Latest revision as of 15:55, 17 January 2013

Working Group 4 - main objectives

WG4 should assess models, tools and conventions for different phases of participatory planning process and for different tasks within these phases; for evaluating the effectiveness of DSSs in supporting participatory processes; and for deriving improved protocols to be included in guidelines on good practices for DSS development and use, the last point in concert with WG1.

Work Program 2009

Activities and Outputs

• WG4 established - 27 participants from 13 countries.
• Definition of public participation has been defined as well as a classification scheme of methods models and tools.
• Case template defining documentation of cases of participatory planning in forestry
• A description of cases following the template is emerging.
• A preliminary list of success criteria for participatory processes has been developed.
• WG4 sessions at Riga meeting.
• A WG4 designated page on the wiki opened.

Work Program 2010

Activities and Outputs

• WG4 has increased its number of participants from 27 from 13 countries in 2009 to 33 from 14 countries.
• The success criteria for participatory planning have been reviewed, and the criteria most relevant to DSS development have been selected, and their importance discussed. (manuscript Menzel, S. et al. 2010 was under preparation).
• Six cases for participatory planning have been included to the list in WIKI so far, from three different countries. More cases will be included in the coming year.

Work Program 2011

Activities and Outputs

• Manuscript on the properties of DSS potentially enhancing the success of participatory planning process was finished and submitted (Menzel et al.).
• The usefulness of DSS tools in the context of PP have analyzed through interviews of professionals working in the field (Italy and Finland under work). A manuscript has been prepared for the FORSYS special issue.
• A shorter email questionnaire was sent to professionals in other countries. 11 responses were obtained, the result of which show lack of familiarity of DSS tools available for PP among the practitioners.
• Descriptions of the usage of participation in the development were included to the DSS WIKI template for further analysis
• Descriptions of usage of DSS methods and tools in different phases of participatory planning were collected in the country reports for further analysis
• The contribution of DSS on participation is analyzed based on the information collected from important cases with case template questions, and from the coutry reports
• STSM’s (as proposed in the call text) are going to be hosted by the members of WG4.
• Continue the process of DSS meta-analysis together with other WGs:
  • Develop evaluation criteria.
  • Select case studies.

Work Program 2012

Activities and Outputs

• Semantic WIKI has been utilised in analysing which kind of support the forest DSS can provide for the participatory planning process. This was carried out by collecting the DSS that support a given planning task or planning phase according to the developers. These form the guidelines of WG4 from the point of view of forest manager organizing participatory planning.
• The manuscript on th requirements of forest DSS from participatory planning point of view was published in EJFOR. (Menzel, S., Nordström, E-M., Buchecker, M., Marques, A., Saarikoski, H., & Kangas A. Decision support systems in forest management – requirements from a participatory planning perspective.
• The manuscript concerning the perceived usefulness of DSS in different participatory planning tasks was accepted to be published in Forest systems special number (De Meo, I., Ferretti, F., Hujala, T., and Kangas, A. FORSYS: The usefulness of Decision Support Systems in participatory forest planning: a comparison between Finland and Italy).
• Participtation in the 1st International Scientific Conference 2012 “Implementation of DSS Tools into the Forestry Practice”, which will be held on May 10th - 13th, 2012
• The contribution of DSS on participation is analyzed based on the information collected from important cases and case studies (Valls et al.).

Work Program 2013

Activities and Outputs

• The papers by Menzel et al. and DeMeo et al. form the basis for the guidelines for DSS developers from participatory planning point of view.
• Participation in the FORSYS conference 2013 “Decision support systems for Sustainable Forest Management”, which will be held on April 24th - 26th, 2013 in UmeÅ Sweden.
• Manuscript about using participation in DSS development (by Valls et al.) will be used in preparing the guidelines
• The participatory planning cases and lessons learned will be introduced into the semantic WIKI.

The overall work plan

The first task for this is to establish general success measures for public participation by reviewing the existing literature. The review has been carried out, but new measures may be included during the work.

The second task is the review of different tools and working conventions and recommendations related to participation process. As the process covers all the phases (intelligence, design, choice, monitor), also the models and tools of participatory process relate to all these. The phases are further divided to tasks.

Collected information

Information is collected in three ways:

First, information is collected during the preparation process of country reports, concerning the problem types involving several parties. Information is collected on 1) what tools and methods are used, 2) in what phases they are used, and 3) how participatory planning is carried out (open/restricted/expert participation).

Second, information is collected concerning specific cases of interest from the participatory planning point of view. The cases of interest for participatory planning will be presented on the WIKI pages, and presented based on the case template given.

These problem type descriptions and specific cases will be subject to a further meta-analysis of the usage/usefulness of the different tools for the point of view of participatory planning.

Third, information on the usage/usefullness is also collected by directly asking the professionals working with PP what they think is useful but also what could be potentially useful.

A framework for classifying different models and tools

• Classify the DSSs and cases with respect to PP (based on problem types of CR etc.)
• Classify the PP cases with respect to phase.
• Divide the DSSs to a compilation of different tools.

For instance, one group of tools to consider in the group of KM tools, like the ways to analyze and include local information/expert judgment into the planning process.

Meta-analysis / reviews of existing models and tools

• Make reviews of the collected information (cases/CR), and see what tools are actually used in PP and what have not been used. If tools seemingly useful are not utilized in practise, we try to find out why.
• Make questionnaires/interviews of forestry planning professionals to find out what they feel are adequate methods and tools
• Screen the DSS cases to see how common using PP in the development has been, and to what sort of tasks.

Preparing the guidelines

As conclusions from the analyses above, we try to find out suitable tools (within DSS and/or outside) to match the needs of the process phases and/or different problem types.

Based on all the work carried out, guidelines for forestry practise are presented in the form of final report.