Léon van Berlo / Jos van Leeuwen

The Neighbourhood Wizard

Cause and effect of changes in urban neighbourhoods

05 July 2006 2

Agenda

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

05 July 2006 3

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 don’t 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 liveability:Leidelmeijer and Marsman 1999

Environment characteristic 1

Environment characteristic ..

Environment characteristic n

Appreciation 1

Appreciation n

Importance ..

Appreciation ..

Importance 1

Importance n

Satisfaction 1

Satisfaction ..

Satisfaction n

Experienced liveability

x

x

x

x

x

x

+

+

Infulenced by the habitat

OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE

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Example experience by an individual

Composition:simple

Status:popular

Security:safe

neutral

positive

none

negative

low+/-

++

++

xx

xx

xx

+

+

+

high

AppreciationImportance

Satisfaction LiveabilityCharacteristics

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Example experience by an individual

Composition:simple

Status:popular

Security:safe

neutral

positive

none

negative

low+/-

++

Exp.liveability

+

+

+

high

Charcteristic ..importance

appreciation+

Charcteristic ..importance

appreciation

--

Charcteristic ..importance

appreciation+

Charcteristic ..importance

appreciation+

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Example experience by an individual

ASPECT

ELEMENT

ASPECT

neutral

positive

low+/-

++

Exp.liveability

+

+

high

ELEMENT

ASPECTimportance

appreciation

-- +

ELEMENT

ELEMENT

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Experience by another individual

ASPECT

ELEMENT

ASPECT

neutral

positive

low+/-

+

Exp.liveability

+

+

normal

ELEMENT

ASPECTimportance

appreciation

-- +

ELEMENT

ELEMENT

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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:IncoherentSuitablesurprising 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)

05 July 2006 24

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.

05 July 2006 31

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

05 July 2006 33

Thank you

• Questions or coffee break?

Leon.vanBerlo@tno.nl / WijkWizard.nl j.p.v.leeuwen@tue.nl / www.ddss.nl