CyberGIS design considerations for structured participation in collaborative problem solving

Abstract

New ways for elucidating concepts in geographic information science (GIScience) and implementing geographic information systems techniques using cyberinfrastructure, a research and development focus now called CyberGIS, are emerging within the GIScience community. We report on the structured participation in knowledge production as a foundation for ‘high-performance collaboration’ in geospatial problem-solving research. This article focuses on three design considerations for CyberGIS: (1) structured participation methods that underpin analytic–deliberative activities; (2) structured participation methods as a basis for facilitating scientific workflows; and (3) a design for participatory aspects of a CyberGIS environment and its end-user platform as a Gateway. The findings from previous research about participatory workflows are synthesized with challenges in current research about developing collaborative problem-solving capabilities. A CyberGIS Component Architecture is used to frame findings about the use of structured participation methods that can be organized within a modular architecture. The modular architecture enables scientific workflows through a lens of analytic–deliberative structured participation. A use case scenario elucidates functions of structured participation methods to undertake experiments using the CyberGIS Gateway. A brief treatment of implementation considerations is provided, as the details appear in a separate article. Resolving both design and implementation considerations portends innovations in structured participation methods that foster diverse and deep scientific knowledge production.

Keywords:

• CyberGIS design
• structured participation
• analytic–deliberative
• collaborative problem solving

Acknowledgments

The research reported herein was partially supported by the National Science Foundation Information Technology Research Program grant no. EIA 0325916, National Science Foundation Geography and Spatial Sciences Program grant no. BCS-0921688, the National Science Foundation, Office of Cyberinfrastructure, Software Institutes, Cross-Directorate Active Programs, Geography and Spatial Sciences, and Method, Measure & Statistics Programs grant no. OCI-1047916, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Climate Program Office, Sectoral Applications and Research Program under grant no. NA07OAR4310410. Funding support from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is gratefully acknowledged. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments, making the manuscript stronger and tighter. Last but not least, we thank our collaborators Robert Aguirre, Piotr Jankowski, Dawn Wright, Shaowen Wang, Yan Liu, and Anand Padmanabhan for rich discussions about design and implementation of online structured participation technology for geocollaborative problem solving. We are solely responsible for the content.