A structured decision approach for integrating and analyzing community perspectives in re-use planning of vacant properties in Cleveland, Ohio

An integrated GIS-based, multi-attribute decision model deployed in a web-based platform is presented enabling an iterative, spatially explicit and collaborative analysis of relevant and available information for repurposing vacant land. The process incorporated traditional and novel aspects of decision science, beginning with an analysis of alternatives, building on this analysis with a workshop to elucidate opinions and concerns from key decision-makers relevant to the problem at hand, then expanded by extracting and compiling fundamental objectives from existing planning efforts and previously published long-term goals. The model was then constructed as an open-source, web-based software platform for use as a process for exploring, evaluating, comparing, and optimizing fundamental, strategic, and means objectives. The resulting beta model, MURL-CLE, is intended to allow all interested parties, from stakeholders to decision makers, to consider alternative options for reuse of vacant land in a neighborhood in Cleveland, OH and to do so in a deliberative, transparent, and defensible process. The beta model is intended to be a platform for growth as a decision science tool and to provide a reproducible mechanism for considering any complex decision that attempts to incorporate multiple competing objectives and to allow an iterative process, as opposed to a prescribed solution or ranking of alternatives, for community decision making