The main focus of my research program is to build theories of how geospatial technology can facilitate better planning decisions through the development and application of innovative data gathering, modeling, visualization, and analysis techniques. I design tools for use and evaluation by several user groups: professional planners, government agencies, community groups, and individual citizens. My research program aims to critically evaluate the factors that contribute to the successful adoption of geospatial technology in diverse contexts. I place this research focus on geospatial technology within a human geography frame, specifically tourism, environmental and economic development, planning, and public participation in governance. I currently have two main projects on which I base my growing research program: the Geoweb and community planning in rural Quebec, and agent-based modeling (ABM) as a tourism planning support system.
1. The Geoweb and community planning in rural Quebec
The first area of my research program examines the development and use of collaborative web-based geographic information technology (the Geoweb) for community planning. The region of Acton, east of Montreal, has been selected as a pilot location for a three-year project, supported through a partnership with several Quebec government agencies. The main goals of this project are to establish the value of volunteered geographic information as a data source, determine how the Geoweb can be used to facilitate citizen participation in land-use decision-making, and evaluate the role of government in supporting or constraining the use of the Geoweb.
2. Agent-based modeling (ABM) as a tourism planning support system
The second area of my research program builds from results uncovered during my PhD research, for which I developed and tested an ABM as a tourism planning support system. This ABM improves upon traditional GIS analysis by facilitating a process-centric approach to modeling tourism dynamics. The ability to show how a system grows and changes over time makes ABM well-suited to testing the impact of tourism policies and planning interventions. This strength of ABM led to me to use and evaluate it as a support tool within tourism planning practice.
Working closely with tourism planners in Nova Scotia, I developed a dynamic, web-based model called TourSim, which I used to create a suite of planning scenarios. One scenario studied the impact of the closure of a ferry access point. What I wanted to understand was how structural changes to the tourist landscape (the ferry closure) would affect tourist travel patterns, and which destinations would benefit as a result. Findings from this scenario showed that when a tourist entry point is closed there was a reduction in visitation at both the ferry docking point and neighbouring areas, yet other destinations throughout Nova Scotia showed a substantial increase in visitation as a result of the shifting tourist travel patterns. This type of effect is one example of how an ABM can be used to study the potential impacts of a policy or development action.