The Interagency Transportation, Land Use, and Climate Change Pilot Project - Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Website

http://www.volpe.dot.gov/publi...

PlaceMatters led a team including Placeways, LLC and the University of Colorado Denver Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems and Transportation Research Center to create an interactive scenario planning exercise to examine the impacts of various housing and employment scenarios on greenhouse gas emissions and vulnerability to sea level rise on Cape Cod.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (the Volpe Center) coordinated a number of key federal, state, regional and local partners including EPA, FWS, NOAA, the Cape Cod Commission, and Cape Cod town planners to participate in this process as a model for future climate change discussions.  PlaceMatters’ task was to design a pilot stakeholder scenario planning process that attempted to address transportation related aspects of climate change factors as well as possible adaptation approaches on Cape Cod.

PlaceMatters worked closely with Placeways and the University of Colorado to develop a workshop interface that allowed participants to digitally placement of jobs, housing and transportation, and then see the performance of their scenario against several metrics in real time.  Using low cost pen touch-tables built by PlaceMatters, stakeholders could place future households and employment on a digital map embedded with a number of impacts and indicators.  Placeways’ CommunityViz™ scenario planning tool quickly analyzed and reported performance through easy to understand charts and other visual representations.  The interactive feedback and ability to turn on and off map layers enabled a detailed conversation about the complex impacts of development patterns on greenhouse gas emissions, and potential climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Image: "Cape Cod" by Josh and Erica Olson Silverstein.  Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacire/5288526255/

For more information

Contact Jason Lally