Abstract
Recent advances in cloud computing and the ability to more easily deliver online tools and services provide exciting opportunities for the development and application of online planning support systems. This paper describes the application of an online open source land suitability tool which has been developed as one of the many tools available through the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) workbench. The tool is part of the larger open source online What if? planning support system (PSS) which implements the desktop What if? PSS developed by Klosterman (Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 26:393–408, 1999; 2008). This paper describes the development of the online What if? suitability tool and the advantages and disadvantages of developing this novel solution. The paper focuses on a case study which used the tool for collaborative planning in the context of developing land suitability scenarios for the Metro North West sub-region in the Perth-Peel region undertaken by the Department of Planning in Western Australia. The paper concludes by discussing the lessons learned from formulating the land use suitability scenarios for Perth and outlines the next steps in the development and application of the online What if? tool.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brail, R. K. (Ed.). (2008). Planning support systems for cities and regions. Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Carver, S. (1999). Developing Web-based GIS/MCE: improving access to data and spatial decision support tools. In J.-C. Thill (Ed.), Spatial multicriteria decision making and analysis: a geographic information sciences approach (pp. 49–75). Sydney: Ashgate.
Carver, S., Evans, A., Kingston, R., Turton, I. (2001). Public participation, GIS, and cyberdemocracy: evaluating on-line spatial decision support systems. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 28(6), 907–921.
Collins, M. G., Steiner, F. R., & Rushman, M. J. (2001). Land-use suitability in the United States: historical development and promising technological achievements. Environmental Management, 28, 611–621.
Commonwealth of Australia (1999). Environment protection and biodiversity conservation Act 1999.
Delaney, P., & Pettit, C. J. (2014). Urban data hubs supporting smart cities In: S. Winter, & C. Rizos (Eds.), Research@Locate’14, Canberra, Australia, 07–09 April 2014. Published at http://ceur-ws.org, 13–25.
Geertman, S., Toppen, F., & Stillwell, J. (Eds.). (2013). Planning support systems for sustainable urban development. Heidelberg: Springer.
Hopkins, L. D. (1977). Methods for generating land suitability maps: a comparative evaluation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 43, 386–400.
Klosterman, R. E. (1999). The What if? collaborative planning support system. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 26, 393–408.
Klosterman, R. E. (2008). A new tool for a new planning: the What if?TM planning support system. In R. K. Brail (Ed.), Planning support systems for cities and regions. Cambridge: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy.
Klosterman, R. E. (2013). Lessons learned about planning: forecasting, participation and technology. Journal of the American Planning Association, 79, 161–169.
Klosterman, R. E., & Pettit, C. J. (2005). Guest editorial: an update on planning support systems. Environment and Planning, B: Planning and Design, 32, 477–484.
Malczewski, J. (2004). GIS-based land-use suitability analysis: a critical overview. Progress in Planning, 62, 3–65.
Malczewski, J. (2006). GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis: a survey of the literature. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 20, 703–726.
McHarg, I. (1969). Design with nature. Garden City: Doubleday/Natural History Press.
Moilanen, A., Franco, A. M. A., Early, R. I., Fox, R., Wintle, B. A., & Thomas, C. D. (2005). Prioritizing multiple-use landscapes for conservation: methods for large multi-species planning problems. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 272, 1885–1891.
Moilanen, A., Meller, L., Leppänen, J., Montesino Pouzols, F., Arponen, A., & Kujala, H. (2012). Zonation: spatial conservation planning framework and software version 3.1 user manual. Helsinki: Helsingin Yliopisto.
Pettit, C. J. (2005). Use of a collaborative GIS-based planning support system to assist in formulating a sustainable development scenario for Hervey Bay, Australia. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 32, 523–545.
Pettit, C. J., & Pullar, D. (1999). A integrated planning tool based upon multiple criteria evaluation of spatial information. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 23, 339–357.
Pettit, C. J., Shyy, T., & Stimson, R. (2002). An on-line planning support system to evaluate urban and regional planning scenarios. In S. Geertman & J. Stillwell (Eds.), Planning support systems in practice (pp. 331–348). London: Springer.
Pettit, C. J., Klosterman, R. E., Nino-Ruiz, M., Widjaja, I., Tomko, M., Sinnott, R., & Stimson, R. (2013). The online What if? Planning support system. In S. Geertman & J. Stillwell (Eds.), Planning support systems for sustainable urban development (pp. 349–362). Berlin: Springer.
Pettit, C. J., Stimson, R., Nino-Ruiz, M., Morandini, L., Widjaja, I., Delaney, P., Tomko, M., Sinnott, R., Randolph, B., Kvan, T. (2014). Supporting urban informatics through a big data analytics online workbench, NSF Workshop, Big Data and Urban Informatics, University of Illinios, Chicago, August 11–12th.
Sieber, R. (2006). Public participation geographic information systems: a literature review and framework. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96, 491–507.
Sinnott, R. O., Bayliss, C., Bromage, A., Galang, G., Grazioli, G., Greenwood, P., Macauley, G., Mannix, D., Morandini, L., Nino-Ruiz, M., Pettit, C. J., Tomko, M., Sarwar, M., Stimson, R., Voorsluys, W., & Widjaj, I. (2014). The Australia urban research gateway. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. doi:10.1002/cpe.3282.
Tomko, M., Bayliss, C., Widjaja, I., Greenwood, P., Galang, G., Koetsier, G., Sarwar, M., Nino-Ruiz, M., Mannix, D., Morandini, L., Voorsluys, W., Pettit, C., Stimson, R., & Sinnott, R. (2012). The design of a flexible web-based analytical platform for urban research, 20th ACM SIGSPATIAL, Redondo Beach, California, November 6-9th.
Vonk, G., Geertman, S., & Schot, P. (2005). Bottlenecks blocking widespread usage of planning support systems. Environment and Planning, A, 37, 909–924.
Voogd, H. (1983). Multicriteria evaluation for urban and regional planning. London: Pion.
Western Australia Department of Water. (2006). Land use planning in public drinking water source areas. Water Quality Protection Note, 76.
Western Australia Planning Commission. (2005). Population report no. 6: Western Australia tomorrow, population projections for planning regions 2004 to 2031 and local government areas 2004 to 2021. Western Australia: Western Australia Planning Commission.
Western Australia Planning Commission. (2010). Outer metropolican perth and peel sub-regional strategy—draft. Western Australia: Western Australia Planning Commission.
Western Australia Planning Commission. (2013a). Fact sheet—strategic assessment of the perth and peel regions. Western Australia: Western Australia Planning Commission.
Western Australia Planning Commission. (2013b). Strategic assessments: urban value atlas point system and mapping, draft version 1. Western Australia: Western Australia Planning Commission.
Acknowledgments
AURIN is a $24 million project which is developing national networked urban research infrastructure for Australia funded by the Commonwealth Government under the Education Investment Fund and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. AURIN is hosted at the University of Melbourne. This project was also supported by the Environmental Decisions Research Hub through funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Research Program (NERP). The authors thank their colleagues in the AURIN Office and the Core Technical Team and the Western Australia Department of Planning, in particular Bryce Bunny for his many contributions to this project. Finally, the authors wish to acknowledge contributions made by Brendan Wintle, Erin Pears, Nicole Matthews, David Mitchell, Catherine Garlick, Jess Miller and Dave Osborn.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM 1
(PDF 84 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pettit, C.J., Klosterman, R.E., Delaney, P. et al. The Online What if? Planning Support System: A Land Suitability Application in Western Australia. Appl. Spatial Analysis 8, 93–112 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-015-9133-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-015-9133-7