Suchergebnisse

Significant advances in public participation geographic information systems technology and online mapping platforms have not translated into enhanced citizen participation in democratic planning processes. This study contributes to addressing this gap by evaluating the engagement of members of an urban community in sustainable neighbourhood planning through argumentation mapping. The study provided an online public discussion forum, together with a neighbourhood map to which the participants could link their discussion contributions. On the basis of participation statistics, contents of contributions, and responses to a survey, we discuss the participants' technical and engagement experiences. The sixteen registered participants lived within or near the 'Queen West Triangle' in downtown Toronto, Canada. They rated themselves as experienced computer users and consequently found the participation in the online discussion forum to be easy. The contributions showed a great degree of interest and knowledge in the issues of sustainable community development. However, while the majority of participants also rated themselves as comfortable with map reading, they found the handling of the online neighbourhood map difficult and did not use the option to link their comments to the map.

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) support collaborative decision-making in the public realm. PPGIS provide advanced communication, deliberation, and conflict resolution mecha nisms to engage diverse stakeholder groups. Many of the functional characteristics of Web 2.0 echo basic PPGIS functions including the authoring, linking, and sharing of volunteered geographic information. However, with the increasing popularity of geospatial applications on the Web comes a need to develop concepts for scalable, reliable, and easy-to-maintain tools. In this paper, we propose a cloud computing implementation of a scalable argumentation mapping tool. The tool also illustrates the opportunities of applying a Web 2.0 model to PPGIS. The searching, linking, authoring, tagging, extension, and signalling (SLATES) functions are associated with PPGIS functionality to produce a participatory GeoWeb tool for deliberative democracy.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enable the integration, mapping, and analysis of data across numerous domains. It has been estimated that 80 per cent of all data collected by governments and businesses contain geographic references, and the news media are no exception. We will explain how we conceptualize news items as spatial data points and illustrate how GIS can be used to manage and analyze them using a sample of geographic references from local news items published in the Toronto Star newspaper. The analysis makes use of cartographic mapping for visual analysis of local news distribution and geospatial tools for quantitative–statistical analysis of emerging patterns. The objective of this paper is to illustrate how computer-based mapping tools can be used to analyze the geographic distribution of news in order to identify concentrations and gaps in local news coverage within a given area and thus better understand issues and trends in local news reporting. Keywords : geographic distribution, GIS, local news, spatial point pattern analysis

Injury from causes such as falls, traffic accidents, or violence is a major public health issue globally. Injury prevention research aims to identify vulnerable populations and places by analyzing the spatial patters of demographic and socio-economic risk factors associated with elevated injury rates. The stakeholders in injury prevention and control are often distributed across government and public health institutions, non-profits, and even the private sector (e.g. insurance firms). While this situation calls for distributed, online research tools, their implementation may conflict with health data confidentiality and license limitations for socio-economic data. In this paper, we present the Online Injury Atlas for Ontario, which was designed with the explicit goal to make use of, and contribute to, the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure. We propose a service-based architecture that integrates publicly accessible map services with protected data layers. Thereby, we demonstrate the benefits of using spatial data infrastructures alongside private data at different levels of protection. In addition, we discuss the extensive data processing needs and specific cartographic design requirements of a Web atlas in the health and social sciences domain. ; C. Rinner, B. Moldofsky, M.D. Cusimano, S.P. Marshall, T. Hernandez (2011) Exploring the Boundaries of Web Map Services: The Example of the Online Injury Atlas for Ontario. Transactions in GIS 15(2): 129-145