Visualizing and simulating inner city construction work to support multi-stakeholder meetings

To align the majority of the stakeholders during urban planning activities, planning experts organize multi-stakeholder meetings. A main problem during these meetings is that participants do not always have the necessary knowledge to decide or evaluate planning alternatives. Visualization and Simulation (V&S) tools can help to generate this knowledge that is necessary to make informed decisions during meetings. Experts can communicate their knowledge to laypersons easily and, in this way, improve the stakeholder's knowledge. However, V&S tools only help stakeholders to evaluate several planning alternatives if the simulation and visualization outcomes are meaningful for stakeholders. Theory lacks a process that describes how V&S system designers can find indicators that developers of simulation programs can use to make the mathematical simulation results understandable for laypersons. This paper presents a process model that allows V&S system designers to identify stakeholder-relevant indicators for V&S tools to support urban construction projects. We validated the process model on a case study in which we developed a V&S tool to support traffic planning activities during the reconstruction of the city centre of Enschede. We used a V&S tool for indicators that we identified using the process model in two meetings where it helped to generate and streamline meaningful discussions among stakeholders. In particular, it enabled stakeholders to learn about relative differences of planning alternatives. This helped to generate and communicate new knowledge by supporting the evaluation of different planning alternatives.