Evaluating Measures of Collaborative GIS: Applications for Marine Spatial Planning on Multi-user Touch Tables

• Main Author: Brandon, Cathryn
• Other Authors: Canessa, Rosaline Regan
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Collaboration; GIS; Decision making; Marine Spatial Planning; Touch Tables
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/4928

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) increasingly utilizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and technologies to support decision-making with stakeholders and policymakers. The study of the group use of GIS to support decision-making processes is called Collaborative GIS. Measuring the impact and influence the technology has on decision-making processes is an important aim of Collaborative GIS research. To date, Collaborative GIS research has relied on qualitative questionnaires to measure the impact of GIS on group decision-making and the GIS software and technology being used, lacking support of quantitative measures. A novel technology increasingly being used for group planning processes with maps is multi-user touch tables; this technology encourages equality of technology interactions and increases participant engagement by allowing all group members the opportunity to interact with the technology, transcending limitations of single-user mouse environments. This research identifies and evaluates measures of collaboration for Collaborative GIS on multi-user touch tables for MSP activities. Group measures of participation are explored using coding systems to determine fluctuations in the groups’ participation using technological interactions and verbal participation by Google Earth task performed and by decision phase. Results indicate variation in participation across role play simulations due largely to group dynamics and participant personality, evidenced by researcher observation. Coding systems require improvements in capturing participation levels. Individual measures of participation are also collected to determine the equality of technological interactions and verbal participation by seat location around a multi-user touch table. Results indicate technological interactions and verbal participation are not equally distributed around a multi-user touch table using Google Earth. Seat locations closest to the Google Earth menus tend to have higher participation rates, with seat locations farthest from the menus marginalized. Furthermore, technological interactions by interface-menus, dialogue boxes, and earth display –have variation in equality of interactions by seat location. Menus and dialogue boxes have higher rates of inequality of participation than the earth display has. To date, study and collection of group and individual participation has been limited in Collaborative GIS research. With reliance on qualitative questionnaires to collect data, this study represents quantitative measures to describe Collaborative GIS group decision-making processes on touch tables. Whereas, previous literature represents coarse scale measures of the group’s process and outcome constructs, this study focuses on fine scale measures of collaboration. === Graduate === 0366 === 0632 === 0984