Collaborative Spatial Decision Making with Qualitative Constraints

Usually spatial planning problems involve a large number of decision makers with different backgrounds and interests. The process of Collaborative Spatial Decision Making (CSDM) has to reconcile the individual approaches and lead to solutions that satisfy all participants. In this paper we deal with a particular instance of CSDM that involves qualitative constraints. Qualitative CSDM is very important for practical applications where decision makers communicate spatial knowledge using relations in space rather than absolute coordinates. It is also an interesting topic from the scientific point of view, because it combines several research areas related to Geographic Information Systems such as Spatial Query Languages, Constraint Satisfaction Mechanisms, Heterogeneous Databases, Spatial Access Methods and Group Decision Making. We describe the problems that need to be dealt with, we outline solutions, and we propose a computational model that can automate a large party of Qualitative CSDM. Topics: GIS and cooperative work, Requirements analysis for GIS applications, Interoperability among heterogeneous GIS, GIS meta data