City Research Online

Abstract

Developing equitable and effective decarbonisation plans is a critical challenge for UK local authorities, who must balance complex technical, social, and economic factors. While computational models can propose optimal solutions based on a single objective, they often fail to account for the nuanced trade-offs and competing priorities inherent in public policy. We address this with a visual analytics system designed to support a human-in-the-loop planning process. Our primary contributions are threefold: (i) a modular, component-based planning paradigm that makes the construction of complex, multi-objective strategies cognitively manageable; (ii) a multi-scale visualisation framework that uses a model-driven glyph design to represent multivariate and temporal data uniformly across geographic scales, enabling fair and just assessment; and (iii) a tightlyintegrated workflow that allows planners to iteratively explore data, compose interventions, simulate outcomes, and refine their strategies in real-time. We demonstrate through an application scenario how our system empowers planners to move beyond monolithic optimisation and engage in a transparent, evidence-based dialogue with their data, ultimately supporting the creation of more robust and equitable decarbonisation plans.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s). Proceedings published by Eurographics - The European Association for Computer Graphics. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Department of Computer Science School of Science & Technology > Department of Computer Science > giCentre
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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