Stakeholder engagement is a key issue for sustainable transport planning. Appropriate methods and... more Stakeholder engagement is a key issue for sustainable transport planning. Appropriate methods and tools are needed to support an efficient participation process. This study presents a combination of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the Delphi method as a useful support for participatory decision-making processes aimed at consensus building. A case study will be presented and the results will be analysed also via an agent-based model (ABM), used to reproduce the same process of convergence of opinions, with the aim to understand the role of network topology, stakeholder influence and other sensitive variables on the emergence of consensus.
Transports can be considered as the main contributors of climate change and cities' total energy ... more Transports can be considered as the main contributors of climate change and cities' total energy consumption. In order to reduce transport energy, which is mainly influenced by urban form and available systems, three strategies can be adopted: a land use distribution lowering the need of motorized mobility; adoption of measures fostering low impact transport modes; promotion of energy efficient vehicle fleets. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the suitability of accessibility measures as a planning tool to evaluate the effectiveness of integrated transport and land use policies adopted to reduce the transport energy dependence of an urban area.
Purpose This paper proposes an innovative approach to decision-making processes for urban freight... more Purpose This paper proposes an innovative approach to decision-making processes for urban freight planning that could easily be transferred across cities while capable of jointly taking into account: (1) all the conceivable and updated urban freight transport (UFT) measures that should apply to the specific city culture, structure and evolution, (2) all the relevant stakeholders and successfully involve them from the beginning, (3) behavioural, technical, operational, organisational and financial issues. Methods The methodology is organised and deployed in three phases, following three different approaches, i.e.: a Bdesk approach^ for data acquisition and knowledge-based policy rankings; a Bliving lab approach^ to foster stakeholders' engagement in co-creating policies; a Bmodelling approach^ to evaluate policies and find/define an optimised mix of shared applicable/effective policies. Results The three-phase methodology supports public authorities in: (a) increasing knowledge and understanding of the most innovative context-specific UFT policies; (b) integrating UFT policies in strategic urban planning via collaborative participation/governance processes; (c) developing an ex-ante behaviourally consistent, financially robust and technically compatible assessment of shared UFT policy mixes while providing appropriate instruments to facilitate policy adoption and deployment. Conclusions The proposed methodology contributes to the identification and development of effective UFT solutions. Bringing together knowledge acquisition, policy co-creation, behaviour change analysis within a single methodological approach , aimed at identifying an optimised policy package, is both new and needed.
This paper proposes a novel approach to support participatory decision-making processes in the co... more This paper proposes a novel approach to support participatory decision-making processes in the context of urban freight transport through the integration of discrete choice modeling and agent-based modeling. The methodology is based on an innovative multilayer network and opinion dynamics models and applied to the case study of Rome's limited traffic zone. Simulation results produce a ranking of plausible policies that maximize consensus building while minimizing utility losses due to the negotiation process. These results can be used to support real participatory decision-making processes on freight-related policies accounting both for stakeholders' heterogeneous preferences and their interaction effects.
This paper presents a procedure for the structuring of a problem hierarchy by involving key stake... more This paper presents a procedure for the structuring of a problem hierarchy by involving key stakeholders, rep-resenting a first step towards a participatory decision-making process. The case study re-gards the building of a new metro station in Catania (Italy), which will be the closest station to a high-demand district where healthcare and university services and a park-and-ride facility are located. Due to the distance and the high slope between the station and the district, a dedicated transit system linking the two nodes is under study, and four different alternatives have been proposed. Key stakeholders have been identified and in-volved via in-depth interviews. A questionnaire, a GIS map and a SWOT-like graph have been used to present them the problem and capture their preferences and opinions. From the results of the interviews, a first hierarchy of the problem has been built, that can be used for stakeholder-driven multicriteria analysis.
We address the problem of a participatory decision-making process where a shared priority list of... more We address the problem of a participatory decision-making process where a shared priority list of alternatives has to be obtained while avoiding inconsistent decisions. An agent-based model (ABM) is proposed to mimic this process in different social networks of stakeholders who interact according to an opinion dynamics model. Simulations’ results show the efficacy of interaction in finding a transitive and, above all, shared decision. These findings are in agreement with real participation experiences regarding transport planning decisions and can give useful suggestions on how to plan an effective participation process for sustainable policy-making based on opinion consensus.
Public Participation in transport planning is often regarded as a formal compulsory phase of the ... more Public Participation in transport planning is often regarded as a formal compulsory phase of the decision-making process and it lacks in its real purpose, i.e. engaging people to find the most shared solution in the shortest time, in order to make the process effective and (cost) efficient. The need to include the public in transport planning and decision-making leads to the effort to understand how to design and speed up the process of taking a public decision and to find out if the communication among stakeholders can influence the process of governance. In this paper an agent-based model is presented as a contribution to build new tools to support decision-makers and practitioners in designing and guiding effective participation processes. The model reproduces the interaction process in a network of stakeholders by means of a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. The participatory decision-making process about the acceptability of a parking management strategy inside a University campus in Catania (Italy) was simulated to see to what extent interaction among stakeholders can foster the emergence of consensus. A better parking management is one of the priorities for sustainable mobility proposed by the mobility management office of the University. Results show that many links can help the opinion exchange process and the convergence of opinions and that the final outcome (i.e. approval or disapproval of the parking management strategy) is highly influenced by the initial distribution of opinions. This suggests that having a preliminary knowledge of stakeholders’ opinions can be helpful to arrange the participation process and repeated interaction opportunities contribute in smoothing diverging opinions.
The aim of this work is to give a contribution in the field of stakeholder engagement in order to... more The aim of this work is to give a contribution in the field of stakeholder engagement in order to reduce the widespread conflicts arising when transport plans have to be implemented and understand the role of quantitative methods to support shared decisions. We present the results of a participation experiment, with university students as stakeholders, where the AHP method was applied to derive individual priority vectors, on the basis of their judgments of preference between all couples of alternatives regarding the mobility management of their university. The aggregation of the individual judgments was done by using different methods, some derived from AHP and other derived from voting methods, such as Pairwise Majority Rule (PMR). A discussion about the results of the different methods, before and after stakeholder interaction, and from an agent-based simulation in terms of respect of the consistency condition and degree of consensus of the collective decision will provide some recommendations that can be useful to guide effective and efficient participation process.
Climate change (CC) potentially affects people travel behaviour, due to extreme weather condition... more Climate change (CC) potentially affects people travel behaviour, due to extreme weather conditions. This is particularly true for pedestrians, that are more exposed to weather conditions. Introducing the effect of this change in transport modelling allows to analyse and plan walking networks taking into consideration the climatic variable. The aim of this work is to develop a tool that can support planning and design of walking networks, by assessing the effects of actions oriented to increase resilience with respect to extreme weather conditions (CC adaptation). An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with elements of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility. Walking networks are analysed through centrality indexes, including thermal comfort aspects into a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. The method has been applied to the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes different functions and where pedestrian paths are barely used by people. Results confirm that this tool is sensitive to the variables representing weather conditions and it can measure the influence of CC adaptation measures (e.g. vegetation) on walking attitude and on the performance of the walking network.
In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-mak... more In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-making process. Though public participation is fundamental to legitimate a transport plan, some inconsistencies may arise when individual preferences are aggregated into a collective decision. In this work, we reproduce the process of collective preference ranking among plan alternatives using agent-based simulations of the opinion dynamics on groups of stakeholders linked in typical social networks. The results show the efficacy of interaction and the relevance of the network topology to find a transitive and shared collective preference ranking.
A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport en... more A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport energy through three key strategies: a land use distribution lowering the need and length of motorized mobility; adoption of measures favouring low impact transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets. A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy. The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3) relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence” indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales. First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and transport plans.
In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-mak... more In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-making process. Though public participation is fundamental to legitimate a transport plan, some inconsistencies may arise when individual preferences are aggregated into a collective decision. In this work, we reproduce the process of collective preference ranking among plan alternatives using agent-based simulations of the opinion dynamics on groups of stakeholders linked in typical social networks. The results show the efficacy of interaction and the relevance of the network topology to find a transitive and shared collective preference ranking.
A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport en... more A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport energy through three key strategies: a land use distribution lowering the need and length of motorized mobility; adoption of measures favouring low impact transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets. A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy. The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3)relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence” indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales. First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and transport plans.
Overview
Transport is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (around a q... more Overview Transport is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (around a quarter of the total in Europe) and, therefore, of climate change (CC). To reduce the consequences of CC, it is possible to act by adapting our cities to its effects or by mitigating its causes. Not always adaptation strategies are suitable to mitigation and viceversa. The key is to find actions that can help to reduce the GHG emissions and to increase the resilience of our cities, i.e. a way to act locally and think globally. To this respect, a successful way to adapt and mitigate is to promote the systematic use of green walking paths. On the one hand the role of green spaces to increase the adaptive capacity of our urban areas to the global warming is widely recognized; on the other hand the analysis of the factors which affect pedestrian behaviour is a relevant issue to mitigate the impact of climate change, through sustainable mobility. The aim of this work is to develop a tool that can help the planning and designing of green walking networks. To reach this goal, it is useful to understand to which extent green spaces, vegetation and trees affect walking attitude under different climate and weather conditions. An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with notions of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility. Methods The methodology proposed is based on the analysis of walking networks through a revised Multiple Centrality Assessment (Porta et al., 2008). The concepts of node accessibility, equivalent walking distance (Wibowo and Olszewski, 2005) and thermal comfort are integrated using a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. It was applied to test the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes different functions and where pedestrian paths are poorly experienced by people. This is mainly due to the fact that they are mixed with car routes and they do not adequately protect from high temperatures and wind. The promotion of pedestrian mobility and, in general, of the sustainable mobility of the Campus users is one of the main aim of the University Mobility Management office (MOMACT). Results The results of the case study are in terms of coloured maps, local centrality indexes referred to the activities and global indexes referred to the network as a whole. They mostly show the influence of climate, i.e. high temperatures and wind-chill, together with geometric features, such as slopes, and the paving surface, on the cost function, thus reflecting the walking attitude. Different scenarios were analyzed and, in particular, greening the paths and opening internal corridors to connect the activities seem to benefit the walking network, increasing the global efficiency. Conclusions The methodology proposed can be used as a tool to analyse the impact of weather conditions and the influence of vegetation on pedestrian mobility, thus helping the design of both green spaces and walking networks, with the overall aim to improve the climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban areas. References Porta S., Crucitti P. and Latora V. (2008). Multiple Centrality Assessment in Parma – A network analysis of paths and open spaces. Urban Design International 13, 41-50. doi:10.1057/udi.2008.1 Wibowo S. S. and Olszewski P. (2005). Modeling Walking Accessibility to Public Transport Terminals: Case Study of Singapore Mass Rapid Transit. Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 147-156
