A Decision-Making Framework for Participatory Planning: Providing Water Infrastructure Services to Displaced Persons: Fid-Bau Portal

A Decision-Making Framework for Participatory Planning: Providing Water Infrastructure Services to Displaced Persons

Araya, Felipe / Faust, Kasey M. / Kaminsky, Jessica A.

In 2015 and 2016 combined, approximately 2.4 million first-time asylum seekers sought refuge in countries from the European Union, of which nearly 50% were registered in Germany. This population influx was primarily housed in urban environments, placing additional demands on the urban infrastructure systems from hosting communities. As such, the alternatives used by local authorities to provide services to displaced persons (e.g., temporary versus permanent infrastructure) can impact how hosting communities react to such methods (for instance, support versus opposition). This study proposes a framework to include public perceptions of hosting communities in the decision-making process of how to provide water infrastructure services to displaced persons. An agent-based model is developed to capture potential interdependencies between local authorities and hosting communities during the decision-making process of implementing infrastructure alternatives to explore the impact of including public support and opposition toward different infrastructure alternatives. This model is enabled by publicly available data (e.g., percentage of displaced persons accommodated by each state), 10 semi-structured interviews with decision-makers in the summer of 2016, and 416 valid responses from a survey deployed to the German public in 2016. The results revealed that the alternatives that involve making temporary changes to provide water infrastructure faced the highest levels of public opposition. Furthermore, the local context influences how hosting communities perceive different infrastructure alternatives. As such, infrastructure alternatives supported in the context of one community may be opposed by other communities. Understanding the effects of including hosting communities in the decision-making process may assist local authorities and utility engineers in developing infrastructure alternatives that can be sustainable and supported by the hosting communities.