Web-based GIS used to enhance public democratic involvement

Increasingly the World Wide Web is being used to disseminate information of a spatial nature; however, there are relatively few systems that allow the public to both query and manipulate information, let alone submit their ideas on spatial problems to those with the power to enact solutions. Ideally, systems should be available for the public to participate in finding solutions to a wide variety of real-world spatial problems. Such systems should allow users to: * examine objective bipartisan information, and meta-information, on a problem in a way that encourages comfortable exploration * add their own information in multimedia formats, discuss the datasets, and form interested communities. * examine the spatial datasets and manipulate them to run "what if" scenario models, and * reach an informed decision, submit this to those responsible for implementing it, see the results, and gain feedback on the reasons for the final choice. This paper outlines research aimed at distributing such systems to the public to aid in the solution of environmental problems with a spatial component. Initial results and future developments also are presented.