Community Involvement, Public Engagement, Stakeholder Engagement, are all different ways to name ... more Community Involvement, Public Engagement, Stakeholder Engagement, are all different ways to name the participation process of interested people to public decisions. In transport planning there are lots of decisions concerning several issues, with diverse stakeholders involved from organizations to citizens. Sometimes involvement is just a single, compulsory moment of the decision-making process and it lacks in its real purpose: engaging people to find the most shared solution in the shortest time, in order to make the process effective and (cost) efficient. The aim of this work is to improve the knowledge of the involvement process by building the network of relationships among stakeholders and analysing the opinion dynamics which leads to the final decision. The methodology proposed uses an agent-based simulation and a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. It can be used as a tool both for a preventive analysis addressed to plan an effective participation process and to predict and foster the emergence of a coalition of stakeholders towards a shared decision.
The role of Public Participation in sustainable port planning , Nov 2013
Ports play a strategic role in the development of domestic and international trade and have a str... more Ports play a strategic role in the development of domestic and international trade and have a strong impact on the liveability of the local community hosting the port as well. They face many problems related to the multitude of actors directly and indirectly involved and the variety of interests they represent. For these reasons port planning requires appropriate skills and procedures to be successful. One of the biggest issue is the need of Public Participation (also referred as Community Involvement or Public Engagement) into the decision-making process, in order to make the planning practice effective and (cost) efficient. What is important is to engage all the stakeholders from the very beginning of the planning process with different levels of involvement during all the relevant phases. Taking into consideration the stakeholders’ needs and concerns it will be easier to find the most shared solutions pursuing port sustainability.
The aim of the research is to give a contribution and an insight on the complex field of stakehol... more The aim of the research is to give a contribution and an insight on the complex field of stakeholder involvement in transport planning, by analysing the role of decision-support methods and agent-based modelling in guiding a participation process. The approach is twofold: from one side it is about to deeply understand the process of making a collective decision, by studying how the interaction among different actors can lead to a convergence of opinions towards a shared collective decision. From the other side, it is based on finding appropriate decision-support methods to help the group decision-making process. Agent-based modelling and simulations have been used, in order to guide real participation processes and predict the results of an interaction process, and group multi criteria decision-making methods, to help taking consistent decisions based on several judgment criteria. The results of the research should help decision-makers and practitioners in dealing with multiple stakeholders and complex decisions and guiding the participation process.
Stakeholder engagement is a key issue for sustainable transport planning. Appropriate methods and... more Stakeholder engagement is a key issue for sustainable transport planning. Appropriate methods and tools are needed to support an efficient participation process. This study presents a combination of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the Delphi method as a useful support for participatory decision-making processes aimed at consensus building. A case study will be presented and the results will be analysed also via an agent-based model (ABM), used to reproduce the same process of convergence of opinions, with the aim to understand the role of network topology, stakeholder influence and other sensitive variables on the emergence of consensus.
Transports can be considered as the main contributors of climate change and cities' total energy ... more Transports can be considered as the main contributors of climate change and cities' total energy consumption. In order to reduce transport energy, which is mainly influenced by urban form and available systems, three strategies can be adopted: a land use distribution lowering the need of motorized mobility; adoption of measures fostering low impact transport modes; promotion of energy efficient vehicle fleets. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the suitability of accessibility measures as a planning tool to evaluate the effectiveness of integrated transport and land use policies adopted to reduce the transport energy dependence of an urban area.
Purpose This paper proposes an innovative approach to decision-making processes for urban freight... more Purpose This paper proposes an innovative approach to decision-making processes for urban freight planning that could easily be transferred across cities while capable of jointly taking into account: (1) all the conceivable and updated urban freight transport (UFT) measures that should apply to the specific city culture, structure and evolution, (2) all the relevant stakeholders and successfully involve them from the beginning, (3) behavioural, technical, operational, organisational and financial issues. Methods The methodology is organised and deployed in three phases, following three different approaches, i.e.: a Bdesk approach^ for data acquisition and knowledge-based policy rankings; a Bliving lab approach^ to foster stakeholders' engagement in co-creating policies; a Bmodelling approach^ to evaluate policies and find/define an optimised mix of shared applicable/effective policies. Results The three-phase methodology supports public authorities in: (a) increasing knowledge and understanding of the most innovative context-specific UFT policies; (b) integrating UFT policies in strategic urban planning via collaborative participation/governance processes; (c) developing an ex-ante behaviourally consistent, financially robust and technically compatible assessment of shared UFT policy mixes while providing appropriate instruments to facilitate policy adoption and deployment. Conclusions The proposed methodology contributes to the identification and development of effective UFT solutions. Bringing together knowledge acquisition, policy co-creation, behaviour change analysis within a single methodological approach , aimed at identifying an optimised policy package, is both new and needed.
