Simulated Systems for Environmental Planning

Sustainable management of a region’s valuable environmental assets requires comprehension of alternative ways that these resources will function into the future depending upon different policy and investment choices. Environmental resources must be understood and treated as complex systems that are part of regional and global networks. Simulated systems for environmental planning serve as planning support systems that simulate future environmental change associated with alternative futures resulting from present day decisions. These tools are included here because they utilize simulation, an important educational technology methodology, to educate citizens and stakeholders to assist with environmental decision making in public forums. These systems use visualization to produce output in formats that enable users to easily perceive trends and intuitively visualize results through the use of educational multimedia such as graphs, moving images, and motion pictures generated from the data displayed with computer generated imagery (CGI). A number of these important systems have been developed by professors and students in a higher education setting, where they are also utilized for teaching and learning. This entry provides information about the critical need for support with environmental planning today and about how these simulated systems can help. It discusses the components of the systems and their workflow and explains how they are used in tandem with facilitated planning processes. It presents the land-use evolution and impact assessment model (LEAM), as an example of such a simulated system.