Planning Support Systems: Content, Issues and Trends

Abstract

Since we edited Planning Support Systems in Practice (Geertman and Stillwell 2003), we have become increasingly aware that successful applications of geo-technology by planning practitioners to support their activities are far from commonplace. It is disturbing, in fact, to observe the extent to which new computer-based support systems are developed by researchers to the point of adoption but are never implemented in planning practice or policy making. Similarly, there is evidence to indicate that systems which are made operational are not extensively used, after the initial novelty has passed, by those planning organizations for which they have been developed in the first instance. In terms of application, it is possible to point to more failures than successes, i.e. to more cases where systems have not been implemented than examples where they are used routinely. Moreover, many state-of-the-art systems appear to take a long time to reach the ‘market’ and this is often a process requiring considerable financial resources. There are a number of reasons for this state of affairs that we will explore in Section 1.2 of this chapter after providing some initial clarification of what we mean by Planning Support Systems (PSS) and how they are distinguished for Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS).