A GIS-based decision support system for facilitating participatory urban renewal process

Abstract

Renovation of Urban Blighted Areas (UBAs) plays a vital role in the improvement of Urban Quality of Life (UQL), notably in developing countries. Due to socio-economic and legal issues in UBAs, the renovation process cannot be sufficiently realized without the intervention of both public and private sectors. As active involvement of owners, investors and urban managers in urban renovation increases the success of renewal projects, more considerable attention has been paid to owner-investor participatory models in the last few decades. In order to promote participatory urban renewal processes, a Spatial (GIS-based) Decision Support System (SDSS) has been developed. The primary objective of proposed SDSS is to present a general framework for the involvement of owners, investors, and urban managers in UBA processes. Through the integration of Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), the proposed SDSS provides an appropriate tool for the facilitation of participatory renewal procedures in UBAs. In addition to entering, storing, manipulating, analyzing and representing spatial data related to UBAs, the system provides further features for stakeholders including spatial negotiation, weighting, prioritization, validation, monitoring, and decision rule capabilities. The SDSS has been implemented in Tehran, and its quality has been validated from the perspective of developers, experts, and end users (owners and investors) in accordance with the ISO/IEC_9126 standard. Based on three group’s opinion, the system is relatively acceptable in terms of functionality, reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability, and portability in facilitating the urban renewal process.