Information Technologies for Environmental Decision-Making in Networked Society

Environmental decisions are difficult because of complex physical, technological components, economic and social influences and impacts. The complexity of the physical and technological aspect led to the development of many simulation models and decision support systems including spatial decision support and geographic information systems augmented with decision support components. Lack of mechanisms allowing social participation and conflict resolution during all stages of the decisionmaking often leads to undesired results including social unrest and rejections of good compromises. Assuming that (1) the public needs to actively participate in environmental conflict decision-making, and (2) the emerging networked society and its various organizations can gain access to highly sophisticated information technologies, we discuss the opportunity to construct and use electronic agora support systems. These systems utilize technologies embedded in e-business systems providing facilities for learning about environmental problems, sharing information and knowledge, engaging in disputes, creating alternative scenarios and assessing them, and making decisions in a collaborative framework. 1 This work has been supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from Concordia University. The authors thank Professor Dino Bori and Dr. Angela Barbnente for the organization of the workshop which was instrumental to shaping this work and Margaret Kersten (Carleton University) for many comments and suggestions. http: / / interneg.org/ Management of Environmental Conflicts 2