This paper proposes a novel approach to support participatory decision-making processes in the co... more This paper proposes a novel approach to support participatory decision-making processes in the context of urban freight transport through the integration of discrete choice modeling and agent-based modeling. The methodology is based on an innovative multilayer network and opinion dynamics models and applied to the case study of Rome's limited traffic zone. Simulation results produce a ranking of plausible policies that maximize consensus building while minimizing utility losses due to the negotiation process. These results can be used to support real participatory decision-making processes on freight-related policies accounting both for stakeholders' heterogeneous preferences and their interaction effects.
This paper presents a procedure for the structuring of a problem hierarchy by involving key stake... more This paper presents a procedure for the structuring of a problem hierarchy by involving key stakeholders, rep-resenting a first step towards a participatory decision-making process. The case study re-gards the building of a new metro station in Catania (Italy), which will be the closest station to a high-demand district where healthcare and university services and a park-and-ride facility are located. Due to the distance and the high slope between the station and the district, a dedicated transit system linking the two nodes is under study, and four different alternatives have been proposed. Key stakeholders have been identified and in-volved via in-depth interviews. A questionnaire, a GIS map and a SWOT-like graph have been used to present them the problem and capture their preferences and opinions. From the results of the interviews, a first hierarchy of the problem has been built, that can be used for stakeholder-driven multicriteria analysis.
We address the problem of a participatory decision-making process where a shared priority list of... more We address the problem of a participatory decision-making process where a shared priority list of alternatives has to be obtained while avoiding inconsistent decisions. An agent-based model (ABM) is proposed to mimic this process in different social networks of stakeholders who interact according to an opinion dynamics model. Simulations’ results show the efficacy of interaction in finding a transitive and, above all, shared decision. These findings are in agreement with real participation experiences regarding transport planning decisions and can give useful suggestions on how to plan an effective participation process for sustainable policy-making based on opinion consensus.
Public Participation in transport planning is often regarded as a formal compulsory phase of the ... more Public Participation in transport planning is often regarded as a formal compulsory phase of the decision-making process and it lacks in its real purpose, i.e. engaging people to find the most shared solution in the shortest time, in order to make the process effective and (cost) efficient. The need to include the public in transport planning and decision-making leads to the effort to understand how to design and speed up the process of taking a public decision and to find out if the communication among stakeholders can influence the process of governance. In this paper an agent-based model is presented as a contribution to build new tools to support decision-makers and practitioners in designing and guiding effective participation processes. The model reproduces the interaction process in a network of stakeholders by means of a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. The participatory decision-making process about the acceptability of a parking management strategy inside a University campus in Catania (Italy) was simulated to see to what extent interaction among stakeholders can foster the emergence of consensus. A better parking management is one of the priorities for sustainable mobility proposed by the mobility management office of the University. Results show that many links can help the opinion exchange process and the convergence of opinions and that the final outcome (i.e. approval or disapproval of the parking management strategy) is highly influenced by the initial distribution of opinions. This suggests that having a preliminary knowledge of stakeholders’ opinions can be helpful to arrange the participation process and repeated interaction opportunities contribute in smoothing diverging opinions.
The aim of this work is to give a contribution in the field of stakeholder engagement in order to... more The aim of this work is to give a contribution in the field of stakeholder engagement in order to reduce the widespread conflicts arising when transport plans have to be implemented and understand the role of quantitative methods to support shared decisions. We present the results of a participation experiment, with university students as stakeholders, where the AHP method was applied to derive individual priority vectors, on the basis of their judgments of preference between all couples of alternatives regarding the mobility management of their university. The aggregation of the individual judgments was done by using different methods, some derived from AHP and other derived from voting methods, such as Pairwise Majority Rule (PMR). A discussion about the results of the different methods, before and after stakeholder interaction, and from an agent-based simulation in terms of respect of the consistency condition and degree of consensus of the collective decision will provide some recommendations that can be useful to guide effective and efficient participation process.
Climate change (CC) potentially affects people travel behaviour, due to extreme weather condition... more Climate change (CC) potentially affects people travel behaviour, due to extreme weather conditions. This is particularly true for pedestrians, that are more exposed to weather conditions. Introducing the effect of this change in transport modelling allows to analyse and plan walking networks taking into consideration the climatic variable. The aim of this work is to develop a tool that can support planning and design of walking networks, by assessing the effects of actions oriented to increase resilience with respect to extreme weather conditions (CC adaptation). An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with elements of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility. Walking networks are analysed through centrality indexes, including thermal comfort aspects into a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. The method has been applied to the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes different functions and where pedestrian paths are barely used by people. Results confirm that this tool is sensitive to the variables representing weather conditions and it can measure the influence of CC adaptation measures (e.g. vegetation) on walking attitude and on the performance of the walking network.
