Tag Archives: Decision-Making

Faculty Fellow Showcase: Ralph Hall

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Ralph Hall in Senegal

Faculty Fellow Ralph Hall, assistant professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning program in the School of Public and International Affairs, explores the transdisciplinary approach to solving sustainability problems and its applications in many corners of the world.

Q. What are your main research projects at the present time?

My research interests currently fall into three broad areas that are linked by the theme of sustainability. The first and broadest area relates to identifying ways to transform industrial and emerging economies towards sustainable development. Over the past ten years I have been working with Prof. Nicholas Ashford (at MIT) on a textbook that explores the many dimensions of sustainable development and how national, multinational, and international political and legal mechanisms can be used to further sustainable development. In 2011, we published the textbook – Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State (Yale University Press) – and have since been working on articles to further extend this work. I would describe this research area as transdisciplinary, which means that the problems being addressed require solutions that can originate from any discipline. This first research area builds the broad foundation for my other two research interests.

My second research area focuses on sustainable transportation and continues the research I began with my PhD at MIT. I research decision-support frameworks that transportation agencies and practitioners can use to transition their transportation systems towards sustainability. This research also has broader applicability to other sectors of the economy and I hope to expand it into energy systems, agriculture, etc. My most recent work in this area relates to the design of performance measurement frameworks for transportation agencies. In 2011, I was an adviser to a research project that created A Guidebook for Sustainability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies. This guidebook was informed by best-practice case studies and practitioner interviews and has inspired a second book that I am working on with Dr. Henrik Gudmundsson (Technical University of Denmark), Dr. Greg Marsden (University of Leeds), and Dr. Josias Zietsman (Texas A&M University). This book will provide students and practitioners with a deep understanding of the basic concepts of sustainability as well as a coherent framework for how to apply them consistently in the context of transportation planning, management, and decision making at different levels of an agency. The purpose of the textbook is to outline an approach for measuring the performance of transportation systems against key sustainability principles.

My final research area relates to sustainable water supply and sanitation systems in developing regions. This applied, empirical research began during my postdoc at Stanford University and has since taken me to India, Colombia, Senegal, and Mozambique.

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Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds through Participatory Platforms in Planetizen

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MI’s Director, Kevin Desouza, outlines five guidelines to consider for Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds through Participatory Platforms was published on Planetizen. The future of design and planning is certain to be around participatory platforms, designers and planners should embrace these platforms and leverage their potential towards designing smart(er) cities through open, inclusive, and collaborative approaches. Planners need to learn how to orchestrate participation on these platforms so as to arrive at plans that are representative of community needs and within scope, budget, and resource constraints. Failure to achieve this will result in plans that fall prey to the foolishness or the rowdiness of crowds. I outline five simple guidelines to consider. To read more, click here - LINK

Metropolitan Institute to present at IGU Commission on Geography and Governance Annual Conference

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Kevin Desouza and Lauren Bulka will present at the IGU Commission on Geography of Governance annual conference set for April 2012 in Lisbon, Portugal. The International Geographic Union (IGU) is a network of scholars that focuses on the relationship between geography and governance, particularly in government/administration structures and processes. This year’s annual conference will focus on two main themes: “Citizen e-Participation in Urban Governance,” and the “Impact of Economic and Financial Crisis on Local Governance.” Kevin’s paper, co-authored by Akshay Bhagwatwar, “Citizen Apps and Urban Governance: Understanding the Landscape of Apps and their Impacts” focuses on examining the range of citizen applications (‘citizen apps’) targeted to solve urban issues and their ensuing impacts on planning, decision-making, problem solving, and urban governance. The paper looks broadly at citizen apps that address a wide range of urban issues from those that solve public transportation challenges to those advance management public utilities and services and even public safety. Lauren’s paper “Impacts of Inter-Municipality Cooperation on Small City Regeneration,” will focus on the impact of economic and financial crises on urban regeneration in small deindustrialized cities; looking specifically at the role inter-municipal cooperation could play in mitigating negative effects. The paper will use an in-depth case study of Clarksburg, West Virginia to analyze and propose innovative solutions for alleviating and addressing these impacts. For more information about these papers, please contact us.

