Public Participation GIS (PPGIS)

Public participation GIS (PPGIS) is a family of practices that bring the spatial knowledge, values, and priorities of ordinary people into geographic information systems, so that community perspectives sit alongside expert and official data in planning and decision-making. Synthesized as a field by Renee Sieber in 2006, it ranges from facilitated workshops where residents mark up paper maps to web mapping platforms where thousands of people drop points marking places they value or fear. Its aim is both technical and political: to enrich spatial analysis with local knowledge and to widen who gets to shape decisions about place.