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the assessment and evaluation of alternatives, the preferred 
alternative, public input to-date, and other study materials. In 
addition to regular public meetings, supplementary meetings 
with affected parties or working groups may also be held for 
public input. These special meetings are usually more technical 
or subject oriented, requiring more technical details. 
  
  
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of Winston Churchill Boulevard (source: Region of Peel) 
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2.3 Problems and Potential for Improvement 
By examining the existing approach for public consultation in 
class EA process, a number of problems and potential for 
improvements can be identified. 
First of all, the public is often unprepared when situations 
requiring participation emerge and they react to circumstances 
determined by project proponents [Meredith, 2000]. In other 
words, the public very often comes to the public meeting 
without sufficient background and has to follow whatever 
decision path presented by the project proponents. 
During the process of the EA study of a project, "where the 
responsible authority has determined that public participation is 
appropriate, it must provide an opportunity for the public to 
examine and comment on the screening report [CEAA, 2003]." 
This requires innovative approaches to support easy yet fully 
exploration of class EA study results as well as commenting on 
them before and after attending public meetings. . 
Secondly, interested citizens have to physically attend the 
public meeting to be able to understand the related issues and 
voice their concerns and/or comments, which is very often 
difficult for them given their other commitments. Problems of 
accessing public meetings have been seen as a deterrent to 
"having your say" [Lowndes, et al., 2001b]. Existing remedies 
of providing either contact information in notices for obtaining 
further information or simple online feedback and /or comment 
form prove to be not sufficient. For example, for those citizens 
Who cannot attend the meetings, it is difficult for them to get 
necessary analysis results, alternative scenarios, plans, etc. to 
form an overall consensus or concern. 
Finally, but not lastly. the existing approach does not provide a 
rich platform to support interactive public input prior, during, 
and after public meetings. Full public participation in class EA 
processes cannot be completely realized through a few public 
Meetings held at specific locations and time, as well as written 
communications. Participants need to "play with" various 
alternative solutions/designs (including their own ones) before 
making and/or commenting on the preferred alternative. 
Technology advances should be well utilized to allow the 
public input at anytime from anywhere, with support of 24 
hours participation services access including tools and 
information [Lowndes, et al, 2001b]. Such utilization enables 
interactive, explorative generation and analysis of 
environmental impacts shown on maps, for instance, and 
supports multi-criteria decision making. 
There may be many solutions to tackle the aforementioned 
problems. This paper presents an integrated solution based on 
the Internet, geographical information systems (GIS), database, 
and workflow technologies. Our solution supports an integrated 
public participation workflow process that flows from the 
beginning of a class EA to its end, ensuring continuous public 
involvement anytime anywhere. 
2.4 GIS as a Facilitating Tool 
The spatial nature of EA study and the increasing role of public 
input in class EA processes in Canada encourage integration of 
GIS in EA decision making. For example, GIS is identified as 
one of the information technology sources in addressing 
biological diversity in EA process [CEAA, 1996]. Environment 
assessment includes geographical factors as input and 
environmental conditions as output, and it is important that the 
latter be expressed in easily understood forms to the public. 
The ability of GIS to physically overlay and perform analysis 
on selected criteria enables project designers to limit the impact 
to environmental sensitive areas. However, the potential that 
computing technology including GIS technology brings to the 
general citizens for public discourse remains largely untapped. 
In effect, maps are mostly used to only provide effective visual 
communication aids (e.g. large-format colour displays) for 
presentations to the public during public meetings. 
GIS output is considered to be highly advantageous in 
understanding and interpreting environmental impacts [Haklay, 
2003]. In order to use GIS as an effective tool to facilitate 
public consultation in class EA processes, the following 
environment factors, although not an exhausted list, must be 
well understood and presented using GIS and maps in an easy- 
to-understand manner with respect to individual EA study: 
e Natural Environment: vegetation and wildlife (habitat and 
movement); forest areas; groundwater resources/wells; and 
aquatic/fisheries resources 
e Social Environment: property acquisition requirements 
and frontage impacts; pedestrian: noise; and existing and 
future land usc compatibility 
e Cultural Environment: built heritage and cultural features; 
and archaeological resources 
3. OUR APPROACH 
3.1 General Framework: a Big Picture 
Our model for public consultation in class EA processes builds 
on two separate yet inter-connected use cases: GIS-enabled, 
media rich virtual environments for public notices and 
collaborative multimedia public meeting environments. These 
two use cases are conceptually described as follows: 
l. Each project undergoing a class EA process possesses a 
single access point on the web, leading to a public 
participation virtual space. All the notices of the public