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AESOP-ACSP Join t Con gress 15-19 Ju ly 201 3 D ub lin
1 |
ICT Tools to enhance the utility of a Spatial Decision Support
System – Methodological essays
Eduarda Marques da Costa1, Nuno Marques da Costa2 Patrícia Abrantes3 and Ana Louro4
1 Associate Professor (CEG-UL), eduarda.costa@campus.ul.pt; 2Assistant Professor (CEG-
UL), nunocosta@campus.ul.pt; 3 PhD Researcher patricia.abrantes@campus.ul.pt;
4 Research fellow (CEG-UL), analouro@campus.ul.pt
Keywords: Spatial Decision Support System, Decision-making, WebGis, modelling
. ABSTRACT
The need for "well decide" in urban planning has been enhanced with the development of
technologies and methods of data analysis, along with a considerable increase of the
information available not only for the decision-makers but for all community. However, the
disjointed of information impedes a more informed and qualified decision making.
The SPOTIA Project
1
, whose main objective is to analyse the coherence between
Portuguese territorial policies, but also to analyse the impacts that mega-projects have on
territory. As an example we present the EFMA (Multipurpose Alqueva Project) case study.
We intend to develop some tools that may be relevant to a more efficient planning system,
through a greater availability of information in a user-friendly system. In this sense, we
consider the development of relevant tools to support, in different manners, Spatial Decision
Support System (SDSS), namely consultative platforms, WEBGIS and geographic modelling
tools.
This paper consists of three parts after this brief introduction: the first part is related with the
use of GIS in territorial planning, culminating with a reflection about the SDSS; the next part
will focus on the different tools developed in the SPOTIA project in the context of a potential
SDSS for the case of Portuguese planning system, detailed in three distinct tools:
consultative platforms, WEBGIS and geographic modelling. The third and final part is the
preliminary conclusions.
1 THE ROLE OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM AS AN ICT TOOL IN
URBAN PLANNING
Gar-On Yeh citing Douglass and Friedmann (1998) wrote that “In the West, the urban
planning paradigm has moved away from the technological approach of the 1960`s and
1970`s to a more participatory approach and greater role of civil society”, changing from a
model-based urban planning generated by computer to a planning process based on
consultations and negotiations between various stakeholders. In this sense, the geographic
information system (GIS) started to integrate the urban planning process as a tool that that
would develop the new urban planning paradigm, where is required a greater volume of
information and analysis that facilitates stakeholder information, discussion and decision
making, allowing the existence of computerized systems that could store, retrieve, visualise,
analyse and model spatial information (Yeh, 2008). Considering Manabe and Teraki (1999)
in Kohsaka (2001), the main purpose of local government to use GIS in urban planning is to
1
SPOTIA Project: Sustainable spatial policy orientations and territorial impact assessment – contribution to
portuguese context (PTDC/CS-GEO/105452/2008). Coordenation: Professor Eduarda Marques da Costa, Centre
of Geographical Studies, University of Lisboa
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store and update urban plan information, planning, inquiry and inspection of urban plan
information, mapping and offer of urban plan information to other departments. In this
context, there are a vast number of fields that, for some reason, uses GIS in planning, for
example:
a. Property – Urban development, control land use;
b. Facility Management – Pipe location and underground cable, utility planning
coordination, telecommunication network service, Energy consumption planning,
Building site selection;
c. Environmental Management – Waste management, Disaster management,
Analysis of environmentally sensitive areas, Study the suitable of crops, forest
management, agricultural land, water resources, wetlands
d. Road network - Vehicle navigation, Home and road location, Site assessment,
Ambulance service, Transport planning;
e. Design and Engineering – Development strategy, Population growth and
migration, Availability of land for development, Highway route location, Utilities
development;
f. Land Information System – Cadastral administration, Tax, Land use zoning, Use
of space information such as water, air and soil, Reclamation of land. (Selamat et
al., 2012)
There are some evident benefits to use GIS in urban planning and management (Royal
Town Planning Institute, 1992), where is included a better, faster and actualized production
of maps, more retrieving capacity, more informed forms to create scenarios and predictions,
a more friendly-use for stakeholders and community, among others. Having the urban
planning different functions and stages, the uses of GIS are also diverse, adapted to the
needs of each task and depending of some scopes, as the territorial scale or the sector in
focus. According to (Yeh, 2008) (Fig. 1), there are three main functions of urban planning -
“General administration”, “Development control” and “Plan making” – related with different
types of activities (more or less regular) and, consequently, with different functions of GIS –
“Description”, “Prediction” and “Prescription”.
