From Spatial Data Infrastructures to Planning Support Systems

Developments in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) offer spatial planners unprecedented wealth of digital spatial data and services, which may be used to support more informed decision-making in urban and regional planning. However, these resources are often underexploited due to lack of the necessary skills by practitioners, so missing the opportunity for innovation in the planning practices. Geodesign is an emerging approach which bridges the gap between spatial planning and design, and Geographic Information Science. The main underlying assumption in Geodesign is that geographic knowledge and geo-information technologies can support more informed design and sustainable decision-making in urban and regional planning. This contribution presents two different approaches developed by the authors to research in Geodesign. The first approach concerns the development of methodology-oriented 1st generation Planning Support Systems (PSS 1.0) for Local Land-Use Planning and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA-LLUP). The second approach concerns base research for the definition and development of process-oriented 2nd generation Planning Support Systems (PSS 2.0). The results aim at demonstrating how Spatial Data Infrastructures can be used as a base for Planning Support System implementation in spatial governance.