E-Learning & environmental policy: The case of a politico-administrative GIS

Abstract

Is an effective knowledge exchange and cooperation between academic community and practitioners possible? Implementation of e-learning in specialized policy fields pertains to the most challenging priorities of ICTs and software engineering. In multidisciplinary academic areas which combine environmental policy studies with positivist subjects (like environmental issues, forest policy, rural development, Landscape Architecture etc), the using of e-learning system in analyzing policy issues steadily gains in importance and is a method which connects the academic community and the researchers with the practitioners and field experts. Such initiatives incorporate a number of politometrics-relevant algorithms embedded in a context of political geography (i.e. visualized hierarchies in different region-related policy issues). This is the case addressed in this paper. The GIS learning management system introduced in this paper is based on certain criteria concerning organizational models and region-specific politico-administrative hierarchies. Scenarios of politico-administrative metadata achieving optimal power synergy are extracted through a sequencing technique, combining vector-algebra software and statistics and can be used for both teaching and research purposes. © 2006-2010 by CCC Publications.