Figure 1. Urban planning functions and the use of GIS. Adapted of Yeh (2008).
Scale:
Country, region, city, part of city, district, street block
Sector:
Land use, transports, housing, energy, environment
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The two first functions of urban planning, “General administration” and “Development
control”, are mostly related with routine planning activities, appealing the GIS function of
“Description” using the functions of data management, visualisation and spatial analysis. This
GIS function of “Description” includes tasks as:
- Management of land use records;
- Thematic mapping;
- Planning application processing;
- Building control application processing;
- Land use management;
- Land availability and development monitoring industrial, commercial and retail floor
space;
- Recreational and countryside facility planning;
- Environmental impact assessment;
- Land use-transport strategic planning; public facilities and shops catchment area and
accessibility analysis;
- Social area and deprivation analysis.
The third urban planning function - “Plan making”, is especially related with non-routine
planning activities, using the GIS function of “Prediction” and “Prescription” for spatial
modelling, spatial analysis and visualisation (Yeh, 2008).
Analysing with more detail the several planning phases (Figure 2), since the “Determination
of objectives” until the “Plan evaluation, monitoring and feedback”, GIS functions have not
the same use and even relevance. In different phases, GIS tools have an important role to
produce a stronger diagnosis; to create different scenarios according multiple criteria,
recurring to modelling and projection; or to evaluate the results of policies.
Figure 2. Urban planning functions and the use of GIS. Adapted of Yeh (2008).
Planning Phases
Technologies and their relevance in Planning
1. Objectives
2. Data collection
GIS – Other databases & models
• Save time in collection of information, sources of spatial information and it`s changes
3. Data analysis
GIS – Other databases & models
• Store, manipulate and analyse physical, social and economic data
• Mapping function to analyse the actual situation
• Identify conflict areas through the overlay of data
4. Modelling and Projection
GIS – Other databases & models
• Projection of future (ex. population, economic growth)
• Estimate the impact of possible trends (ex. future demand of land resources)
• Model different scenarios and formulate different planning options
5. Development of Planning
Options
GIS – Other databases & models
• The spatial optimization models with GIS – maximize or minimize some functions
• Simulation of different scenarios, integration of cellular automata, location-allocation
models find optimal locations of public facilities, multi-criteria decision analysis could
consider multiple criteria in deriving different planning options
6. Selection of Planning
Options
GIS – Other databases & models
• Majorly a political process, where planners could provide technical inputs to reinforce
the decision-making
7. Plan Implementation
GIS – Other databases & models
• Evaluate and minimize environmental impact, for programming and monitoring land
development, automate the planning office, enable more consistent decision making in
development control
8. Plan Evaluation,
Monitoring and Feedback
GIS – Remote Sensing – Other databases & models
• Monitor and evaluate changes and dynamics as in land use and if that dynamic
correspond to the planned
• It could help to develop adjustments to the plan
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Yet in this context, it`s possible to identify some benefits and constrains in the use of GIS in
urban planning. As benefits, especially in public organizations and for urban planning, we
can list:
- The increase of productivity – more produced information in less time; more public
information, efficiency on mapping producing and actualization, development of
monitoring systems, increasing of data sharing both for technicians and users;
- The cost reduction, not only in employee`s time saving but in other costs, as space;
- Improving in technic support, due to the different kind of information, decision support,
expert assistance, among others;
- The organizational enhancement, through new forms of integration that promote an
increased efficiency related with the realization of advanced analysis, faster and
cheaper mapping (Budié, 1994; Kohsaka, 2001)
In the other hand, as constrains, we highlight that:
- There is an evident increasing of working volume to create and maintain an
actualized GIS, otherwise the information lose its relevance for urban planning;
- The huge cost of data and, consequently, the data updating, independent of its type;
- The need of high specialized workers to create and maintain the GIS and the time
and money costs to promote training for users, as planners and decision-makers;
- It only could be useful if used in an integrated perspective by the several decision-
makers and other users. So, it`s relevant to pay attention to the needs of users and,
at the same time, consider the available resources. Being an information technology,
it`s relevant that the planning organizations stay committed to the project;
- The existence or lack of data is a fundamental aspect. The availability, the cost and
the characteristics of data are central to create and maintain an actualized SDSS.