 

IBM Center for the Business of Government: Citizen Apps as a Democratizing Technology

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The Metropolitan Institute is pleased to announce a new grant from the IBM Center for the Business of Government for our research project, Citizen Apps as a Democratizing Technology:  Challenges and Opportunities for Federal Agencies. This project will be conducted as part of the institute’s policy informatics portfolio with Kevin Desouza serving as the Principle Investigator.

Most US federal agencies have embraced President Obama’s vision for 1) greater transparency, 2) increased citizen participation, and 3) greater collaboration. A critical outcome of these initiatives is the willingness of federal agencies to engage with citizens around open-data initiatives and the creation of technology for solving public policy problems – ‘citizen apps.’ We are witnessing an increasing proliferation of ‘citizen apps,’ i.e. applications designed by citizens and developers to solve public policy challenges. Federal agencies are not only opening up data reservoirs, but are also incentivizing the development of citizen apps through competitions. In this research project, we propose to study citizen apps and the federal programs that fostered (incentivized) their creation.

There are many reasons why it is beneficial to involve citizens in the governance process. One, it opens up problem solving opportunities where citizens can participate. Second, it serves as a forum to increase the diversity of thought and knowledge brought to a problem. This increases the potential for innovation by engaging many minds to solve complex problems. Citizen participation leads to greater collective intelligence and hopefully more robust solutions for social issues. Third, it allows citizens to solve problems that a government agency might be challenged to address. Finally, it empowers the vision set forth by former President John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Citizen app programs normally come in two broad flavors. One set of citizen app programs are fueled by government open-data initiatives. In these cases, a government agency makes data available to the public and the public in turn responds by using this data creatively to generate technologies (the apps) that better the lives of citizens. The second set of citizen app programs is where a government agency issues a challenge or problem to the public. The public then responds by building solutions to the challenge. In this case, the government may incentivize the development of the apps through issue of recognition prizes and funding. This success of both types of citizen app programs depends on the dynamic collaboration of government agencies, app developers, and the citizenry. To date, our knowledge on what makes for successful collaboration among these three players is limited.

There are a number of design considerations that need to be addressed when building citizen app programs from the nature of incentives provided to goals of the apps, the motivations that drive citizens to create the apps, and how (and where) to deploy the apps, the involvement by the agency (e.g. staff time to interact with app developers), level and amount of data availability, and creation of problem-solving communities and forums, among others. In this research project, we will uncover design considerations that government executives need to bear in mind as they initiate citizen app programs. We will also compare and contrast citizen app programs to arrive at a set of best practices by looking at critical success factors that led to citizen app programs that were highly successful.

Our research project will thoroughly inventory and study the range of citizen apps to understand the typology of the apps, the data they use, the problems they address, the motivation of the designers, the usage by citizens, and the impact on government and governance. We propose to discover and define the inter-relations between the government agencies, the app developers, and the citizens. While our focus will be on studying citizen apps generated out of programs commissioned by the federal government, we will also look at programs started by progressive states (e.g. New York, California, etc).

The results of the final report will benefit public sector government executives, public managers, and the public-at-large in several ways: 1) it will enable government executives to avoid common pitfalls when incentivizing citizen app programs (for e.g. placing emphasis on the frontend, i.e. the creation of apps, and ignoring the more challenging aspect of ensuring that the apps are diffused into the agency’s work practices or to citizens); 2) it will enable public managers to understand the landscape of citizen apps, the motivations of citizens who create them, and the factors that drive their usage; and 3) it will enable federal agencies to better engage citizens into the policy setting process through supporting technology development thereby increasing the chances of more effective solution generation for policy problems.

