Local Decision Maker:
An Interactive Web Tool for Citizens, Planners and Decision-makers
Overview:
Local Decision Maker (LDM) is a web-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) decision support system and tool box that aims to assist communities to enhance and expand their planning horizons by providing value-added information and data in a useful, interactive format (maps as well as tables) for planning and evaluation purposes.
The LDM project was initiated with a grant from Purdue’s new Center for the Environment, and has developed into a fully-fledged interdepartmental and inter-Center partnership involving Purdue Extension, the Indiana-Illinois Sea Grant program, the Purdue Forestry Department (College of Agriculture), the Center for the Environment and the Purdue Center for Regional Development.
The project objective is to integrate natural resources and environmental planning into the comprehensive planning process, and provide linkages with economic development planning and other components of a comprehensive plan. Because planning is location specific, geographic information systems (GIS) mapping plays a fundamental role. Almost every activity and part of the planning process links maps and data with issues.
The LDM contains government- and GIS-based data for every Indiana school district, tax district and county, in the areas of population, environment and natural resources, land use and land cover, transportation, education, economy and labor markets, housing, health and human services, and governance. By choosing the appropriate data, the online program will lead the user through a community audit ("Inventory/Analysis"), a community goal ("Vision/Objectives"), plan development ("Alternative Strategies") and plan implementation ("Plan Implementation").
Local Decision Maker is a work in progress. New content is added weekly. The project goal for 2008 is to complete the inventory and analysis phase of comprehensive planning. A focus on inventory and analysis is necessary because inventory and analysis are the bases of every successful planning effort; their development is also expensive even though much of the data is available from public sources. Project researchers have discovered that rural communities and counties spend between 70 and 90 percent of their limited budgets on inventory and analysis, thus leaving very little for the actual plan. Local Community Decision Maker aims to mitigate this expense, and save time by assembling much of the necessary information in one place, where it is instantly accessible to citizens, consultants, planners and decision makers.
LDM is freely available (in beta version at this time) here. The Decision Maker team welcomes comments and suggestions from users and potential users. Please use the website “feedback” button to send comments directly to the team. You may also send comments to the following individuals: