A framework for participatory decision support using Pareto frontier visualization, goal identification and arbitration

Due to the increasing demand for citizen participation in public decision processes, participatory budgets are becoming popular in many municipalities. As there is little methodology available for this type of activities and Information Technology are scarcely used in them, we provide a formalization of participatory budgets, as well as describe two models to support these processes and their corresponding webimplementation. One model is based on an iterative negotiation method that allows offering fair solutions for a participatory budget problem. The other one is based on goal identification, allowing participants to communicate their preferences comprehensively. These models were implemented to support non-sophisticated users and develop a user-friendly, yet rigorous, participatory decision support system in this application area. We describe experiments with these systems.