The 'What if?' Planning Support System: Exploring Alternate Futures With A GIS

Department of Urban Planning, University of Illinois, U-C

When:

26-27 July 2001

Where:

Department of Urban Planning

University of Illinois, U-C

Temple Hoyne Buell Hall

Champaign, IL

This workshop will provide a hands-on introduction to the What if? Planning Support System, a GIS-based system for developing and evaluating future land use development scenarios.

What if? is:

* Easy to use

* GIS-based

* Policy-oriented

* Scenario-based

* Land use forecasting tool

For more information about What if? go to http://www.what-if-pss.com

What if? is the first commercially available off-the-shelf software package that allows professionals, public officials, interest groups, and private citizens to prepare their own scenarios for dealing with issues of smart growth, urban sprawl, and farmland/open space preservation.

The workshop will allow you to:

* Apply What if? to data for a real community

* Define and evaluate your own land use suitability assumptions

* Define and evaluate your own assumptions about the future land use demands

* Combine these assumptions with different policy choices to develop alternative visions for the future.

* Learn how to install What if? for your own community.

Who Should Attend?

* GIS Staff

* Urban Planners

* Elected and nonelected planners

* City and Regional Planning Commissioners

Workshop Instructor

The workshop will be taught by Richard E. Klosterman, Ph.D., the developer of What if?. Dr. Klosterman has over twenty years of experience in developing computer models and quantitative techniques for planning. He is the author of a widely used textbook, Community Analysis and Planning Techniques, senior editor of Spreadsheet Models for Urban and Regional Analysis, and co-editor of Planning Support Systems which will soon be published by the ESRI Press and the CUPR Press.