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Research

Research

Research

Summary

The Decision Theater (DT) is a world-class university facility that is used for exploring and understanding decision-making in complex and uncertain systems. The DT uses a combination of hardware, software and facilitation to form a robust decision-support platform. This platform includes the use of tools like visualization capabilities, modeling and simulation, and experiential/collaborative group activities to help users to direct their decisions towards a more sustainable future. DT supports a greater level of process documentation than is generally available in the more traditional "paper and pencil" collaborative processes.

The DT may be used in the following ways:

  • laboratory to study decision-making
  • environment for immersive visualizations of models and simulations
  • hub for research collaboration
  • site for stakeholder visioning, alignment, collaboration and decision-making workshops
  • integrated collections of decision support systems for monitoring data informatics to support planning and decision-making.

The City of Avondale is a rapidly developing community and the City Council and City staff are interested in applying innovative and progressive collaborative and visual planning tools to evaluate growth management. The DT provides tools to: visualize and evaluate land development scenarios, create structured engagement of Avondale City Council members and staff, support visioning and alignment of plans. The Avondale City Council will use these tools for a visioning workshop at the Decision Theater at Arizona State University. The goal of the visioning workshop is to establish alignment of the City Council and staff decisions for managed growth planning for several identified areas of study that are of considerable interest to City.

Funding

City of Avondale, Arizona

Timeline

August 2009 — July 2010