Digital tools and data in the Detailed Planning process in Stockholm municipality - A conclusive needs assessment and SWOT analysis.

Abstract: There is a high building pressure in the Municipality of Stockholm today and the city is expected to continue to grow in the future. This trend can be seen in urban environments around the world and has resulted in new ideas concerning how to develop cities in a sustainable way. Sustainable urban development concerns both how cities should be designed, as well as how to ensure that the development processes occur in such a way, that they can help achieve sustainable development. In Sweden, development processes are regulated by law, with statutory requirements on producing a Detailed Plan in all development projects. The Detailed Plan process involves actors from both public and private sectors that need to communicate and collaborate throughout the process. This master thesis focused on finding strengths, weaknesses, possibilities and threats of the information sharing system within the Detailed Planning process at the Municipality of Stockholm. Furthermore, it investigated the feasibility of digitalisation of the process and the expressed data and analysis needs of the involved actors, as well as its connection to sustainable development. In order to investigate these research questions, a combined use of a literature review, an interview study and a SWOT-analysis was used. The literature review focused on identifying the state of the art within the research topic, the use of Geographic Information Systems in urban development and understanding the concept of sustainable urban development. In order to understand the Detailed Planning process in the Stockholm Municipality, the literature review was combined with information obtained in the interview study. The interview study was conducted as semi-structured interviews with interview subjects from developers, municipal administrations, academia and consultant agencies involved in the Detailed Planning process in Stockholm. The results from the interview study was analysed through a needs assessment. Based on the literature study and the needs assessment, the information sharing system and digitalisation of the Detailed Planning process was compiled in a SWOT-analysis used to create alternative visions for the system construction. The results of this thesis showed that in the information sharing system of the Detailed Planning process, data is mainly shared as reports between the involved actors and the involved actors use different softwares for data handling, visualisation and use. The needs assessment revealed several themes in the needs of the actors concerning Data & Analyses, Format, System & Handling and Softwares & Functions. Among the involved actors, there is a need for more georeferenced statistical data and analyses concerning human perception and behaviour  connected to the built environment. All actors wanted an improved data exchange within the process and a majority of the actors are open to the idea of a GIS-kit containing available and relevant data to be shared between the actors in the beginning of Detailed Planning projects. The SWOT analysis showed both positive and negative factors affecting the information sharing system and its digitalisation. It resulted in the creation of two alternative visions for the information sharing system, based on the distribution of a GIS-kit or the creation of a shared project database. In both visions, a shared database for the municipal administrations is constructed. Based on the results, the master thesis concluded that data coordination and data format definitions are two key aspects that will affect the information sharing system progress and its digitalisation in the Municipality of Stockholm.