Design Considerations for Space and Time Distributed Collaborative Spatial Decision Making

The idea of GIS used by citizens in exercising democracy, dubbed public GIS, involves the use of GIS tools to help laypeople understand the spatial consequences of proposed projects and actions effecting their communities. The widening use of the Internet creates the opportunity of elevating GIS to a truly public decision making tool by making it accessible regardless of spatial and temporal constraints restricting its use. Before public GIS becomes a reality, however, empirical studies are needed to determine the feasibility of this idea. This paper presents the design of a prototype called Spatial Understanding and Decision Support System (SUDSS) that is a step towards implementing public GIS. SUDSS will be used in a series of controlled experiments in which groups of participants will collaborate on the Internet in a realistic land use zoning decision making problem in Idaho. The paper discusses system's interface design, functionality, and architectural arrangements.