A Spatially Intelligent Public Participation System for the Environmental Impact Assessment Process

An environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a decision-making process that evaluates the possible significant effects that a proposed project may exert on the environment. The EIA scoping and reviewing stages often involve public participation. Although its importance has long been recognized, public participation in the EIA process is often regarded as ineffective, due to time, budget, resource, technical and procedural constraints, as well as the complexity of environmental information. Geographic Information System (GIS) and Volunteer Geographic Information (VGI) have the potential to contribute to data collection, sharing and presentation, utilize local user-generated content to benefit decision-making and increase public outreach. This research integrated GIS, VGI, social media tools, data mining and mobile technology to design a spatially intelligent framework that presented and shared EIA information effectively to the public. A spatially intelligent public participative system (SIPPS) was also developed as a proof-of-concept of the framework. The research selected the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project (TRTP) as the pilot study area. Survey questionnaires were designed to collect feedback and conduct evaluation. Results show that SIPPS was able to improve the effectiveness of public participation, promote environmental awareness and achieve good system usability.