Abstract
The Korean Digital Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) System, which is currently under development, aims to develop a system that conducts environmental impact assessment on a platform that digitizes the entire process of environmental impact assessment. This paper analyzes the politics of major interest groups such as EIA agencies, EIA review agencies, public officials, and residents in three stages of EIA: big data platforms, environmental predictive modeling, and data presentation. The results of this study are as follows: Big data platforms are beneficial to the interests of review agencies, but ambivalent to the interests of EIA business. Big data platforms increase the accessibility of data to review agencies, making it easier for them to review assessment data, which helps to prevent false and poor investigations. On the other hand, the platform cannot replace field surveys, but it can reduce the scope and scale of field surveys, which may partially infringe on the interests of field survey agencies, while big data platforms can be utilized as a data market if environmental impact survey data can be sold on the data platform. Second, if domestic predictive modeling programs are installed on the platform, it may weaken the market dominance of large companies that use expensive foreign modeling software. Third, even in the pursuit of digital democracy, a politics of the senses may be at work, diminishing the tactile and auditory and enhancing the visual in the presentation of data.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—People, Education, and Technology for a Sustainable Future
KEYWORDS
Data Science, Environmental impact assessment, Digital democracy, Sensory politics
