DECIDE: An Outcome-Driven Decision Support System for Urban-Regional Planning

This position paper argues that outcome-driven Decision Support Systems (DSS) are more appropriate than current data-driven approaches to integrate Multi-Domain Models (MDMs) in the context of sustainable urban-regional planning. This is because, for urban planning, DSS needs to provide fit-for-purpose answers to problems faced by practitioners when managing and designing city features. In fact, planners must cater for imagined scenarios, assessing viable solutions with regards to how they change in accordance with ever-changing constrains, to be able to improve cities towards becoming sustainable and resilient. The authors frame urban-regional planning as a design activity in which complex and interwoven requirements from multiple stakeholders need to be addressed by decisions involving multidomain knowledge. To this end, the paper highlights main characteristics of design activities, and then compares and contrasts data-driven strategies with outcome-driven strategies. This promotes the development of an outcome-driven DSS that better aligns with the needs of planners working with urban-regional development towards enhancing urban livability and addressing territorial inequalities. It then frames the role of data-driven strategies within outcome-driven DSS, showing how the DECIDE project embraces the creation of an outcome-driven DSS with punctual data-driven strategies.