Seminar: Participatory Modeling For Collaborative & Equitable Planning: From Potential To Realization with Moira Zellner

Abstract:

Participatory modeling (PM) is a collaborative approach to formalize shared representations of a problem and, through the joint modeling process, design, and test solutions. This approach is particularly well-suited to address complex socio-environmental problems like climate change and its implications on equitable and sustainable resource management and landscape planning. Despite its potential to inform planning and policy, PM has yet to become a mainstream practice for decision-making. While most of the PM research and development has focused on modeling tools and engagement techniques, multiple other dimensions must be recognized and articulated for impactful planning support. I present a PM platform, fora.ai, that is supportive of the iterative steps in PM: problem definition and goal setting, preference elicitation, collaborative scenario-building, simulation, tradeoff deliberation, and solution-building. I demonstrate the platform’s effectiveness when embedded in a stakeholder-led process that integrates diverse knowledge, data sources, and values in pursuit of equitable green infrastructure (GI) planning to address flooding. The immediate visualization of simulated impacts, followed by reflection on causal and spatial relationships and tradeoffs across diverse priorities, enhanced participants’ collective understanding of how GI interacts with the built environment and physical conditions to inform their intervention scenarios. Participants shifted from untested beliefs to designs that were specifically tailored to the problem in the study area and the diversity of values represented, attending to both localized flooding and neighborhood-level impacts. They also derived generalizable design principles that could be applied elsewhere. I show how the combination of specific facilitation practices and platform features leveraged the power of data, computational modeling, and social complexity to contribute to collaborative learning and creative and equitable solution-building for urban sustainability and climate resilience. Grounded on a more fully integrated picture of PM, I propose an interdisciplinary research agenda to further evolve and scale up this practice for collaborative and just planning and policy. I highlight aspects of interface design and model biases, value elicitation and inclusion, management of diversity and innovation through facilitation, and the potential of novel computer-assisted assessment methodologies.

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About the Speaker:

Moira Zellner’s academic background lies at the intersection of Urban and Regional Planning, Environmental Science, and Complexity. She has served as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator in interdisciplinary projects examining how specific policy, technological and behavioral factors influence the emergence and impacts of a range of complex socio-ecological systems problems, where interaction effects make responsibilities, burdens, and future pathways unclear. Her research also examines how participatory complex systems modeling with stakeholders and decision-makers can support collaborative policy exploration, social learning, and system-wide transformation. Moira has taught a variety of workshops on complexity-based modeling of socio-ecological systems, for training of both scientists and decision-makers in the US and abroad. She has served the academic community spanning across the social and natural sciences, as reviewer of journals and grants and as a member of various scientific organizations. She is dedicated to serving the public through her engaged research and activism.