regarding how to manage forests must carefully consider how management will affect such communities. The scientific literature recognizes the importance of incorporating stakeholders' knowledge and the active role of local communities to enhance and strengthen adaptive capacities to fire risk management. However, the research in this area seems to be still at the initial stage, and this gap needs to be addressed through actions that value the knowledge and voices of stakeholders and local communities. This research aims to contribute to this gap by sharing the process with the application of participatory mapping GIS involving forest stakeholders in a forest fire risk area in Liguria, Italy. To investigate local community preferences for forest management, public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) mapping exercise is a good tool for local residents to express their views on fire reduction treatments (for example, commercial harvest, non-commercial harvest and prescribed fire). Emergent themes from the mapping exercise can be used to inform alternative management scenarios to explore the usefulness of using PPGIS to generate modelling inputs. Scenarios will be ranged from restoration-only treatments to short-rotation commercial harvest. The use of PPGIS is useful for outlining the range of forest management preferences within the local community, for identifying areas of agreement among residents who have otherwise polarized views, and for generating modelling inputs that reflect views that may not be obtained through existing official channels for public participation. Involving forest stakeholders in the decision-making process may increase public acceptance of the forest fire treatments needed to modify wildfire trajectories under future climate conditions and to improve forest resilience.

Lessons for PPGIS from the application of a decision-support tool in the Nova Forest Alliance of Nova Scotia, Canada

This study discusses how to apply public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) to advance citizen participation in community affairs. It aims to improve the interaction and communication between citizens and decision-makers. A website was designed to display community resources and became a platform for citizens to discuss community issues. Using Web2.0 combined with GIS tools, community members were able to discuss issues and accesses resources to find creative solutions for community problems. This study assesses the impact PPGIS had in empowering citizens to find unique solutions for local matters.

The present study aimed to explore traditional farming and its role in sustainable development of the mountainous area based on the indigenous community of Wutai in Taiwan as a case study. It adopted qualitative methods with an ethnographic orientation, to conduct in-depth interviews, participant observation, and focus groups as an integral component of public participation geographic information system (PPGIS), and aerial photo analysis to collect and analyze field data, mainly in 2013 and 2017. The results revealed the continuation of traditional farming practices guided by the traditional farming calendar and characterized by mixed cropping, inter cropping, and rotation, which optimized the use of limited arable lands in the area. These practices also contributed to maximizing and securing local food supply, and maintaining endemic crop varieties. The results suggested that traditional farming offered a way to overcome the limitation of modern agriculture and support ecotourism as a sustainable alternative to mass tourism, by preserving crop diversity, social institutions and cultural traditions, and stabilizing the local environment. Furthermore, our findings showed that traditional farming, in keeping with local capacity, was adaptable to the impacts of climate change. In the last two decades, a returning tide of young residents and retired people involved in traditional farming might play a key role in the slowing down of the loss of agricultural lands in Wutai, influenced by the fashion of healthy foods and environments, as well as development of local ecotourism industry. Learned from this study, while there would be some opportunity for traditional farming to be recognized as one of the key components to promote the sustainable development of indigenous villages in mountain areas, more policy incentives might be considered.

Participatory planning of a community-based payments for ecosystem services initiative in Madagascar's mangroves

The predicted penetration rates of low carbon technologies (LCTs) for heating and transport will place additional stresses on planning and design activity within Distribution Network Operators (DNOs). DNOs are obliged to provide cost-effective solutions for network reinforcement and designers are faced with the complexities of new technology and a rapidly changing use of the electricity network, particularly at low voltage. Performing network assessments and identifying the most feasible solution places a significant resource burden on network operators. This paper provides an overview of a Network Planning and Design Decision Support (NPADDS) tool which is being developed as part of the UK’s Customer-Led Network Revolution (CLNR) smart grid project. The tool is demonstrated by performing an assessment of a network area based on a range of LCT penetration scenarios for which it proposes solutions based on a database of historical or anticipated costs and benefits.