The use of outdated information compromises the relevance of the tool as well as the
analysis;
- The gap between the existence technologies and the way of how to make urban
planning, according to the used tools or technical skills of planners remains evident,
even in more developed countries (Kohsaka, 2001; Yeh, 2008).
Nowadays, the planners, the politicians and the stakeholders aren`t the only players in the
urban planning, having the society, the NGO, the public and private institutions, among
others, a role too. In this sense, “public participation is increasingly important in the planning
system” (Yeh, 2008), having all the players the right and the duty to be involved in policy
making. With resource to the new technologies, as Internet, and having more and more
access to specific information related with territorial planning (using, for example, WebGis
platforms), common individuals could participate “in plan discussion, local community
information collection, and decision making support” (Yeh, 2008).
Despite all, GIS per se it is just a tool, allowing mapping various types of information and
visualise all data at the same time, adding the capabilities that the tool has to model and
project different scenarios, with some criteria defined by each user, and according to the
available data. Also related with urban planning, there are other tools beyond GIS, as
Remote Sensing, Expert Systems or Decision Support Systems, which reinforce the
decision-making process, supporting spatial decisions (Sugumaran and DeGroote, 2011). In
this context, we will focus briefly the Spatial Decision Support Systems as reference of the
SPOTIA project's main objective.
The development of Decision Support Systems (DSS) and, specifically, the Spatial Decision
Support Systems (SDSS), begins in the late 1960`s and early 1970`s as an answer to the
limitations of the management information systems, as the lack of capacity for analytical
modelling and the difficult interaction between the decision makers and the solution
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processes (Budié, 1994), since it conjugate data management, analysis and modeling,
accessed by an user interface (Sugumaran and DeGroote, 2011).
For Sugumaran and Degroote (2011), an SDSS have to have a set of characteristics as:
- Spatial data management and analysis;
- Iterative problem solving;
- Report generation;
- Scenarios evaluation;
- Visualization through maps, graphs, tables and reports;
- Semi or ill-structured problem solving;
- Easy to use and existence of interactive user interfaces;
It is in the context of demand for tools that could support the Portuguese planning system in
its different phases and its own SDSS, with the main goal to become it in a more coherent
planning system, that are in course the following methodological experiences in SPOTIA
Project:
- Consultation Platforms for diagnosis, planning and evaluation phases;
- WEBGIS as dynamic and user-friendly monitoring system, and;
- Geographical modelling as a tool to reinforce the decision-making process.
2. EXPERIENCES IN SPOTIA PROJECT – APPLIED METHODOLOGIES AND
PRELIMINAR RESULTS
As a final objective of this investigation project, it is intended to develop a Spatial Decision
Support System to help the decision-making for Portuguese planning context. In this part,
firstly, it will be focus a brief presentation of SPOTIA Project and specifically one of the case-
studies – Alqueva multi-purpose project - Alqueva Dam (EFMA Project). After this
introduction, it will be focus some tested tools that could reinforce, through different
perspectives, the SPOTIA SDSS.
2.1 Brief presentation of SPOTIA Project and the EFMA Case-Study
The SPOTIA Project – “Sustainable spatial policy orientations and territorial impact
assessment – contribution to Portuguese context” - is focus on the development of methods
for assessing the coherence and relevance of territorial policies issued by Land Management
Instruments (plans and programs). Related with the main purpose, stand out as work
objectives:
(a) Assessment of internal coherence and relevance of Portuguese programs and
plans; (b) Assessment of the coherence and relevance among PNPOT – National Program
of Policy Planning - and NSDS - National Sustainable Development Strategies - (top-down
orientation policies) and other programs and plans (like the regional Operational
Programmes and regional spatial plans;
(c) Identification, collection and analysis of the most relevant indicators for the policy
areas policies of the EU, national and regional, as well as for the case studies analyzed, with
the ultimate goal of;
(d) Construct a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) that is able to produce
results that support decision-making respecting to territorial problems.
Alqueva multi-purpose project is one of three SPOTIA case studies that appeared to
minimize structural problems, in this specific case of a peripheral Portuguese region –
Alentejo that is now changing its economic, social and environmental conditions. This
reading is relevant due to the need of evaluate if mega-projects brought important results for
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the territory, people and economy, if they are able to generate a better cohesive performance
and if the expected impacts in spatial development and regional convergence have been
attended.
