| Operations at the Hanford site, a former plutonium production facility in Washington State, resulted in high levels of contamination of soils and groundwater. These nuclear and chemical contaminants can be very harmful to humans and ecological systems, and can persist for (tens of) thousands of years in the environment. In the last ten years, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has spent over 12 billion dollars on Hanford “clean up,” but the nature, extent, and technical complexity of activities make them difficult to understand. Cleanup decision information is simply not ‘transparent’ to people who are interested in participating in cleanup decision processes. This research proposed and evaluated ways to improve the transparency of cleanup decision information at Hanford. Transparency is a multi-faceted concept requiring multiple measures for evaluation. The pilot Decision Mapping System (DMS) was developed to measure and improve transparency for a specific Hanford decision by integrating information from many sources and visualizing decision information in several ways. The DMS consisted of six ‘information structures’ linked with hypertext on the World Wide Web (decision maps, background information, decision paths, geographic libraries, value trees and commenting features). Employing a participatory design strategy ensured that the DMS was responsive to stakeholder needs and expectations. The DMS was published on the Internet (http://nalu.geog.washington.edu/dms) and evaluated with an on-line survey and emails received from DMS users. In general, users found that the pilot DMS provided appropriate information in a useful format, recommended further system development, and expected to use the DMS to access documents, learn about Hanford and keep track of cleanup progress. These results indicate that tools such as the Decision Mapping System can provide the information needed to support analytic-deliberative decision process. Thus, we have made significant progress toward defining the information content and format needed to develop ‘shared understanding’ among participants in decision processes. Directions for future research include continuing to unpack transparency, improving the information structures found in the DMS, developing transparent “institutional controls” that protect residents and ecosystems for the long-term, and expanding the DMS framework to other applications (such as transportation planning).*; *This dissertation includes a CD that is compound (contains both a paper copy and CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following applications: Internet Browser, Microsoft Office. |
