VisionEval
The Regional Strategic Planning Model (RSPM) was developed by ODOT as an offshoot of the GreenSTEP model to support metropolitan area scenario planning projects. The name reflects a broadening of the outcomes and policies for local agency use. Outcomes beyond GHG emissions requirements, such as non-motorized travel are emphasized with a focus on the types of policies and investment actions that are often implemented at the regional or local jurisdiction level. The essential steps of RSPM are similar to GreenSTEP, with a crucial difference of geographic scale. RSPM subdivides metropolitan areas into districts, which are similar to census tracts, and groups of districts, as divisions, to represent the separate policy actions of jurisdictions within the metropolitan area.
An interactive viewer of previously run results from hundreds or thousands of scenarios was added to RSPM. The viewer enables learning about the impact and tradeoffs of different policy combinations, resilience under a range of conditions, and can help to catch inconsistent thinking where residents support a broad community goal but discard the specific actions available to reach it. To date, several agencies have built web-based interactive viewers around scenarios run from VisionEval tools, allowing users a way to explore the effects of various choices for their region’s future.
Current Status
The RSPM model, along with a graphical user interface and output scenario viewer (similar to RSPM viewer) was transferred to the common VisionEval framework.