The World Wide Web, as a collection of Web sites, Web services, and Web-enabled technologies, is a space of expression and contestation—a social construction of sorts. Additionally, the Web, as a locus of investigation, is gaining attention from scholars in the social sciences, feminist and critical theorists, as well as more recent poststructural reconceptualizations across many disciplines. One unifying interest is precisely the topic of this article: How might we recognize what is considered political and personal in a virtual space? To what sense can we distinguish political and personal expression online? This article frames the diverse perspectives for interrogating political and personal expression on the Web, while offering considerations for why these sorts of projects are at all necessary or useful. The determinacy of virtual, Web-based locations as political and/or personal is a complex endeavor. Does a prochoice posting to an anti-abortion online discussion group constitute a political act? What is potentially meant by “political”? Several discussion forums or news groups contain categories like “politics” or “government and politics” (see Yahoo! Groups for example); and yet, such groups may or may not be perceived as “political”. This perception of “being political” is dependent on certain philosophical tensions about what can be considered political in certain spaces and times. Other Web sites seek to build politics through the Web, via such movements as e-democracy, online deliberation, or public participation geographic information systems (Davies & Novack, forthcoming; Dragicevic & Balram, 2006). However, while building politics is certainly political, surficial analysis of such online-coalition building endeavors may resist or gloss the multiple political implications for constructing a politics. Therefore this entry contains a discussion of politics and “the political”; each as a perspective has certain methodological and empirical contingencies. Namely, how do we study online interactions? What sorts of data might we collect? Furthermore, how are we, as researchers, already implicated in our studies of online interactions? This entry proposes a diversity of approaches in studying interactions within the Web as informed by both the information sciences and the humanities and is organized into four sections: first, a background section which contemplates more traditional debate in political theory made relevant to studies of the Web; a second section which proposes (post)modernist and poststructuralist framings for researching personal and political expression; third, a section offering future research questions in this research area; and finally, conclusions that reflect upon research on the Web.

This study reports the variation in safety perceptions of university students (N = 196 university students) on university campuses in South China, focusing on the risk of crime and traffic incidents. Using a public participation geographic information system, we explore potential links between students’ perceptions and campus characteristics. We conclude that environmental cues associated with the risk of crime victimisation (e.g. lack of natural surveillance) are more often linked to poorer safety perceptions than those linked to the risk of traffic conditions. Although half of the students declare feeling safe on campus, their perception varies by individual characteristics, frequency of use, and daily experiences. Inspections of campuses environments using a door-to-door perspective are advised when safety becomes an integral part of sustainability planning of universities worldwide.

BackgroundContext-free outcome measures, such as overall leisure-time physical activity (LTPA), are habitually applied to study the neighborhood built environment correlates of physical activity. This cross sectional study identifies and empirically tests potential methodological limitations related to the use of context-free measures and discusses how these may help in the interpretation of inconsistent associations between participation in moderate-to-vigorous LTPA and objectively measured neighborhood-level built environment attributes.MethodsWe employ a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS), an advanced participatory mapping method, to study the spatial distribution of moderate-to-vigorous LTPA among adult urban Finnish residents (n 1322). Secondary sources of GIS land-use and sport facility data were used to disaggregate respondent-mapped LTPA by the behavioral context, such as indoor and outdoor sport facilities, green spaces, and other public open spaces. Associations between the use of the identified LTPA settings and a range of objectively measured neighborhood built environment attributes were studied with multilevel logistic regression models.ResultsDisaggregated by behavioral context, we observed varied and partly opposite built environment correlates for LTPA. The use of indoor and outdoor sport facilities showed no significant associations with their neighborhood availability, but were significantly associated with personal-level attributes. By contrast, participation in LTPA in green and built public open space shared significant associations with access to and availability of neighborhood green space that persisted after controlling for personal-level covariates. Moreover, neighborhood distances up to 1600 m poorly captured participation in moderate-to-vigorous LTPA, as, on average, 40% of visits were located further from home. However, we found the immediate home environment to be an important LTPA setting for the least active participants.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that LTPA can be a highly heterogeneous measure regarding both the spatial distribution and the environmental correlates of behavioral contexts. The results show that context-free LTPA outcome measures yield inconsistent associations with built environment exposure variables, challenging the applicability of such measures in designing neighborhood-level built environment interventions.

A national scale web mapping platform for mainstreaming ecosystem services in Greece