Figure 1– Alqueva Dam
Source: Portal do Alentejo
Figure 2 – EFMA municipalities
Source: Own production
The EFMA Project, centered on the Alqueva dam and built in the Guadiana River, is a
structuring project for regional development in southern Portugal. It aims to contribute to the
economic and social valorisation of Alentejo, one of the poorest regions of Portugal. EFMA
Project has direct influence over 21 municipalities, in a range of 10.000 Km2. According to
EDIA - Enterprise Development and Infrastructure Alqueva, S.A., this mega-project could be
the key for a boosting of economic and social development by increasing the Gross
Domestic Product through the creation of new investment and the development of new
economic activities; the integration and complementarity of projects and activities; the
creation and employment qualification; branded Alqueva reference-quality products and
services and Alqueva area as a reference for innovation and technology. This project has a
strong sustainable connotation as it pretended to support the social, institutional and
business in the region; to maintain and enhance the character, culture and regional identity;
to promote Alqueva as a paradigm of environmental quality; and to generate criteria for
competitiveness and profitability of investments.
Figure 3 – EFMA Area (Legend: Blue - reservoirs generated by dams, Dark green - New areas of
existing irrigation, Light Green - New irrigation areas in project). Source: EDIA, SA – Interactive
Maps in Google Earth
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The several activities developed in SPOTIA Project pretended to focus in the several
planning phases – Diagnosis, Planning and policy implementation and Evaluation -
combining various territorial instruments at regional and national scales, meanwhile, other
activities pretended to reinforce the studies about the previously cited case-studies.
Table 1. Territorial planning process and respective tools for support of decision-making
Phases and functions
Tasks
SPOTIA Project activities
1 Diagnosis
- Identification of the context/ start
reality
- Identification of the problems and it`s
causes
- Identification of the several
instruments of the national planning
system
- Identify the main demographic,
economic, environmental and
socio-cultural changes;
- Identify the main problems and
SWOT*presented by all
territorial instruments
- Identify the main territorial
changes
- Create different scenarios to
reinforce the policy options
1.1 WEBGIS - Main themes: Agriculture,
energy, Economy, Housing, Mobility,
Population, Scholar network, Health
network, Tourism;
1.2 WEBGIS - Land use dynamic (CLC 1990,
2000, 2006);
1.3 Consultation platform of the problems
and SWOT identified in the main national
and regional planning instruments;
1.4. Consultation platform of the main
reports of the national planning instruments
1.5. Geographical modelling to create
scenarios
2 Planning and Policy Implementation
2.1 External coherence
- Identification of the expected
actions/changes in the several
instruments that comprises the
general structure of territorial planning
- Identification of the results of the last
planning cycle and/or the best
experiences to determinate the
problems and solutions
- Consult the expected goals for a
particular instrument in the
context of the national planning
system (both territorial and
sectoral approach), considering
the objectives, the actions and
the agents
2.1.1 Consultation platform of the
objectives, measures, actions, indicators of
the planning instruments organized by
domains and/or agents and/or instruments;
2.1.2 Network analyses based on the agents
that should respond to the planned
objectives;
2.2 Internal coherence
- Analyse the coherence among the
diagnosis and the expected
plan/programme
- Develop an internal analysis
between diagnosis and plan
goals, plan and indicators,
diagnosis and indicators
2.2.1 Exercises of internal coherence to
answer to the main planning concepts:
sustainability, territorial cohesion, regional
competitiveness, etc.
3 Evaluation
- Confront the expected goals with the
executed programmes
- Identification of the new reality
- Resume of the executed or non-
executed project and/or
objectives and understand what
and where are the main
difficulties
- Monitoring and evaluation
- Actualization of the initial
indicators
3.1 Analysis of the approved projects of
NSRF 2007-2013 (quantitative analysis and
WEBGIS)
3.2. Geographical modelling for monitoring
and evaluation
Source: Own elaboration. Consult of Marques da Costa (2011). *SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats.
2.2 Experimented tools in SPOTIA Project
The next experiences were realised in the context of SPOTIA Project methodology and
pretended to understand what kind of tools could be useful for the decision-making process
and, at the same time, could be part of a Spatial Decision Support System. These different
exercises depend not only of the available tools and data but are strongly related with the
decision-making phase or phases that we pretend to develop – support for diagnosis,
construction of objectives and actions framework, evaluation of policy`s implementation, etc..
