Knowledge Exchange: Improved community engagement through spatial and visualisation methods (ICE-SAV)

New approaches to engage with different communities (residents of particular neighbourhoods but also groups with different expertise or knowledge - communities of interest) that incorporate or combine spatial (mapped based and linked to real places) and visualisation (three-dimensional views or abstract representations of information) tools hold considerable potential to improve interaction between and within groups. This improved engagement provides opportunities to improve the understanding of different viewpoints between and within communities but also to generate new knowledge or novel solutions to complex (often difficult) problems by allowing people to see things in a different way.

The 'Improving Community Engagement through Spatial and Visualisation methods' project saw groups of academics, charities, local government officers and community groups come together for three seminars to share and exchange their experiences of what approaches work where, when and for whom based on previously funded projects.

These discussions helped the seminar participants to make previously unrecognised linkages between methods used in their research and community engagement work. The seminars also identified gaps in our understanding that require further research together with opportunities to apply and combine methods in new contexts, with different communities, to improve the engagement of stakeholders in real world decision making.