PARTICIPATORY GIS APPLICATIONS

Public Participation GIS (PPGIS)

Participatory GIS (PGIS)

DEFINITION

PGIS is a term that has been coined to express the adoption of GIS to empower indigenous and local communities.

The movement represents the vision of GIS practitioners who have developed an interest in the socio-political contributions that the technology can make to empower less privileged groups in society.

PPGIS is therefore about the role of GIS in a broader consideration of the empowerment and disempowerment of communities.

It is viewed as an alternative to traditional GIS applications with an agenda to empower communities who are often ignored in traditional GIS applications.

Some consider PPGIS to be a post-modernist transformation of GIS applications, or an activist agenda that is directed at the democratization of society, technology and spatial data usage.

The PGIS initiative focuses on generic issues such as empowerment and equal representation.

It is believed that without access to GIS and its analytical capabilities and popular appeal, ordinary people would find it difficult to respond to official policies that alienate them. The communities could therefore lose out in public policy debates that involve GIS.

PPGIS provides tools that allow communities to achieve some leverage in their dealings with state bureaucracy.

According to Obermeyer (1998 p. 6), the movement aims to develop a GIS that will be adaptable to “inputs from ordinary citizens and other non-official sources”.

Generally, PPGIS projects are designed to move underprivileged groups from a situation where they have no influence on decisions that affect them, to one where they can fully participate and have a decided impact on the outcomes.

It is the empowerment of weaker members of society, rather than the production of information for official policy decisions that drive PPGIS applications. Recorded benefits of PPGIS projects thus include advocacy of popular causes, a better understanding of local issues, and accessibility of communities to digital spatial information.

THE NATURE OF PGIS APPLICATIONS

Craig and Elwood (1998) believe the organizations adopt GIS for the following reasons:

1. Administrative purposes: i.e., program evaluation

2. Strategic purposes: i.e., assessment of local or neighborhood needs

3. Organizational purposes: i.e., recruitment of members, and

4. Tactical purposes: i.e., counter-mapping, representation of local knowledge etc.,

PARTNERSHIPS FOR PGIS APPLICATIONS

In inner cities and local communities in North America and Europe where technical competency and cost has been a barrier to GIS implementation, PPGIS applications occur within several organizational arrangements (Leitner et. al., 1998). These include:

1. Community-University partnerships with inner city communities (Ghose, 1999; Elwood 2001, Elwood and Leitner 1998: Craig and Elwood; 1998)

2. Grassroots social organizations (Sieber 2001, Martin 2000, Meredith et. al 2001, Tulloch 2001)

3. Community-based in house GIS (Craig and Elwood 1998, Sawicki and Burke 2001)

4. GIS facilities in Universities and Public Libraries

5. Map Rooms (City of Minneapolis Map Room, Leitner et al, 1998)

6. Internet Map Servers and Web-based PPGIS (Kingston 2001)

7. Neighborhood GIS Centers (Elwood, 2001, Ghose, 1999)

Characteristics of Traditional GIS Applications and PPGIS Practice

Traditional GIS	Characteristic	Participatory GIS
Technology and people	Focus	People, process and technology
Facilitate official policymaking. Improve software programs	Motivation/Goal	Empower communities Facilitate public participation.
Public officials, decision makers	Participants	Local, underprivileged groups
Supply driven, technological push	Implementation	Demand and need driven
Because it is possible	Why adopt?	Because it is needed
Rigid, hierarchical & bureaucratic	Organization	Flexible, open and participatory
Decided by GIS experts	Details of Applications	Decided by users/focus groups
Led and controlled by GIS experts	Role of GIS Experts	GIS experts act as facilitators
Multipurpose applications	Project Type	Specific projects
Public organizations & large private enterprises in Western developed nations.	Place	Local, rural and indigenous communities in both developed and developing countries
Top down, hierarchically structured.	Information Flow	Bottom up, grassroots and citizen participation.
Capital intensive projects	Expenditure	Low cost projects
State and corporate funding	Sponsorship	Donations, NGO support.
Big and complex systems	Size of Systems	Small and simple systems