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2.2.1 Supporting a more coherent planning system: consultation Platforms for diagnosis,
planning and evaluation phases
In order to interconnect the several instruments of territorial management and / or sectorial
instruments at various scales (essentially at national and regional), it is relevant to create a
tool that can bring together some of the most relevant information resulting from them:
managing to link them, thus seeking a higher efficiency of all planning system performance.
The efficiency of the entire planning system would be due to a bigger and better knowledge
of “what to do”, particularly aspects such as “who should act”, “what funding systems are
available”, “which instruments should respond to a particular aim”, “which problems and
diagnoses were identified” by the various instruments at various scales and across sectors.
Despite this is not a GIS tool, it remains relevant to support it, deciding and making know
what dynamics and, consequently, what indicators to monitor or to evaluate the policies
through the confrontation between the initial context and the new context of reality after the
execution of policies, suggested by the policies instruments.
In this sense, SPOTIA Project pretended to develop four consultation platforms that could be
used in different planning phases, as we identified previously in Table 1:
1. Consultation platform of the problems and SWOT identified in the main national and
regional planning instruments;
2. Consultation platform of the main planning instruments at European, national and
regional scales;
3. Consultation platform relating the objectives, measures, actions, indicators of the
planning instruments with the concepts of “sustainability”, “regional competitiveness”,
“territorial cohesion”, “polycentricity”, “territorial governance” and “territorial impact”;
4. Consultation platform of the approved projects of NSRF 2007-2013.
For these settings, we used Microsoft Access 2010, transforming simple tables in a query
application easily accessible for any user. Previously to the creation of these applications,
there were created a coding system of Themes and Domains and all items in all tables were
codified (Table 2). This coding system becomes the basis of consults, related with other
criteria filters such as "instruments" or "scale", having applications this preview (Figure 4) –
the first component with the criteria variables and the second component present the
searched results. Table 2. Themes of the SPOTIA coding system
SPOTIA Themes
Economy and business
Land uses
Research, Technological Development and Innovation
Climate change and carbon emissions
Information Society and ICT
Energy
Employment and labour market
Water, sanitation and solid waste
Tourism
Risks
Demography and aging
Environment
Social inclusion / exclusion
System Development and urban areas
Education, lifelong training and qualification
Development of rural areas
Health
Equipment and social infrastructure
Culture and heritage
Transport, Mobility and accessibility
Housing
Public Administration
Agriculture, forestry, industry and fisheries
Land Management
Source: Own elaboration
Consultation Platform 1. The first consultation platform is related with the diagnosis
elaborated in the context of the main territorial instruments of the national planning system.
In these diagnosis is usually to have a SWOT analysis, as in the Portuguese regional spatial
plans, or a set of problems, as in PNPOT. This platform allows a search by “instrument”, by
“item`s category” (problem, strength, weakness, opportunity, threat), by “coding system”
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created by the Project SPOTIA and also by the main “planning concepts”. However, it is
noted that, according to the territorial scale and the instrument`s type (guidance vs.
programmatic; land management vs. sectoral), the diagnostic would have different but
complementary perspectives, for an integrated national planning system. This platform could
be useful for different agents in different moments:
- To support the internal coherence of instruments, that is, according to the diagnosis
previously identified, are objectives and evaluation indicators meaningless?
- To support the external coherence of the various instruments, as the guidelines of the
central instruments should be implemented for all other instruments.
Consultation Platform 2. This second consultation platform pretend do aggregate the major
national and regional planning instruments, both territorial and sectoral, in a single
application. Into this package we highlight, as instruments of territorial basis, the National
Policy Planning (PNPOT), the National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSSD), the
various Regional Plans, the various thematic and regional Operational Programmes; and as
sectoral instruments arise between others, the National Strategy for Energy or the National
Employment Plan, among others. Also included are some European guiding documents,
especially white papers and green papers related with the themes developed by SPOTIA
Project.
