SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW
SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW
SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW
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Legal Simcity; Legislative Maps and Semantic Web<br />
Supporting Conflict Resolution<br />
Rob Peters 1 , Rinke Hoekstra 2 , Tom van Engers 3 and Erik Hupkes 4<br />
University of Amsterdam / Leibniz Center for Law<br />
1 Rpeters@vrk.nl, 2 Hoekstra@uva.nl, 3 T.M.vanEngers@uva.nl<br />
4 ehupkes@leibnizcenter.org<br />
Abstract<br />
Participative decision-making may promote the quality and the support of regulations.<br />
This also applies to regulations applying to a location. To date it has been very difficult<br />
for citizens to participate in legislative debates since this domain requires a level of expertise<br />
which is not widely available. Traditional approaches providing access to these<br />
regulations are not satisfactory to citizens since they are confronted with vast amounts<br />
of often contradicting regulations. Questions like “where will I be able to do this kind of<br />
activity” or “will this activity be allowed here” are hard to answer in traditional webbased<br />
service environments. There are many attempts to create one-stop-shop frontends<br />
to eGovernment, but these are seldom built from the perspective of the user. Developing<br />
more sophisticated visualization tools allows for a future in which legal planning<br />
is an important part of modern democracies. More accessible interfaces will mean<br />
that people can engage in a dialogue between interests, possibilities and regulative impact<br />
as a form of balanced system management rather than voting for or against a proposal<br />
set by experts. Improving the access to the legal planning process implies that<br />
legislation can become part of the democratic debate rather than the territory of experts.<br />
This article describes a number of prototypes that have been iteratively built and<br />
resulted in the Legal Atlas approach. Legal Atlas seems to provide the required supporting<br />
environment for public authorities that govern complex issues that require a<br />
participative policy- and decision-making strategy. The Legal Atlas system described<br />
here is designed to support INSPIRE environmental policy implementation. Qualified<br />
map layers and dynamic legal comparison using Simcity-like manoeuvrability can help<br />
to avoid conflict polarisation and result in conflict resolution.<br />
Keywords: INSPIRE, geographic information, regulations, semantics, participatory<br />
GIS, Europe, Feed project.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Governments have recognised the need to take advantage of ‘the wisdom of the<br />
crowds’, and the need for finding solutions to complex problems that in the end are<br />
supported by as many stakeholders as possible. This requires new ways of interacting<br />
with stakeholders. The complexity of the interaction between many different existing<br />
legal sources having constraints on solutions to problems at hand make it difficult for<br />
both experts and laymen to understand the consequences of their proposed solutions.<br />
Balancing the interests of stakeholders involved make it even more complex.<br />
Governments realise that participative approaches to policy- and decision-making are<br />
helpful to create better regulations that are supported by a majority of stakeholders.<br />
Recently, different web-based support tools have been developed in various e-participation<br />
projects, allowing citizens participation and building their support for decisions to<br />
be made. Legal pluralism and the huge volumes of sometimes conflicting regulations<br />
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