Community Viz and Municipal Conservation Planning

Judy Colby-George of Spatial Alternatives, is here to talk about how to engage the public by using GIS spatial tools.

It is important to tell the story behind GIS information, not necessarily the technical aspect of the process.  Thus, the Topsham plan, which was a similar process to the Sanford open space plan process, will be used to explain the importance of GIS information.

Community Viz is a GIS tool for spatial analysis. In Sanford inventories of town resources were compiled and maps were created of the resource locations. Resources inventoried include wetlands, soils, land cover, wildlife habitat. Maps were available at each public meeting and questions were encouraged. 

Somethings that the town learned was that keeping your models simple, when possible, is often beneficial for communication, even when it may involve leaving out some parts of the more complex picture. Also, in order for people to understand the model they need to be able to "play" with it. By interacting with the model people will come away with a better understanding. 

A resource inventory maps were combined in a model which showed areas of overlapping conservation value. These maps were used in a value voting exercise using fake money captured peoples priorities for conservation. The group values were then plugged into the resources model to show areas of priority for conservation. Keypad polling was used to capture demographic information on the group as well as their thoughts behind the way they voted on conservation values.

With all tools, whether GIS or keypad polling, it is important that they be evaluated for their application in a particular process.

Q: In your community meetings, was the information generated available at each successive meeting.

A: It was not.

Q: Did the meetings have repeat attendees.

A: One person attended two meetings.