Consultation Platform 3. The third consultation platform is related with the main goal of
Project SPOTIA, which focuses on the analysis of the coherence of the main instruments in
analysis and the main European planning concepts - “sustainability”, “regional
competitiveness”, “territorial cohesion”, “polycentricity”, “territorial governance” and “territorial
impact”. In this platform, it will be possible to consult different levels of information, in other
words, it pretend to demonstrate what general and specific objectives, actions or indicators at
national or regional territorial scale, could answer to the planning assumptions declared by
the European Commission. In this platform too, after these first filters – the “planning
concept”, the “territorial scale” and the “level of information”, it`s possible to filter by the
SPOTIA “coding system” too (see Figure 4).
Figure 4 – Consultation Platform 3 – Instrument`s Guidelines
Source: Own production (work in progress)
Consultation Platform 4. This last platform pretends to focus the approved projects of the
NSRF 2007-2013, with filters as the “Operational Programme” (among five regional PO and
three sectoral PO), “policy area”, “type of operation”, “beneficiary”, “region and municipality”,
“approved eligible investment” and “approved community fund”. This consultation platform
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becomes relevant when related to another package of filters linked to the main planning
concepts - “sustainability”, “regional competitiveness”, “territorial cohesion”, “polycentricity”,
“territorial governance” and “territorial impact”. The data source for this platform is the
available database of the approved projects for all Portugal by NSRF 2007-2013. This
platform is helpful to understand the potential new dynamics in several thematics after the
concretization of the projects, to exchange information among all agents, and allows the
evaluation of the programmes, confronting the initial objectives with the executed actions,
being a relevant source for policy`s evaluation.
This kind of tool, as all tools, has positive and negative aspects. As positive aspects, it`s
possible to highlight:
- The ease to query relevant information in the context of territorial policies to support
the various phases of planning, from diagnosis to evaluation;
- The greater disclosure of the various agents, allows a greater transfer of knowledge
of the national planning guidelines among various instruments;
- The greater availability of knowledge strengthens the action of all agents, including
municipalities, communities, schools, companies, among others, and consequently,
strengthens the governance;
However, strongly related to the inherent characteristics of the sources of information, in
SPOTIA Project, it is verified some limitations too:
- There is not easy to actualize these platforms, requiring an active participation of the
various actors of planning regarding the centralization of information when changed or
updated to the responsible technicians for the maintenance of the platform, being necessary
to transform the raw information provided by the agents in the proper format for the operation
of the platform;
- The great diversity of the organization of the instruments, even considering the
instruments of the same type (eg. the various regional plans of spatial planning), make
difficult the task of construct this type of platforms;
The operationalizing of this platform and being the agents available to participate in an
integrated form, some potentialities are found:
- The main potential of this tool is the effort for a more coherent system of national
planning, through the knowledge of the main national guidelines of the main policies.
2.2.2 Knowing better for better decisions: WEBGIS as dynamic and user-friendly monitoring
system
The WEBGIS refers to a GIS tool that uses the Internet as the main mean to access
analysis, processing and dissemination of geographical information (Peng, 1999; Peng e
Beimborn, 1998; Plewe, 1997 in Dias, 2010). The easy access and an interactive interface
makes it as a great tool for exchanging information, spatial processing and public
participation all through the Internet. The main potentiality of the WEBGIS is the not need of
installed programs in the local computers, allowing a higher access to the general
community, and at the same time, is not required a complex GIS software knowledge to
visualise the spatial information by the users. However, some limitations are identified, as the
lack of access to the Internet for all community`s members, especially for individuals with
low-income and/or low-education levels (Peng, 2001 in Dias, 2010).
At the same time, there are continuous discussions about the utility of indicators in planning,
especially for diagnosis or evaluation phases, indicators that will be the basis of web
mapping. For example, Hoernig and Seasons (2004) synthetize the main strengths of its use
– the simplification of a complex reality, the possibility of describe and track some dynamics,
the identification of trends and patters, the comparison of the different units, the support for
predictive mechanisms and the reinforce of decision-making are some of them. In this
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context, the indicators types could have distinct perspectives too (Hoernin and Seasons in
Marques da Costa, E. (2011)):
- Conventional – with a single-sector approach, as “Economy”, “Social well-being” or
“Environment”;
- Integrative – a multi-sectoral approach, as “Sustainability”, “Healthy cities” or “Quality
of Life”;
- Performance – with a performance, production or financial approaches of the
department or programme.
