About the Project

Creating Futures is a new and innovative 4-year research project aimed at creating tools for improved decision making. The research tools are designed to inform communities about the long-term effects of current development patterns and trends. It also aims to enhance community involvement in choosing and planning for desired futures.

Creating Futures is the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) Funded - Choosing Regional Futures Project. The research project lead by Environment Waikato, in collaboration with AgResearch, Landcare Research, the National Institute for Water and Atmosphere (NIWA ), Scion (formerly the Forest Research Institute), University of Waikato, the New Zealand Institute for Ecological Economics (NZCEE) and international researchers from the Netherlands, France and the USA has been awarded $1.6 million funding from the FRST.

The project will intergrate within a spatial model economic information, social/population statistics and environmental data across the Waikato Region. The tools developed will be useful in long term, holistic planning and decision-making. This is sometimes called 'Futures Planning' - making informed choices for our future.

The research project has been closely aligned with the end users through Environment Waikato and its role in developing the Long-Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) for the Waikato Region. This involves linking with the Choosing Waikato Futures project and the establishment of an Advisory Group that has input into the research process.

The development of these tools recognises the links and interactions between environmental, social, cultural and economic activities and outcomes, and incorporates the need to understanding the trade-offs among those outcomes when making decisions. The tools being developed are applicable nationally and this project will use the Waikato region as the case study to leverage off existing council planning and research effort.

The project has two work streams:

Deliberation Processes - Objective 1 provides tools and processes for evaluation, deliberation and choice of alternative futures towards sustainability, including the development of scenarios for the Waikato Region.

Spatial Modelling - Objective 2 develops a spatial decision support system that integrates data across layers of information that represent the 4 well beings in a way that allows interrogation of the impacts of alternative futures. This tool will allow for testing of proposed policies in a spatially explicit way, and to undertake "what-if" testing as part of policy development.