Exploring the use of multi-agent systems for interactive multi-actor spatial planning
A. Ligtenberg · 2006
One of the misconceptions of a PhD research is that it requires years of exile in small rooms with piles of books, notes, papers, and a computer.Perhaps for some this is true.For me, however, an important aspect of "doing a PhD" involves communicating and discussing my work with open minded and motivating people, who have inspiring ideas and unexpected views, and who are not afraid to say that I'am talking double Dutch.I was lucky to have quite a lot of such people around me, which I would like to thank.First of all my (co)-promotors, Adrie Beulens, Arnold Bregt, Dik Kettenis and Monica Wachowicz.They appeared to be the perfect mix of scientific meticulousness, pragmatism, creativity and realism.Just what I needed when I was: to vague, to detailed, to imprecise, to fast, to slow, to ambitious, or not ambitious enough.They helped me to develop a scientific attitude for sure I will benefit in my future work.But they were not the only ones.I also like to thank the colleagues at the Centre for Geo-information and the Information Technology Group of Wageningen UR.Especially my running-and roommate Marion, with whom I spend a lot of hours discussing science, society, children, partners, and life in general, while running in the forest.Also Tessa who, with a lot of enthusiasm, struggled through the text of my thesis.Without her efforts a lot, of "typo's" and weird sentences would be left undiscovered.To Ron van Lammeren and Jandirk Bulens I'am very grateful for liberating me at a regularly basis from my thesis work by inspiring, innovative, future oriented, creative ideas for new projects that really needed to be worked out.Projects which I needed in order to fuel-up again for my thesis.Adrie van de Brink, and Arnold van der Valk, Rob van de Velde, and the facilitators of WING Process Consultancy I would like to thank for sharing their view on participatory planning and validation and for their efforts in reviewing the model.Also to the students of the Wageningen MSc course Geo-information Science 2006 I'am grateful for "playing their role" in validating the model.The management of the CGI (Gerard and Jandirk) I like to thank for viii their flexibility and support when I tried to combine thesis work with the ongoing projects.And finally of course, Jolanda, Bart and Yente.I know, especially the last six months, I had a more intimate relation with my laptop than with you.Thanks for being patient with me and allowing me to do this in my own way.But also thanks for being impatient every now and then; calling me back to earth when I tend to become to much "the workaholic who forgets about his priorities".It is good that this has come to an end.But . . .there still remain a lot of things to learn and to explore. List of Tables4.1 Entities and stages in the conceptual model . . . . . . . . . .5.1 Part of the decision table of the regional authorities for high, moderate or low preferences for urbanization. . . . . . . . . .5.2 Change in land-use for the three scenarios. . . . . . . . . . . .6.1 Parameters assigned to the scenarios (explanation of abbreviations see equations 6.4 and 6.6.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7.1 Aspects used during the expert validation. . . . . . . . . . . .7.2 Remarks made by the experts during the face validation. . . .7.3 Land use classes used by the citizen groups to define urban and forest/nature areas.The table derives from the results of the second stage of the role play. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7.4 Land use classes used by the farmers groups to define urban, existing agriculture, and small villages.The table derives from analyzing the results of the second assignment. . . . . . . . . .7.5 Land use classes used by the nature conservationists groups for the definition of beliefs for nature and historical villages.The table derives from the results of the second assignment. . Interactive multi-actor spatial planning processesDepending on the goal, scale, and nature of planning there are myriad of approaches that have been developed in interactive multi-actor spatial planning; ranging from well described, formal working processes up to and including descriptions of best practices applied on "ad-hoc" basis.In this thesis the research investigates issues related to aspects of interactive spatial planning process itself, such as communication, negotiation, group decision-making, conflict resolution, and knowledge management.Based on a literature review, a conceptual model of interactive multi-actor spatial planning will be