1DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A GIS-ENABLED ONLINE DISCUSSION FORUM FOR PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

research and applications in participatory planning revealed that recent efforts in PPGIS concentrate primarily on making GIS or other spatial decision-making tools available and accessible to the general public (Tang, 2006). In order to support meaningful participation, a PPGIS application should also meet the principles of the participatory planning approach suggested by Rittel (1972). Those principles stress transparent decision-making that demands a setting that is conducive to mutual understanding among the participants through discussions. However, relatively little effort in PPGIS research to date has been put into addressing the communication and discussion needs of participatory planning (Tang, 2006). Those needs include supporting the multi-way flow of information among various participants; facilitating participants understand each other’s positions; and comprehending the evolution of ideas throughout the discussion process. Since planning issues concern with geographic matters, the effective communication of geographic features, geographic extent, geographic location, and spatial relationships between objects (collectively known as “spatial context ” in this paper) is an essential prerequisite for successful spatially-related discussions. This paper presents a research effort in examining the communication needs for PPGIS applications in participatory planning. For details of the research, please refer to Tang’s (2006) M.Sc.E. thesis entitled Design an