In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-mak... more In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-making process. Though public participation is fundamental to legitimate a transport plan, some inconsistencies may arise when individual preferences are aggregated into a collective decision. In this work, we reproduce the process of collective preference ranking among plan alternatives using agent-based simulations of the opinion dynamics on groups of stakeholders linked in typical social networks. The results show the efficacy of interaction and the relevance of the network topology to find a transitive and shared collective preference ranking.
A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport en... more A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport energy through three key strategies: a land use distribution lowering the need and length of motorized mobility; adoption of measures favouring low impact transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets. A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy. The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3) relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence” indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales. First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and transport plans.
In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-mak... more In transport planning several actors with conflicting objectives are involved in the decision-making process. Though public participation is fundamental to legitimate a transport plan, some inconsistencies may arise when individual preferences are aggregated into a collective decision. In this work, we reproduce the process of collective preference ranking among plan alternatives using agent-based simulations of the opinion dynamics on groups of stakeholders linked in typical social networks. The results show the efficacy of interaction and the relevance of the network topology to find a transitive and shared collective preference ranking.
A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport en... more A consolidated approach for pursuing sustainable urban mobility consists of reducing transport energy through three key strategies: a land use distribution lowering the need and length of motorized mobility; adoption of measures favouring low impact transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets. A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy. The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3)relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence” indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales. First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and transport plans.
Overview
Transport is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (around a q... more Overview Transport is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (around a quarter of the total in Europe) and, therefore, of climate change (CC). To reduce the consequences of CC, it is possible to act by adapting our cities to its effects or by mitigating its causes. Not always adaptation strategies are suitable to mitigation and viceversa. The key is to find actions that can help to reduce the GHG emissions and to increase the resilience of our cities, i.e. a way to act locally and think globally. To this respect, a successful way to adapt and mitigate is to promote the systematic use of green walking paths. On the one hand the role of green spaces to increase the adaptive capacity of our urban areas to the global warming is widely recognized; on the other hand the analysis of the factors which affect pedestrian behaviour is a relevant issue to mitigate the impact of climate change, through sustainable mobility. The aim of this work is to develop a tool that can help the planning and designing of green walking networks. To reach this goal, it is useful to understand to which extent green spaces, vegetation and trees affect walking attitude under different climate and weather conditions. An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with notions of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility. Methods The methodology proposed is based on the analysis of walking networks through a revised Multiple Centrality Assessment (Porta et al., 2008). The concepts of node accessibility, equivalent walking distance (Wibowo and Olszewski, 2005) and thermal comfort are integrated using a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. It was applied to test the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes different functions and where pedestrian paths are poorly experienced by people. This is mainly due to the fact that they are mixed with car routes and they do not adequately protect from high temperatures and wind. The promotion of pedestrian mobility and, in general, of the sustainable mobility of the Campus users is one of the main aim of the University Mobility Management office (MOMACT). Results The results of the case study are in terms of coloured maps, local centrality indexes referred to the activities and global indexes referred to the network as a whole. They mostly show the influence of climate, i.e. high temperatures and wind-chill, together with geometric features, such as slopes, and the paving surface, on the cost function, thus reflecting the walking attitude. Different scenarios were analyzed and, in particular, greening the paths and opening internal corridors to connect the activities seem to benefit the walking network, increasing the global efficiency. Conclusions The methodology proposed can be used as a tool to analyse the impact of weather conditions and the influence of vegetation on pedestrian mobility, thus helping the design of both green spaces and walking networks, with the overall aim to improve the climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban areas. References Porta S., Crucitti P. and Latora V. (2008). Multiple Centrality Assessment in Parma – A network analysis of paths and open spaces. Urban Design International 13, 41-50. doi:10.1057/udi.2008.1 Wibowo S. S. and Olszewski P. (2005). Modeling Walking Accessibility to Public Transport Terminals: Case Study of Singapore Mass Rapid Transit. Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 147-156
Community Involvement, Public Engagement, Stakeholder Engagement, are all different ways to name ... more Community Involvement, Public Engagement, Stakeholder Engagement, are all different ways to name the participation process of interested people to public decisions. In transport planning there are lots of decisions concerning several issues, with diverse stakeholders involved from organizations to citizens. Sometimes involvement is just a single, compulsory moment of the decision-making process and it lacks in its real purpose: engaging people to find the most shared solution in the shortest time, in order to make the process effective and (cost) efficient. The aim of this work is to improve the knowledge of the involvement process by building the network of relationships among stakeholders and analysing the opinion dynamics which leads to the final decision. The methodology proposed uses an agent-based simulation and a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. It can be used as a tool both for a preventive analysis addressed to plan an effective participation process and to predict and foster the emergence of a coalition of stakeholders towards a shared decision.
