International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B2. Istanbul 2004
To better organize the public input, together with the EIA map
displays, all comments are “threaded” and are stored and
managed in the system database. This allows easy access to
other’s input and comments on that input, with necessary
references to both textual and mappable data related to EA
study results. The organization of threaded comments is similar
to any threaded discussion forum found on the Internet (see
Figure 7), which can be accessed through the Public Input link
as shown in Figure 5 and map features as shown in Figure 6.
Note: you may need to reload this page to see the most
recent additions.
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Figure 7 GeoNotice interface: threaded public comme
5. DISCUSSIONS
During our preliminary study and prototype development, we
havé encountered several organizational and technological
issues, on top of many social issues. Some of them are briefly
discussed as follows:
One of the problems is who is going to run and maintain the
GeoNotice system. As described previously, the proponents,
normally government agencies are responsible for broadcasting
public notices and the external consultants retained are
responsible for conducting class EA studies, presenting results
to the public, and collecting public input. Ideally, the system
should be run and maintained by the municipal government and
open to the consultants to load required data and information,
following guidelines. However, this needs further investigation
together with involved parties.
Public enthusiasm in participation is another big issue to
consider in system design in terms of interfaces, service
availability, and easiness of using the system. In addition,
lower attendance of public meetings makes the meeting system
suspicious in terms of cost savings. Special considerations
should be given to how easy such networked meeting systems
can be setup and whether they help improve the attendance
physically or virtually. This also led us to a component-based
design, which allows the incremental implementation of the
developed methods and tools.
GeoNotice system is an effort of technology integration from a
technological perspective. A problem associated with it is the
selection of different technology components to minimize
potential cost required to implement the system and to
maximize (or reduce technology impediments to) public
involvement. For example, the software tools developed can
depends on large, commercial systems such as Oracle Database,
Internet Map Server, Workflow Management System, ctc.,
which will pose a huge initial investment and high license
maintenance cost. Other problems, common to all online
application development, are the compatibility of different web
browsers and Internet connection speed.
274
6. CONCLUDING REMARKS
This paper discusses the application context. design, and some
implementation issues of preliminary development effort of an
online GIS-enabled public notice system. While we believe the
system will help improve the public participation in municipal
class EA process, there are still many issues needed to be
further studied before this can be realized. Specially, we look
for using our initial prototype, simple yet functional, to support
sclected real-world projects. It has to be pointed out that, given
the limited access to the Internet in some areas and some social
sectors, the traditional approach should not be replaced. The
approach discussed should rather be considered as a good
complementary means to facilitate public involvement.
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Allen, E., 2003. Obstacles to Community Adoption of PPGIS
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Ban, Y., U., 2003. Public-Participatory Land Use Decision
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CEAA, 1996. A Guide on Biodiversity and Environmental
Assessment. A report from Canadian Environment Assessment
Agency, http://www.ceaa.gc.ca/, (accessed on April 25, 2004)
CEAA, 2003. Canadian Environment Assessment Act.
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency website,
http://www.ceaa.gc.ca/, (accessed on April 25, 2004)
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