Online Decision Support Infrastructures for Integrating Spatial Planning and Flood Risk Management Policies

Accessible geospatial data are crucial for informed decision making and policy development in urban planning, environmental governance, and hazard mitigation. Spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) have been implemented to facilitate such data access. However, with the rapid advancements in geospatial software and modelling tools, it is important to re-visit the theoretical discussion about the different roles of data-focused SDIs and decision support and modelling tools, particularly in relation to their different impacts on policy making and policy integration. This research focuses on addressing this issue within the specific context of policy integration in spatial planning and flood risk management. To investigate this, an experiment was conducted comparing a data-focused SDI, the Myplan Viewer, with a prototype Internet-based Spatially Integrated Policy Infrastructure (SIPI). The findings reveal that the SIPI, which provides access to both data and decision support and modelling tools, significantly enhances policy integration compared to the Myplan Viewer. Moreover, drawing upon communicative action theory, this study underscores that while data-focused SDIs support instrumental goals, they possess limitations in facilitating trade-offs and balancing diverse interests in the policy-making process, particularly in supporting strategic and communicative actions.