1. Léon van Berlo / Jos van Leeuwen The Neighbourhood Wizard Cause and effect of changes in urban neighbourhoods

2. 05 July 20062 Agenda Introduction Objective Approach (Experiencing) Liveability Data Collection Knowledge representation Prototype Evaluation and testing Conclusions and future work Coffee break

3. 05 July 20063 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

4. 05 July 20064 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

5. 05 July 20065 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

6. 05 July 20066 Experiencing liveability: Leidelmeijer and Marsman 1999

7. 05 July 20067 Example experience by an individual Appreciation Importance Satisfaction LiveabilityCharacteristics

8. 05 July 20068 Example experience by an individual

9. 05 July 20069 Example experience by an individual

10. 05 July 200610 Experience by another individual

11. 05 July 200611 Grouping individuals and their needs Wishprofiles: Teenagers Yuppies Families Elderly Handicapped (elderly) Aspects: Space Liveliness Security Quality Status Traffic

12. 05 July 200612 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.

13. 05 July 200613 Data Collection Example: Form and function: Incoherent Suitable surprising conflicting

14. 05 July 200614 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.

15. 05 July 200615 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

16. 05 July 200616 BN Structure (1)

17. 05 July 200617 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

18. 05 July 200618 BN Structure (2)

19. 05 July 200619 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

20. 05 July 200620 Changing elements: Three ways: 1) Drawing 2) Picking from a list 3) Cheating

21. 05 July 200621 Changing elements: 1 (drawing)

22. 05 July 200622 Changing elements: 2 (picking from a list)

23. 05 July 200623 Changing elements: 3 (cheating)

24. 05 July 200624 Presentation of Predicted Effects Three levels: 1) Simple  does not give desired effect 2) Normal 3) Expert

25. 05 July 200625 Presentation of Predicted Effects: 2 (normal)

26. 05 July 200626 Presentation of Predicted Effects: 2 (normal)

27. 05 July 200627 Presentation of Predicted Effects: 3 (expert)

28. 05 July 200628 Presentation of Predicted Effects: 3 (expert)

29. 05 July 200629 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!

30. 05 July 200630 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.

31. 05 July 200631 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

32. 05 July 200632 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

33. 05 July 200633 Thank you Questions or coffee break? Leon.vanBerlo@tno.nl / WijkWizard.nl j.p.v.leeuwen@tue.nl / www.ddss.nl