Examining Public Participation in ACTion Alexandria

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The Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech has entered into an agreement to partner with ACT for Alexandria to advance the design of citizen engagement platforms. Kevin Desouza, Director of the Metropolitan Institute, will lead a team of researchers who will work in collaboration with ACT for Alexandria personnel to examine public participation on the ACTion Alexandria platform. The team will look at how user interactions on the community platform can guide design choices that promote more robust forms of citizen engagement.

ACT for Alexandria is a community foundation founded in the the fall of 2004 by a small group of citizens who came together to decide how best to stimulate philanthropic giving to improve the lives of the most vulnerable in their community. The ACTion Alexandria project is a new citizen engagement platform which provides interactive tools that make it easier for residents to take a more active role in addressing community problems. ACTion Alexandria connects individuals to nonprofit organizations they want to support, but with a strictly local focus. Individuals have the opportunity to take action on behalf of nonprofits working to improve the community.

“ACT for Alexandria is excited about partnering with the Metropolitan Institute to further refine and grow the ACTion Alexandria platform as a model for others nationally,” said John Porter, Executive Director of ACT. Tracy Viselli, the Project Manager for ACTion Alexandria, added “the possibilities for this platform working with the institute are endless.”

According to Desouza, “ACT for Alexandria is a prominent player in the non-profit space. We are excited to partner with them to study the dynamics of public participation in action. The ACTion platform gives us access to real world scenarios of how citizens use technology to engage each other.”

This initiative will advance the work being done in Policy Informatics at the Metropolitan Institute. “Designing better collaborative and participatory platforms remains a critical challenge in the public arena. We are not only interested in this project from a research point of view but also from a design and policy point of view,” says Desouza. The Metropolitan Institute will be analyzing information on user behavior on the platform, designing experiments to test various strategies for increasing engagement on the platform, and contributing to the design of the overall platform.

Desouza explains, “Collaborating on this effort allows us the opportunity to make a difference in our community. The MI is based in Alexandria and we want to be part of the community. ACT for Alexandria provides an amazing array of services, from scholarships to leadership training. ACTion Alexandria is where the idea of community engagement meets the newest technological innovations.”

Resilience of Citizen Engagement to Local Disasters Project

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Kevin Desouza, Director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, and Maggie Cowell, Assistant Professor in Urban Affairs and Planning, School of Public and International Affairs), have received a seed grant of $20,000 from the Institute for Society, Culture and Environment (ISCE) at Virginia Tech for a project titled “Resilience of Citizen Engagement to Local Disasters: Studying the Emergence and Dissolution of Community Networks.”

This research project will study how citizens merge into responsive communities, make an impact, and then dissolve during and after a disaster. It will bring into light locally significant disasters that do not earn national headlines and where the local community turns to their own resources to respond. Too often these local disasters and citizen responses are not studied but they are vital to deepening of our understanding of community resilience and the dynamics of citizen engagement. We will uncover the dynamics of community emergence in response to a disaster. Questions considered will include: who organizes citizens into a community, how, and why? How do they respond to the disaster? How is technology, especially social media, mobilized for community organization and relief operations? And finally, what leads to the disbanding of these communities and is there any institutional memory preserved? Consisting of a series of in-depth case studies, made up of first-person accounts and interviews together with a review of secondary sources, the research will look at three stages of a spontaneous community response: the assemblage; the action and impact; and the dissolution of the community. We will study how these emergent communities use technology creatively in the various stages of the community formation as a catalyst to overcome the lack of formal response mechanisms or response planning.

This project will provide valuable insights for citizen activists, planners, and policy makers on the functions and impacts of community response and improve our understanding of citizen engagement. Understanding the emergence, and impacts of local community response can inform the efficiency of more widespread responses. We will construct a web-based platform to share results from the research project (including video interviews with citizens, case studies, and community planning tools). In addition, the web-based platform will support networking and community building among citizens who are interested in building resilient community networks.