Internet of People: Opportunities and challenges for engaging stakeholders in watershed planning via the Web
Abstract
Social computing technologies are transforming the way our society interacts and generates content on the Web via collective intelligence. Previously unimagined possibilities have arisen for using these technologies to engage stakeholders and involve them in policy making and planning efforts. While the Internet has been used in the past to support education and communication endeavors, we have developed a novel, web-based, interactive planning tool that engages the community in using science-based methods for the design of potential conservation practices on their landscape, and thereby, reducing undesirable impacts of extreme hydroclimatic events. The tool, Watershed REstoration using Spatio-Temporal Optimization of Resources (WRESTORE), uses a democratic voting process coupled with visualization interfaces, computational simulation and optimization models, and user modeling techniques to support a human-centered design approach. This human-centered design approach, which is reinforced by use of Web 2.0 technologies, has the potential to enable policy makers to connect to a larger community of stakeholders and directly engage them in environmental stewardship efforts. Additionally, the design framework can be used by watershed groups to plug-in their own hydrologic models, climate observations and forecasts, and various other simulation models unique to their watersheds. In this presentation, we will demonstrate the effectiveness of WRESTORE for designing alternatives of conservation practices in a HUC-11 Midwestern watershed, results of various experiments with a diverse set of test users and stakeholders, and discuss potential for future developments.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.H33Q..05B
- Keywords:
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- 1805 Computational hydrology;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1819 Geographic Information Systems (GIS);
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1916 Data and information discovery;
- INFORMATICSDE: 1920 Emerging informatics technologies;
- INFORMATICS