Digital Methods and Collaborative Platforms for Informing Design Values with Science

While design is increasingly being recognized as common ground to bring scientific knowledge into decision making enacting landscape change, it has mostly been used to create place specific responses expressing particular values until now, rather than framing the natural and physical sciences to become more salient, find legitimation, and consequently have a greater and longer lasting effect on landscape change. Inverting the design approach by first assessing values and then modelling the functionality of the system to infer possible management strategies can better help incorporate scientific knowledge in local place making. This contribution illustrates such an approach with a case study focusing on rehabilitating the Ciliwung River in Jakarta, Indonesia, where hydrodynamic models are framed to deliver values assessed in a discrete choice experiment. The assessed values thus frame the processes of science as well as the choices they involve, and are subsequently embodied in design outcomes. We want to show more particularly how digital methods in landscape architecture and planning can support an integrative approach, and close with discussing how embedding such approaches in a collaborative platform can help improve design and provide an interactive learning tool for various stakeholder groups.