Facilitating participatory multilevel decision-making by using interactive mental maps Constanze Pfeiffer 1 , Stephanie Glaser 2 , Jayshree Vencatesan 3 , Elke Schliermann-Kraus 2 , Axel Drescher 2 , Rüdiger Glaser 2 1 Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Swiss Tropical Institute, P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland; 2 Department of Physical Geography, University of Freiburg, Werthmannstraße 4, D-79085 Freiburg, Germany; 3 Care Earth, 21st Street Thillaiganga Nagar, Chennai 600 061, India Abstract. Participation of citizens in political, economic or social decisions is increasingly recognized as a precondition to foster sustainable development processes. Since spatial information is often important during planning and decision- making, participatory mapping gains in popularity. However, little attention has been paid to the fact that information must be presented in a useful way to reach city planners and policy makers. Above all, the importance of visualisation tools to support collaboration, analytical reasoning, problem solving and decision-making in analysing and planning processes has been underestimated. In this paper, we describe how an interactive mental map tool has been developed in a highly interdisciplinary disaster management project in Chennai, India. We moved from a hand drawn mental maps approach to an interactive mental map tool. This was achieved by merging socio-economic and geospatial data on infrastructure, local perceptions, coping and adaptation strategies with remote sensing data and modern technology of map making. This newly developed interactive mapping tool allowed for insights into different locally-constructed real- ities and facilitated the communication of results to the wider public and respective policy makers. It proved to be use- ful in visualising information and promoting participatory decision-making processes. We argue that the tool bears potential also for health research projects. The interactive mental map can be used to spatially and temporally assess key health themes such as availability of, and accessibility to, existing health care services, breeding sites of disease vec- tors, collection and storage of water, waste disposal, location of public toilets or defecation sites. Keywords: participatory mapping, risk assessment, decision-making, visualisation, health research, India. Introduction The demand for participation of citizens in politi- cal, economic or social decisions is growing, reflect- ing the need to integrate the ideas and experiences of those affected by decisions (Mukherjee, 1993; Wright and Nelson, 1994; Chambers, 1997). Considering the voices of citizens has been proven to be crucial for the sustainability of interventions as well as the creation of ownership and acceptance among different stakeholders. Therefore, collabora- tion with, and involvement of, citizens is becoming more and more important for policy makers world- wide. Meanwhile, different tools have been and still are developed that not only allow for learning from community members themselves, but provide ways in which they can actively identify and express their concerns, needs and opinions to policy makers. Since spatial information is often crucial during planning and decision-making, participatory mapping has gained popularity. It is mainly used to facilitate pub- lic involvement and to connect community members with policy makers (Abbot et al., 1998; Harris and Weiner, 1998; Vajjhala, 2006; Dunn, 2007). The idea of using maps to illuminate problems is not a new one. In geography, Kevin Lynch, author Corresponding author: Rüdiger Glaser Department of Physical Geography University of Freiburg Werthmannstraße 4, 79085 Freiburg, Germany Tel. +49 761 203 3527; Fax +49 761 203 3596 E-mail: ruediger.glaser@geographie.uni-freiburg.de Geospatial Health 3(1), 2008, pp. 103-112