In SPOTIA Project, the dissemination of information not only for the decision-makers but for
the community in general is one of the main goals. Recurring to ArcGis Online and ArcGis
Explorer as tools, the developed SPOTIA WEBGIS (Figure 5) presents two axes of
information: the first – General analysis – is based on the total of parishes, municipalities and
regions of mainland Portugal, and the second – EFMA Case Study - is focus only on the 21
municipalities that composed the EFMA case study (previously referred in part 2.1).
Figure 5 – Consultation Platform 3 – Instrument`s Guidelines
Source: Own production (work in progress)
In both, there are three common axes: cartography of the main indicators by theme,
cartography of land use and its evolution, and geographical modelling. In the EFMA case
study perspective, there is an extra axe, related with the location of the constructed
infrastructures in the context of this mega-project and the resulted water bodies. To
understand the main changes with spatial impact arising from the EFMA Project in the
respective area of influence in Alentejo Region, two perspectives were specified now, leading
to the main themes and the land use dynamic.
EFMA Case study - Main themes. The first aspect in analysis have the aim of mapping the
main trends in accordance with the various themes that are related with the case-study
dynamics – “Agriculture”, “Energy”, “Economy”, “Housing”, “Mobility”, “Population”, “Scholar
network and Education”, “Health network and Health”, “Tourism”; searching for the main
indicators at the lowest spatial scale and the most updated as possible. This WEBGIS
present a conventional approach for data analysis. In Figure 6 it`s possible to see the
desktop of the Thematic WEBGIS for EFMA Area. In this tool, selecting one thematic, we
could find several indicators to consult. After selecting one specific indicator, it`s possible to
visualise the mapping of the most recent results for all territorial units, and clicking in one of
them, it`s possible to find a specific table with the results for several years. For example, in
the “Scholar network and Education” thematic, it`s possible to find 10 indicators, as the
“Dropout rate”, “Illiteracy rate”, “Number of students”, “Number of schools per square
kilometer” or “Proportion of primary schools with fewer than 21 students”. This last indicator
is represented in Figure 6.
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EFMA Case study - Land use dynamic. This second perspective for EFMA area is related to
the land use dynamics. The main source of information used to map the land use dynamics
was the Corine Land Cover (CLC) for 1990, 2000 and 2006. Unfortunately, this source don`t
have more actualized data. The CLC data is composed for 3 levels of information: the first
level have 5 main categories of land use – “1. Artificial surfaces”,“2. Agricultural areas”,“3.
Forest and semi-natural areas”, “4. Wetlands”, and “5. Water bodies”; the second level
covers 15 classes of physical and physiognomic entities, and the third and last level have 44
categories. For example, in Figure 7 it`s possible to visualise the WEBGIS Desktop,
considering all land use categories of CLC level 1 for EFMA Area in 2006.
Figure 6 – Thematic WEBGIS for EFMA area. Case of Scholar Network and Education
Source: Own production. SPOTIA Project
Figure 7 – Land Use WEBGIS for EFMA area
Data Source: CLC 2006. Own production. SPOTIA Project
Benefiting from the very good interdependency of data by the various classifications of land
use, and the possibility to transport it to the WEBGIS, we can select only one class of any
CLC level. In the case of EFMA Project is important to understand what changes occurred in
the water bodies of the region after the construction of EFMA infrastructures, which includes
the Alqueva dam, Pedrogão dam, Alqueva hydroelectric central, the Global System for
Irrigation Pumping Station, among others. The “5. Water bodies” category at CLC level 1
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includes two CLC level 2 categories and five CLC level 3 categories: “5.1. Continental
waters”, with “5.1.1. Water courses” and “5.1.2. Water bodies”, and “5.2. Marine waters”,
including “5.2.1. Coastal lagoons”, “5.2.2. Estuaries”, and “5.2.3. Sea and ocean”. The
Figure 8 is a good example of this analysis, where is possible to see the evolution of the
“water bodies” area between 1990 and 2006, especially in the area where several
infrastructures were constructed.
