Indicated by the volume and geographical extent of initiatives for a sustainable future of the planet, there is an increased request for planning to satisfy normative requirements that safeguard sustainability of the adopted plans. However, sustainable planning projects often demonstrate incomplete or oversimplified planning processes. At the same time, a plethora of Planning Support Systems (PSS) exist, heralding the easing of planners’ work. Nonetheless, they cannot boast widespread use, which is perplexing to PSS experts. This PhD sought to explore the two issues for a possible convergence point. To this end, the abductive research strategy was embraced, with existing literature serving as the set of observations. This bottom-up investigative path concluded in recognition of the wicked nature of the planning process and of the fact that design of Information Systems (IS) for planning has been missing this point. The outcome was the suggestion of adopting the Open World Assumption (OWA) in the architecture of a PSS, which translates into using Semantic Web technologies for implementation of its functionalities, as a plausible solution. The next objective was to design an IS that would test feasibility of the solution, and would ultimately assess worthiness of the OWA approach. Dealing in essence with a wicked problem, emphasis was put on building a suitable approach from step one, a journey that involved ontological and epistemological decisions and which ended up with choosing Pragmatism as the research paradigm and Design Science Research as the methodological framework. Design and implementation of the IS were subsequently arranged around processes taken from two distinct planning cases, namely the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Sardinia and the sustainable management of the Maasai Mara rangeland in Kenya, with the first one used for experimenting on knowledge integration and the second one for investigating GIS tool integration. The outputs of this final phase of the PhD were artifacts - a Knowledge Base concerning a SEA planning procedure and a mapping between a GIS software workflow model and elements of a workflow notation that can be used as intermediary between different GIS software -, meta-artifacts, i.e., the design of two aspects of what could be one integral PSS, as well as knowledge generated during design and implementation. Ultimately, an indication of the approach’s research merit has been shown, while work involving more complex processes would help better estimate the potential of the suggested solution.

SEMANTIC WEB TECHNOLOGIES IN A PROCESS-AWARE PLANNING SUPPORT SYSTEM

KECHAGIOGLOU, XENI
2019-02-21

Abstract

Indicated by the volume and geographical extent of initiatives for a sustainable future of the planet, there is an increased request for planning to satisfy normative requirements that safeguard sustainability of the adopted plans. However, sustainable planning projects often demonstrate incomplete or oversimplified planning processes. At the same time, a plethora of Planning Support Systems (PSS) exist, heralding the easing of planners’ work. Nonetheless, they cannot boast widespread use, which is perplexing to PSS experts. This PhD sought to explore the two issues for a possible convergence point. To this end, the abductive research strategy was embraced, with existing literature serving as the set of observations. This bottom-up investigative path concluded in recognition of the wicked nature of the planning process and of the fact that design of Information Systems (IS) for planning has been missing this point. The outcome was the suggestion of adopting the Open World Assumption (OWA) in the architecture of a PSS, which translates into using Semantic Web technologies for implementation of its functionalities, as a plausible solution. The next objective was to design an IS that would test feasibility of the solution, and would ultimately assess worthiness of the OWA approach. Dealing in essence with a wicked problem, emphasis was put on building a suitable approach from step one, a journey that involved ontological and epistemological decisions and which ended up with choosing Pragmatism as the research paradigm and Design Science Research as the methodological framework. Design and implementation of the IS were subsequently arranged around processes taken from two distinct planning cases, namely the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Sardinia and the sustainable management of the Maasai Mara rangeland in Kenya, with the first one used for experimenting on knowledge integration and the second one for investigating GIS tool integration. The outputs of this final phase of the PhD were artifacts - a Knowledge Base concerning a SEA planning procedure and a mapping between a GIS software workflow model and elements of a workflow notation that can be used as intermediary between different GIS software -, meta-artifacts, i.e., the design of two aspects of what could be one integral PSS, as well as knowledge generated during design and implementation. Ultimately, an indication of the approach’s research merit has been shown, while work involving more complex processes would help better estimate the potential of the suggested solution.
21-feb-2019
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11584/261281
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