Planning Support Systems (PSS) are increasingly used to support collaborative planning workshops in urban adaptation practice. Research has focused on developing such tools and evaluating their use in workshops but has not measured tools' effects over time on real planning processes, on the participants involved, and on the final outcomes. The role that tools play in adaptation planning, therefore, remains unclear. A longitudinal case study was made to evaluate a PSS, the Adaptation Support Tool (AST), in a design workshop for sustainable urban water management, in Berlin, Germany. The case study also served to test the evaluation framework and generate insights regarding systematic evaluations of tools in planning processes. The case study was carried out over eighteen months, to capture both the details of the workshop and its longer-term effects on the project and participants. Our results show that the AST's most evident effects were (1) contributory and less tangible in nature (e.g., supporting learning), than directly causal and concrete (e.g., affecting planning decisions), and (2) a function of the process and context in which the workshop took place. This study demonstrates that making systematic, longitudinal evaluations are valuable for studying the role of PSS in urban adaptation planning.

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Planning Support Systems (PSS) are a promising tool for involving stakeholders in urban adaptation workshops. Past research has focused on the use and added value of PSS. While earlier studies have widely acknowledged the importance of context in determining the effectiveness of PSS, there has so far been no dedicated study of the influence of context on the use and added value of these tools in real planning workshops. To address this gap, we made an in-depth exploratory case study of a PSS, called the Adaptation Support Tool (AST), used in an adaptation planning workshop in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The workshop used the AST to support collaborative spatial planning for urban water management, at the neighbourhood scale. Interviews, questionnaires, observations and document review were used to investigate the influence of three contextual factors on the use and added value of the AST. The studied contextual factors are: 1) the style of tool use, 2) the phase of planning, and 3) the local project setting. Our findings indicate that the style of tool use and the local project setting were the most important contextual factors in determining the use and added value of the AST during the workshop. Meanwhile, the phase of planning appears to be critical for achieving impacts at the project level. This exploratory case study is a modest first contribution to understanding the influence of context on the use and added value of PSS in practice. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that further exploration of this topic could offer important insights to PSS use in practice. The influence of context on the use and added value of Planning Support Systems in workshops: an exploratory case study of climate adaptation planning in Guayaquil, Ecuador.@en

In the face of a changing climate, many cities are engaged in adaptation planning and are using participatory workshops to involve stakeholders in these initiatives. Different tools are being used to structure the process and content of participatory planning workshops, but it is unclear what effect the tools have on the workshops and their results. We evaluated three different tools (Group Model Building, the Adaptation Support Tool, and the Stress Test Guideline) and a tool-free approach in repeated simulated workshops, to observe and compare (1) the way workshops played out, and (2) the direct outcomes that were achieved. Tools appear to influence both aspects. Specifically, we measured differences in the learning effects in groups, in the development of shared understanding within groups, in the types of plans that are developed by groups, and in the nature of participation during the workshops. Further research is needed to translate these results into practice, but this is a first step in advancing knowledge about the influence of tools in participatory planning activities.

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