Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications
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ItemDiscuss: a soft computing approach tospatial disaggregation in economicevaluation of public policies(Blackwell, 2006)For more than three decades cost-benefit analysis (CBA) has been used in manycountries as an important tool for evaluating public policies. More recently, participationof stakeholders in CBA processes has become an important issue for governments.However, CBA by itself does not provide a good environment for stakeholderparticipation. A major reason for this is the lack of spatial disaggregation intraditional CBA. In order to allow greater public participation, a GIS-based approachis proposed. This approach uses a Geocomputational system, which incorporates softcomputing theory with expert systems in a geographic information systems (GIS)environment. It is designed to generate representations of environmental, economicand social policy outcomes according to the perceptions of the stakeholders and afterthe CBA results have been obtained. The methodology proposed for modellingimpacts in cases where uncertainty exists uses the soft computing theory of fuzzy logicto generate a raster map based on spatial inputs provided by the stakeholders involvedin the decision process. This computer-based system, called DISCUSS (DecisionInformation System for Community Understanding of Spatial Scenarios), is intendedfor situations where the government chooses to evaluate a policy using CBA anddesires to encourage public participation in evaluating the results identified by theeconomic methodology. DISCUSS and the maps that it produces are being testedin a public participation case study with long-term impacts over a large area ofsouth-eastern Australia.