Figure 8 – Land Use WEBGIS for EFMA area. Case of “Water bodies” CLC category
Data Source: CLC 1990 and CLC 2006. Own production. SPOTIA Project
Concluding about the WEBGIS tools, it`s possible to highlight some notes on its use. As
positive aspects we consider:
- WEBGIS is a user-friendly tool for general people, free and available for who have
Internet;
- allows decision-making processes more transparent, due to the dissemination of the
information;
- the possibility to map several indicators in the same WEBGIS, adding a summary
table with the evolution of the same indicator or even other indicators for each territorial unit
reinforce the understanding about the territorial dynamics;
- the capacity to create combinations of overlapped layers by the users in the same
WEBGIS (for example, using the CLC 2006 data, we can overlap the layers “1. Artificial
surfaces” and “2. Agricultural areas”; or overlap the same layer in different years, as 1990
and 2006, allowing the visual analysis of the evolution of land use of one category; or at last,
overlap one specific indicator at municipality scale and one network, for example, the
“Proportion of primary schools with fewer than 21 students” and the scholar network of all
schools).
It`s possible to identify some negative aspects too:
- there is some difficulties to conciliate all available spatial scale for all data, since the
parishes until regional scale, still having nowadays some lack of data for some territorial
units; - the obsolescence of the data undertakes a reliable analysis for decision support (for
example, the gap between the land use source CLC 2006 and the actuality);
- this tool needs qualified human resources to create and actualise all system to
maintain it operational for all users;
This tool reveals a great utility for several phases of planning – diagnosis, monitoring and
evaluation, for example, to understand the main trends of the context indicators or the
evolution of the land use, but if the data is not updated as regularly as necessary, both by the
WEBGIS manager and by the main statistical sources, as Eurostat or the National Institute of
Statistics, the tool becomes useless in the course of time.
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2.2.3 Geographical modelling as a tool to reinforce the decision-making process
The geographical modelling is linked to the function of predict and prescript in spatial
planning, allowing the elaboration of scenarios. These techniques could support the
monitoring and evaluation functions, allowing to create several answers depending on the
various scenarios prepared in accordance with the initial reality and policy options to take,
but also to change the direction of policy options in advance, adapting it to the dynamics
observed by the monitoring system.
One last activity in SPOTIA Project recurring to ICT tools is focused on Modelling exercises.
In this sense, there are some working groups developing different studies, using several
methods. Among the methods, we highlight: Graph Theory and Complex Networks;
Neural networks (e.g. SOM); combining neural networks with Multicriteria Analysis; Cellular
automata (combining neural networks and or Multicriteria Analysis, i.e. Weighted linear
combination (WLC) to adjust the transition rules).
Being a work in progress, some of the activities that are now under development are focused
on: 1. Build, analyse and visualise the network of actors (stakeholders) concerning spatial
planning, for all scales of Spatial planning instruments (IGT) and for each individually. The
metrics arising from the Graph Theory and Complex Networks, can allow identifying which
agents are more accessible, more central, which are the bridging ones, the cluster of
agents, as well as the degree of connectivity of the network and its resilience.
2. Data-mining, namely to explore the variables of the different domains
(social, economic, demographic, biophysical, legal, etc.) and to develop explorative (what if
scenarios?) and predictive scenarios
3. Building a predictive model to land use/cover changes
It is intended that this information integrate the developed WEBGIS proposed by SPOTIA
Project, being one more element to reinforce the Spatial Decision Support System, fostering
the dissemination of information and decision support.
3 FINAL REMARKS
The task of construct an SDSS is strongly related with the search for a more cohesive
national planning system. To develop that perspective, it`s relevant to improve the general
system through the availability of information in a more user-friendly way, considering the
existent technology and data, being the ICT tools a strong ally to optimize this system.
Having the objectives of SPOTIA Project as premises, and according to the managed data
and policy`s instruments (objectives, actions, indicators, projects, etc.), several tools were
tested to consolidate possible components of a SDSS, recurring to several tools and
methods, as some softwares as Access to database management or ArcGis for mapping and
modelling. It is also intended that these tools support different phases of planning - from
diagnosis, to policy definition, monitoring and evaluation.
As it was referred, all experimented tools present positive and negative aspects. However,
the gains of have this kind of tools and consultive platforms are largely higher than the loose
of do not have any available information to support the decision-making, having the tools the
function of promote an ease access to policy`s for decision-makers, academics and general
community, integrating several national and regional policies. All tools have the same threat:
if there is not a regular actualization, as we talk about the indicators, maps or policies, the
tools become obsolete.
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Concluding, there is no doubt that only an integrated spatial planning system relating the
multiple territorial and sectoral policies could make develop a more cohesive national
planning system, thereby enhancing the values proposed by the European Commission of
promote more sustainable, more competitive but also more social, economic and territorially
cohesive regions.
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