The role of Public Participation in sustainable port planning , Nov 2013
Ports play a strategic role in the development of domestic and international trade and have a str... more Ports play a strategic role in the development of domestic and international trade and have a strong impact on the liveability of the local community hosting the port as well. They face many problems related to the multitude of actors directly and indirectly involved and the variety of interests they represent. For these reasons port planning requires appropriate skills and procedures to be successful. One of the biggest issue is the need of Public Participation (also referred as Community Involvement or Public Engagement) into the decision-making process, in order to make the planning practice effective and (cost) efficient. What is important is to engage all the stakeholders from the very beginning of the planning process with different levels of involvement during all the relevant phases. Taking into consideration the stakeholders’ needs and concerns it will be easier to find the most shared solutions pursuing port sustainability.
The aim of the research is to give a contribution and an insight on the complex field of stakehol... more The aim of the research is to give a contribution and an insight on the complex field of stakeholder involvement in transport planning, by analysing the role of decision-support methods and agent-based modelling in guiding a participation process. The approach is twofold: from one side it is about to deeply understand the process of making a collective decision, by studying how the interaction among different actors can lead to a convergence of opinions towards a shared collective decision. From the other side, it is based on finding appropriate decision-support methods to help the group decision-making process. Agent-based modelling and simulations have been used, in order to guide real participation processes and predict the results of an interaction process, and group multi criteria decision-making methods, to help taking consistent decisions based on several judgment criteria. The results of the research should help decision-makers and practitioners in dealing with multiple stakeholders and complex decisions and guiding the participation process.
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The need to include the public in transport planning and decision-making leads to the effort to understand how to design and speed up the process of taking a public decision and to find out if the communication among stakeholders can influence the process of governance. In this paper an agent-based model is presented as a contribution to build new tools to support decision-makers and practitioners in designing and guiding effective participation processes. The model reproduces the interaction process in a network of stakeholders by means of a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. The participatory decision-making process about the acceptability of a parking management strategy inside a University campus in Catania (Italy) was simulated to see to what extent interaction among stakeholders can foster the emergence of consensus. A better parking management is one of the priorities for sustainable mobility proposed by the mobility management office of the University. Results show that many links can help the opinion exchange process and the convergence of opinions and that the final outcome (i.e. approval or disapproval of the parking
management strategy) is highly influenced by the initial distribution of opinions. This suggests that having a preliminary knowledge of stakeholders’ opinions can be helpful to arrange the participation process and repeated interaction opportunities contribute in smoothing diverging opinions.
arising when transport plans have to be implemented and understand the role of quantitative methods to support shared decisions.
We present the results of a participation experiment, with university students as stakeholders, where the AHP method was
applied to derive individual priority vectors, on the basis of their judgments of preference between all couples of alternatives
regarding the mobility management of their university. The aggregation of the individual judgments was done by using different
methods, some derived from AHP and other derived from voting methods, such as Pairwise Majority Rule (PMR). A discussion
about the results of the different methods, before and after stakeholder interaction, and from an agent-based simulation in terms
of respect of the consistency condition and degree of consensus of the collective decision will provide some recommendations
that can be useful to guide effective and efficient participation process.
weather conditions (CC adaptation). An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with elements of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility. Walking networks are analysed through centrality indexes, including thermal comfort aspects into
a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. The method has been applied to the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes
different functions and where pedestrian paths are barely used by people. Results confirm
that this tool is sensitive to the variables representing weather conditions and it can measure the influence of CC adaptation measures (e.g. vegetation) on walking attitude and on the performance of the walking network.
participation is fundamental to legitimate a transport plan, some inconsistencies may arise when individual preferences are
aggregated into a collective decision. In this work, we reproduce the process of collective preference ranking among plan
alternatives using agent-based simulations of the opinion dynamics on groups of stakeholders linked in typical social networks.
The results show the efficacy of interaction and the relevance of the network topology to find a transitive and shared collective
preference ranking.
strategies: a land use distribution lowering the need and length of motorized mobility; adoption of measures favouring low impact
transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets.
A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address
the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a
transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit
network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows
between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy.
The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling
facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3)
relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban
mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence”
indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales.
First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and
vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to
be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and
transport plans.
transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets.
A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy. The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3)relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence” indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales. First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and transport plans.
Transport is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (around a quarter of the total in Europe) and, therefore, of climate change (CC). To reduce the consequences of CC, it is possible to act by adapting our cities to its effects or by mitigating its causes. Not always adaptation strategies are suitable to mitigation and viceversa. The key is to find actions that can help to reduce the GHG emissions and to increase the resilience of our cities, i.e. a way to act locally and think globally. To this respect, a successful way to adapt and mitigate is to promote the systematic use of green walking paths. On the one hand the role of green spaces to increase the adaptive capacity of our urban areas to the global warming is widely recognized; on the other hand the analysis of the factors which affect pedestrian behaviour is a relevant issue to mitigate the impact of climate change, through sustainable mobility. The aim of this work is to develop a tool that can help the planning and designing of green walking networks. To reach this goal, it is useful to understand to which extent green spaces, vegetation and trees affect walking attitude under different climate and weather conditions. An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with notions of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility.
