PPGIS
Public Participation GIS: methods that let residents and stakeholders add their own place-based knowledge to a map.
Also known as: Public Participation GIS, participatory GIS, participatory mapping
PPGIS stands for Public Participation Geographic Information Systems. It covers a family of methods where people who are not GIS professionals contribute spatial information: where they feel unsafe, which routes they walk, which places matter to them. The data is collected on a map rather than in free text, so it can be analysed alongside other spatial layers.
PPGIS grew out of academic planning research in the 1990s and is now common practice in municipal planning, housing dialogue and environmental research. The practical barrier has usually been tooling: desktop GIS is too technical for respondents, and generic survey tools cannot capture location.
How it works in MapX
MapX is a browser-based PPGIS tool. Respondents answer on any device without an account, planners see the responses on a map, and results export to CSV, PDF and PowerPoint.