L

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Léon van Berlo / Jos van Leeuwen

• The Neighbourhood Wizard
• Cause and effect of changes in urban
  neighbourhoods

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Agenda

• Introduction
• Objective
• Approach
• (Experiencing) Liveability
• Data Collection
• Knowledge representation
• Prototype
• Evaluation and testing
• Conclusions and future work
• Coffee break

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Introduction

• Quality of the neighbourhood (physical and
  social) ? Increasingly important
• Local initiatives for neighbourhood improvement
• Municipalities support these initiatives ?
  Citizen participation
• Issues
• Inhabitants focus on their own problems (not the
  ones from their neighbours)
• Inhabitants dont see the complex dependencies of
  a decision
• Inhabitants give concrete proposals for change in
  stead of their desire

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Objective

• Making citizens realise what the consequences are
  of their ideas for changes
• By developing a tool that allows citizens to
• propose changes to their neighbourhood
• assess the quality of these changes

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Approach

• Find a set of indicators for experience of
  liveability of the neighbourhood
• Find a set of characteristics that affect the
  liveability
• Determine a BBN that represents the knowledge
• Build a prototype
• Narrowing its scope to the plaza type of habitat
• Testing the prototype in the Dutch city of
  s-Hertogenbosch

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Experiencing liveabilityLeidelmeijer and
Marsman 1999
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Example experience by an individual
Appreciation Importance
Satisfaction
Liveability
Characteristics
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Example experience by an individual
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Example experience by an individual
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Experience by another individual
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Grouping individuals and their needs

• Wishprofiles
• Teenagers
• Yuppies
• Families
• Elderly
• Handicapped (elderly)
• Aspects
• Space
• Liveliness
• Security
• Quality
• Status
• Traffic

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Data Collection

• Questionnaire of liveability regarding the city
  of s-Hertogenbosch
• Experiences of characteristics such as
• public furnishing
• available facilities
• public accessibility
• status
• appearance
• ambiance
• etc.
• For plazas, over 40 characteristics were
  included.
• Scale of seven possible values
• Ranging from deficient, through moderate and
  neutral, to ample and excessive.

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Data Collection
Example Form and function Incoherent Suitable s
urprising conflicting
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Knowledge Representation

• Bayesian Network
• Can deal with uncertainty and interdependent
  variables
• Determining the structure of a BN
• 1) Knowledge expert who constructs a network
• 2) Examining data from the particular domain
• In this project 2 is used to come to a base
  network which was refined by 1.

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Structural Learning

• Hugin (www.hugin.com) was used with
• PC algorithm (Peter Clark)
• NPC algorithm (Necessary Path Condition)
• Constraint-based learning algorithms
• Derive conditional independence and dependence
  statements by performing statistical tests on
  pairs of variables in the data set

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BN Structure (1)
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Structural Learning

• PC and NPC ? same results
• Significance level 0.05 0.03 0.01
• Difference in real relationships and
  relationships in the data
• Defining relations that are not in the data no
  use

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BN Structure (2)
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Prototype

• User-interaction focused on a task assigned to
  the user
• Users can experience this like a game
• Representing the effects of changes
• Representing the desired states of the aspects
  for different sections of the population
• Availability of the system on Internet
• Easy to use interface and obvious navigation

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Changing elements

• Three ways
• 1) Drawing
• 2) Picking from a list
• 3) Cheating

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Changing elements 1 (drawing)
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Changing elements 2 (picking from a list)
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Changing elements 3 (cheating)
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Presentation of Predicted Effects

• Three levels
• 1) Simple ? does not give desired effect
• 2) Normal
• 3) Expert

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Presentation of Predicted Effects 2 (normal)
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Presentation of Predicted Effects 2 (normal)
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Presentation of Predicted Effects 3 (expert)
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Presentation of Predicted Effects 3 (expert)
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Evaluation

• www.WijkWizard.nl (dutch)
• Tested and evaluated by inhabitants of the city
  of s-Hertogenbosch.
• Online evaluation form.
• Thanks to the Neighbourhood Wizard, I now see
  that certain ideas are positive for me, but
  negative for other members of our community
  7.4
• The Neighbourhood Wizard shows me that changes
  can have positive effects on one aspect, but
  negative effects on other aspects 7.0
• Confirmed the educational function of the
  prototype!

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Conclusions ()

• The Neighbourhood Wizard helps users to see that
  certain ideas are positive for them, but negative
  for other sections of the population
• The Neighbourhood Wizard shows users that changes
  can have positive effects on one aspect, but
  negative effects on other aspects
• The Neighbourhood Wizard helps users to realize
  the complexity of a design task and as a result
  users will have a better informed view on plan
  proposals and probably a higher appreciation of
  plans.

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Conclusions (-)

• Design of the user interface
• Navigation structure (too many clicks)
• Abstract terms
• Inclusion of more concrete elements (number of
  parking lots) can help take away long-living
  irritations that inhabitants may have
• The data collection is restricted to physical
  characteristics

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Future work

• Investigate the relations between characteristics
  in depth
• (developing a technique that) Includes
  explanations of the effects
• In some cases the predictions are not so obvious
  and require further explanation
• For example The creation of a quiet plaza has
  negative effects on the safety of the plaza. This
  is not a logical, though correct, prediction
  because the quietness of a plaza will attract
  criminal behaviour

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Thank you

• Questions or coffee break?

Leon.vanBerlo_at_tno.nl / WijkWizard.nl
j.p.v.leeuwen_at_tue.nl / www.ddss.nl