Methods
The methodology proposed is based on the analysis of walking networks through a revised Multiple Centrality Assessment (Porta et al., 2008). The concepts of node accessibility, equivalent walking distance (Wibowo and Olszewski, 2005) and thermal comfort are integrated using a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. It was applied to test the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes different functions and where pedestrian paths are poorly experienced by people. This is mainly due to the fact that they are mixed with car routes and they do not adequately protect from high temperatures and wind. The promotion of pedestrian mobility and, in general, of the sustainable mobility of the Campus users is one of the main aim of the University Mobility Management office (MOMACT).
Results
The results of the case study are in terms of coloured maps, local centrality indexes referred to the activities and global indexes referred to the network as a whole. They mostly show the influence of climate, i.e. high temperatures and wind-chill, together with geometric features, such as slopes, and the paving surface, on the cost function, thus reflecting the walking attitude. Different scenarios were analyzed and, in particular, greening the paths and opening internal corridors to connect the activities seem to benefit the walking network, increasing the global efficiency.
Conclusions
The methodology proposed can be used as a tool to analyse the impact of weather conditions and the influence of vegetation on pedestrian mobility, thus helping the design of both green spaces and walking networks, with the overall aim to improve the climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban areas.
References
Porta S., Crucitti P. and Latora V. (2008). Multiple Centrality Assessment in Parma – A network analysis of paths and open spaces. Urban Design International 13, 41-50. doi:10.1057/udi.2008.1
Wibowo S. S. and Olszewski P. (2005). Modeling Walking Accessibility to Public Transport Terminals: Case Study of Singapore Mass Rapid Transit. Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 147-156
planning there are lots of decisions concerning several issues, with diverse stakeholders involved from organizations to citizens. Sometimes involvement is just a single, compulsory
moment of the decision-making process and it lacks in its real purpose: engaging people to find the most shared solution in the shortest time, in order to make the process effective and
(cost) efficient. The aim of this work is to improve the knowledge of the involvement process by building the network of relationships among stakeholders and analysing the opinion
dynamics which leads to the final decision. The methodology proposed uses an agent-based simulation and a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to
investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. It can be used as a tool both for a preventive analysis addressed to plan an effective participation process and to predict and foster the emergence of a coalition of stakeholders towards a shared decision.
The approach is twofold: from one side it is about to deeply understand the process of making a collective decision, by studying how the interaction among different actors can lead to a convergence of opinions towards a shared collective decision. From the other side, it is based on finding appropriate decision-support methods to help the group decision-making process.
Agent-based modelling and simulations have been used, in order to guide real participation processes and predict the results of an interaction process, and group multi criteria decision-making methods, to help taking consistent decisions based on several judgment criteria. The results of the research should help decision-makers and practitioners in dealing with multiple stakeholders and complex decisions and guiding the participation process.
The need to include the public in transport planning and decision-making leads to the effort to understand how to design and speed up the process of taking a public decision and to find out if the communication among stakeholders can influence the process of governance. In this paper an agent-based model is presented as a contribution to build new tools to support decision-makers and practitioners in designing and guiding effective participation processes. The model reproduces the interaction process in a network of stakeholders by means of a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. The participatory decision-making process about the acceptability of a parking management strategy inside a University campus in Catania (Italy) was simulated to see to what extent interaction among stakeholders can foster the emergence of consensus. A better parking management is one of the priorities for sustainable mobility proposed by the mobility management office of the University. Results show that many links can help the opinion exchange process and the convergence of opinions and that the final outcome (i.e. approval or disapproval of the parking
management strategy) is highly influenced by the initial distribution of opinions. This suggests that having a preliminary knowledge of stakeholders’ opinions can be helpful to arrange the participation process and repeated interaction opportunities contribute in smoothing diverging opinions.
arising when transport plans have to be implemented and understand the role of quantitative methods to support shared decisions.
We present the results of a participation experiment, with university students as stakeholders, where the AHP method was
applied to derive individual priority vectors, on the basis of their judgments of preference between all couples of alternatives
regarding the mobility management of their university. The aggregation of the individual judgments was done by using different
methods, some derived from AHP and other derived from voting methods, such as Pairwise Majority Rule (PMR). A discussion
about the results of the different methods, before and after stakeholder interaction, and from an agent-based simulation in terms
of respect of the consistency condition and degree of consensus of the collective decision will provide some recommendations
that can be useful to guide effective and efficient participation process.
weather conditions (CC adaptation). An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with elements of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility. Walking networks are analysed through centrality indexes, including thermal comfort aspects into
a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. The method has been applied to the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes
different functions and where pedestrian paths are barely used by people. Results confirm
that this tool is sensitive to the variables representing weather conditions and it can measure the influence of CC adaptation measures (e.g. vegetation) on walking attitude and on the performance of the walking network.
participation is fundamental to legitimate a transport plan, some inconsistencies may arise when individual preferences are
aggregated into a collective decision. In this work, we reproduce the process of collective preference ranking among plan
alternatives using agent-based simulations of the opinion dynamics on groups of stakeholders linked in typical social networks.
The results show the efficacy of interaction and the relevance of the network topology to find a transitive and shared collective
preference ranking.
strategies: a land use distribution lowering the need and length of motorized mobility; adoption of measures favouring low impact
transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets.
A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address
the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a
transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit
network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows
between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy.
The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling
facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3)
relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban
mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence”
indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales.
First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and
vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to
be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and
transport plans.
transport modes; incentives for energy efficient vehicles’ fleets.
A simple land use and transport model is presented in this paper to calculate a commuting transport energy indicator able to address the delivery of sustainable urban and transport plans. The model is based on a mathematical description of the transport system and a transport mode choice model following ideal simple rules based on the distance from home to workplace and on zonal transit network accessibility. For each transport mode energy consumption, capacity and load factor are considered. Assignment of flows between home and work zones is formulated as a standard transportation problem to minimize the required transport energy. The model is applied to the urban area of Catania, a medium-sized town in Italy, for three scenarios: 1) improving walking/cycling facilities and accessibility to the existing transit network; 2) adding four BRT lines and one metro line to the transit network; 3)relocating a fraction of residents around the stations of the metro line. These scenarios reflect some of the main measures of the urban mobility and land use plans which are currently under discussion. For each scenario we compute the “Transport Energy Dependence” indicator, the travelled distance and modal share for each transport mode at the urban and traffic zone scales. First results show the methodology is suitable to different aims: to evaluate the potential impact of changes in land use, transport and vehicle technologies policies in terms of transport energy consumption; to define a minimum transport energy as a reference value to be compared with the actual consumed transport energy; to define transport energy requirements for the approval of land use and transport plans.
Transport is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (around a quarter of the total in Europe) and, therefore, of climate change (CC). To reduce the consequences of CC, it is possible to act by adapting our cities to its effects or by mitigating its causes. Not always adaptation strategies are suitable to mitigation and viceversa. The key is to find actions that can help to reduce the GHG emissions and to increase the resilience of our cities, i.e. a way to act locally and think globally. To this respect, a successful way to adapt and mitigate is to promote the systematic use of green walking paths. On the one hand the role of green spaces to increase the adaptive capacity of our urban areas to the global warming is widely recognized; on the other hand the analysis of the factors which affect pedestrian behaviour is a relevant issue to mitigate the impact of climate change, through sustainable mobility. The aim of this work is to develop a tool that can help the planning and designing of green walking networks. To reach this goal, it is useful to understand to which extent green spaces, vegetation and trees affect walking attitude under different climate and weather conditions. An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with notions of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility.
Methods
The methodology proposed is based on the analysis of walking networks through a revised Multiple Centrality Assessment (Porta et al., 2008). The concepts of node accessibility, equivalent walking distance (Wibowo and Olszewski, 2005) and thermal comfort are integrated using a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. It was applied to test the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes different functions and where pedestrian paths are poorly experienced by people. This is mainly due to the fact that they are mixed with car routes and they do not adequately protect from high temperatures and wind. The promotion of pedestrian mobility and, in general, of the sustainable mobility of the Campus users is one of the main aim of the University Mobility Management office (MOMACT).
Results
The results of the case study are in terms of coloured maps, local centrality indexes referred to the activities and global indexes referred to the network as a whole. They mostly show the influence of climate, i.e. high temperatures and wind-chill, together with geometric features, such as slopes, and the paving surface, on the cost function, thus reflecting the walking attitude. Different scenarios were analyzed and, in particular, greening the paths and opening internal corridors to connect the activities seem to benefit the walking network, increasing the global efficiency.
Conclusions
The methodology proposed can be used as a tool to analyse the impact of weather conditions and the influence of vegetation on pedestrian mobility, thus helping the design of both green spaces and walking networks, with the overall aim to improve the climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban areas.
References
Porta S., Crucitti P. and Latora V. (2008). Multiple Centrality Assessment in Parma – A network analysis of paths and open spaces. Urban Design International 13, 41-50. doi:10.1057/udi.2008.1
Wibowo S. S. and Olszewski P. (2005). Modeling Walking Accessibility to Public Transport Terminals: Case Study of Singapore Mass Rapid Transit. Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 147-156
planning there are lots of decisions concerning several issues, with diverse stakeholders involved from organizations to citizens. Sometimes involvement is just a single, compulsory
moment of the decision-making process and it lacks in its real purpose: engaging people to find the most shared solution in the shortest time, in order to make the process effective and
(cost) efficient. The aim of this work is to improve the knowledge of the involvement process by building the network of relationships among stakeholders and analysing the opinion
dynamics which leads to the final decision. The methodology proposed uses an agent-based simulation and a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to
investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. It can be used as a tool both for a preventive analysis addressed to plan an effective participation process and to predict and foster the emergence of a coalition of stakeholders towards a shared decision.
The approach is twofold: from one side it is about to deeply understand the process of making a collective decision, by studying how the interaction among different actors can lead to a convergence of opinions towards a shared collective decision. From the other side, it is based on finding appropriate decision-support methods to help the group decision-making process.
Agent-based modelling and simulations have been used, in order to guide real participation processes and predict the results of an interaction process, and group multi criteria decision-making methods, to help taking consistent decisions based on several judgment criteria. The results of the research should help decision-makers and practitioners in dealing with multiple stakeholders and complex decisions and guiding the participation process.