Needs for Participatory , Geospatial Decision Support : Linked Representations for Sustainability Modeling

At the current time, and for some time in the future, one of the most important research areas for geospatial information technology (taken broadly to include geographic information system technology, remote sensing technology, global positioning technology) should be in support of “sustainability science” as mentioned in the National Research Council (1999a) report Our Common Journey: Transition Toward Sustainability. The challenge for a society dealing with sustainability is to sort through difficult choices for social, economic, and environmental development contextualized by environment, social, health, economic, political, and other major concerns a significant transdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary undertaking. Sustainability will embrace all that we know about data, information, knowledge management, analysis and visualization for assessment, planning, management, and decision-making activities. Some have thought sustainability to be a political concern only because of value-based choices, but the NRC (1999a) report, as well as hundreds of publications over the past few years have shown that the political challenge might in fact be one based on scientific underpinnings. How do we build the knowledge necessary to address ecological, social, and economic concerns simultaneously, while fostering an equitable quality of life for all people? The NRC (1999a) report describes how even global climatic change will be an important issue to regional and local decision makers, but much is still uncertain within causal chain, sustainability knowledge about regional impacts. For me such concerns touch on unknown issues about adaptive, watershed management as the interplay among science and decisions focusing on water resources, land use, and ecological integrity (NRC 1999b). Both NRC (1999a, 1999b) reports suggest that “adaptive knowledge” growth as an interplay between science and decisions can be fostered by geospatial information technology, especially if the technology can support pluralistic conversations among stakeholders, technical specialists and decision makers within an urban-regional setting – one of the most urgent needs because of urban growth.