**2.2. Exploring gaps in existing municipal planning practices and possible improvements using Co-PPGIS**

which is categorized according to the spatial and temporal dimensions [37, 38] and starts from the same time (synchronous) and same place (co-located), different time (asynchronous) and same place, different time and different place (distributed), and same time and

**Virtual meeting environment**: With the passage of time, technology has become more advance and friendly. The advance Co-PPGIS has a solution in which a participant can easily participate through the electronic meeting facility without appearing physically in the meeting and share his views with relation to project. Participants can do video chat and can drop a message for a specific participant without any restriction. This is how decision-makers can easily involve in any project, which is being developed for a municipality for its effectiveness and efficiency, which will ultimately lead to better decision-making process. In developing countries resources are minimum and need is maximum like Pakistan and India. There is massive need for developing such thing for public, which gives all these facilities which are

Shortly Co-PPGIS environment is an online meeting procedure for supporting participant's collaborations on geographical information like mapping and imageries and collecting and

different place.

64 Housing

mentioned above to give comfort to decision-makers.

**Figure 4.** Co-PPGIS workflow processes and service abilities.

Exploring and contrasting of existing PPGIS application's performance are essential or helpful in recognizing the functionality gaps between those collaborative PPGIS applications which organized crucial basis for Co-PPGIS requirement analysis and architectural design. **Figure 5** depicts the research gaps in current or existing communication mediums or participation practices found during the literature review and recommended how the Co-PPGIS contributes to the existing practice in order to increase public participation in municipality planning and development projects. It also explains how the approaches in relation to the proposed/ enhanced infrastructure of Co-PPGIS will organize, improve, stimulate, accommodate, and contribute to the existing public participation practices.

The issues and improvements of these issues through Co-PPGIS are explained in this section. For instance, (1) through or by using Co-PPGIS meeting environment, the issue of inadequate communication, generated due to fixed-time meeting schedules, accessibility issues, lengthy

**Figure 5.** Identifying relation between existing participation practices and the suggested Co-PPGIS.

presentations, and open talks with authorities, can be accompanied because Co-PPGIS supports accesses anywhere/anytime/to anyone with real-time participation support. (2) Through a spatial component of GIS-based platform or through real-time map sharing cooperative component of the Co-PPGIS, the issue of inadequate way of investigating spatial data is the use of hard copy maps in the meeting sessions because CPPGIS increases the degree of public participation along with spatial data investigation during essential meeting sessions. (3) Through meeting scheduling/notifying and/or by the e-newsletter components of Co-PPGIS Blog, the issue of inadequate process of sending notification related to existing municipal development projects can be self-regulating/self-operating. (4) Information access associated to a municipality project's level data can facilitate through project information blog which exhibits the existing or future municipal project's notice detail, minutes of the meeting, presentation, document, location, and all valuable information. (5) Through Co-PPGIS, the absence of support to quick decision-making can be encouraged because Co-PPGIS upgrades or improves public participation or input as well as assists scattered decision-makers to work coincidentally on a real-time basis to conclude the decision in timely manners, which eventually diminish the time span of planning and probability of failure.

• In order to undertake synchronous conferencing, the GeoMeeting server application employs a push technology procedure like real-time instantaneous messaging which is a

Collaborative Public Participatory Web Geographic Information System: A Groupware-Based…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.79354

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• GeoMeeting is provided by geo-referenced pointer with a purpose of pointing at the shared

• With the aid of whiteboard facility, multiple users or participants can produce geometry-

• GeoMeeting provides the opportunity of proper handling of maps (like modifying layers, map scale, and its position) to participants and users. It is very easy to rotate or change the map view among different base map layers like street map, satellite, hybrid, and terrain in

• In GeoMeeting participants or multiple users can easily produce and share geo-referenced

• In the construction and installation of GeoMeeting prototype, a web-based client-server

• Through the use of any browser like Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Firefox, GeoMeeting prototype provides the opportunity of the easy accessibility of the main inter-

architecture is very easy; we just need to plug and play.

• GeoMeeting provides real-time map sharing among multiusers or participants.

typical example of push services.

view of map.

based incidents.

notations.

GeoMeeting prototype.

face of a prototype to the users.

**Figure 6.** Conceptual architecture of the GeoMeeting system.

The upcoming sections demonstrate prototypes' execution of the proposed framework to assist its real-time synchronous participatory procedures that exhibit the innovations to be expected when trying to perceive the concepts established in this research.
