Qualitative reasoning in participatory spatial planning: the use of OSIRIS in the Yellow River Delta
Keywords
participatory modelling, participatory spatial planning, qualitative reasoning
Start Date
1-7-2010 12:00 AM
Abstract
Societies see the emergence of new governance concepts, based on the assumption that processes of planning and decision taking are no longer hierarchical but the product of complex interactions between governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and the general public (the model of ‘co-production of knowledge’; Callon, 1999). All involved are seeking to influence the collectively binding decisions that have consequences for their interests. To account for this changing governance and the increased number of stakeholders involved, decisions need to be assessed in an integrated context. This paper discusses the OSIRIS modeling environment for knowledge rule based reasoning on spatial information. The Yellow River Delta project is used as an illustrative case study to describe how the tool helped to develop a model to determine effects on vegetation and fauna when changing abiotic parameters in the delta and apply different scenarios. The tool was used in several workshops in which typologies were determined and relationships between them have been defined by means of rules of thumb. Participants needed to think in a structured way following the conceptual framework of spatial strategies and typologies linked with available spatial data and the available expert knowledge. In the application of scenarios the causal relationships of impacts of spatial plans could be explored by highlighting the decision path in the rules of thumb as defined by participants during the workshop itself. This knowledge transparency makes it possible to have several iterations of fine-tuning the model during a single stakeholder workshop.
Qualitative reasoning in participatory spatial planning: the use of OSIRIS in the Yellow River Delta
Societies see the emergence of new governance concepts, based on the assumption that processes of planning and decision taking are no longer hierarchical but the product of complex interactions between governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and the general public (the model of ‘co-production of knowledge’; Callon, 1999). All involved are seeking to influence the collectively binding decisions that have consequences for their interests. To account for this changing governance and the increased number of stakeholders involved, decisions need to be assessed in an integrated context. This paper discusses the OSIRIS modeling environment for knowledge rule based reasoning on spatial information. The Yellow River Delta project is used as an illustrative case study to describe how the tool helped to develop a model to determine effects on vegetation and fauna when changing abiotic parameters in the delta and apply different scenarios. The tool was used in several workshops in which typologies were determined and relationships between them have been defined by means of rules of thumb. Participants needed to think in a structured way following the conceptual framework of spatial strategies and typologies linked with available spatial data and the available expert knowledge. In the application of scenarios the causal relationships of impacts of spatial plans could be explored by highlighting the decision path in the rules of thumb as defined by participants during the workshop itself. This knowledge transparency makes it possible to have several iterations of fine-tuning the model during a single stakeholder workshop.
