A Participatory Strategy for Geo-problem Solving Based on Tagged Activities

Geo-problem solving is an exploratory process in which lots of resources and expertise, including geographic data, algorithms, strategies, and models, are used to clarify various geographic processes and phenomena. Due to the complexity of the geo-problem, resources and knowledge from many different domains, including hydrology, meteorology, ecology, and even sociology, are usually adopted for geo-problem solving. Therefore, there is a necessity to conduct geo-problem solving in a participatory manner. However, previous participatory geographic and environmental research mainly focused on several activities, especially modelling and decision-making. For supporting a whole-process exploration of geo-problem solving, existing approaches still require to be improved, and participatory iterative attempts are needed. This paper proposed a participatory strategy for geo-problem solving. Focused on coordinating iterative attempts that conducted by distributed participants, this strategy employs eight tagged activities: (1) context definition and resource collection, (2) data processing, (3) visualization and representation, (4) model construction, (5) model evaluation, (6) quantitative and qualitative analysis, (7) simulation and prediction, (8) decision-making and management. Based on the directed-graph structure, tagged activities can be co-maintained online by distributed participants and linked together to drive the solving progress. Meanwhile, some online tools could be provided in these tagged activities to assist geographically distributed participants in geographic practices. Furthermore, by using the proposed strategy, a prototype web system was developed. And two cases are demonstrated in the prototype system to verify the feasibility and capability of the proposed strategy.