Session Chair: Kiyota Hashimoto Session Theme: Online Discussion and Cooperation Session Number: 2 Paper No: 3 Session and Talk No: TS2-4 Type: Full Co-authors: Sofia Sahab, Takayuki Ito, Jawad Haqbeen and Shun Okuhara Title: Towards an Insights-Driven Participatory Tool for Social Sustainability in the context of Neighborhood Functions of Gozars in Kabul City

1. Towards an Insights-Driven Participatory Tool for
Social Sustainability in the context of
Neighborhood Functions of Gozars in Kabul City
Sofia Sahab1, Takayuki Ito2, Jawad Haqbeen1 and Shun Okuhara1
1 Nagoya Institute of Technology
2 Kyoto University
15th International Conference on Knowledge, Information and
Creativity Support System

2. Introduction
• The collection of large-scale primary data from the original data sources is
essential to analyze the neighborhood function of the urban units called
Gozar found in Kabul city for reactivating the failed functions.
• However, in an insecure city like Kabul, collecting people's insight through
common techniques like field surveys, interviews and questionnaires are
very difficult.
• Moreover, getting the participants real insights is difficult by using self-
administered survey.
• Therefore we used web-based online discussion platform, “D-Agree” to
collect people’s real insights on neighborhood functions.
• In this research we will evaluate the usefulness of web-based insight
collection methods over common techniques.
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3. Background of Gozar
• Gozars are centuries old units of urban and local governance found in
Kabul and surrounding Islamic cities
• Before, there were strong social ties among its residents that brought up
mutual aid, social and physical order in them
• However, currently the social capital is diminishing and the neighborhood
functions does not well.
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City
District
Gozar
By acknowledging and valuing the
potential of citizens and traditional
values of Gozars, we are aiming to
mobilize people towards social and
physical improvement of Gozars
using soft methods of participation.

4. Previous Study
• Questionnaires and interviews with 82 Gozar representatives from 4
districts of Kabul in 2013
• Duration: Two months onsite, several months offsite for arrangements
before the survey and analysis after survey
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5. Methodology
We use “D-Agree” online discussion platform as a smart data collection tool
that facilitates the data aggregation and insight collection in collective
intelligence
1. Established research collaboration between Nagoya Institute of
Technology and Kabul Municipality
2. Announced the call for participation in Kabul Municipality Facebook
and Home page and provided a link to login to D-agree
3. Created a virtual discussion space for each of the 22 districts
4. Participants discussion based on their district of residence
Social experiment date: May 12 to May 28 202
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6. Discussion Themes
1. General Gozar Functions
• Duration: 3 days (kick-off)
• Objectives: collecting resident’s general opinions and level of understanding
of Gozar functions
2. Working-well Gozar Functions
• Duration: 7 days
• Objectives: find out working well functions from a list of 18 functions used
in the previous questionnaire survey
3. Solution-giving to not-working well functions
• Duration: 7 days
• Objectives: find out solutions from participants’ point of view and check
effect of the agent facilitation towards leading the issues towards ideas.
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7. Results
• Number of participants: 733
• Number of opinions 874, classified to 1,893 components
• Issues: 599
• Ideas: 576
• Merits/pros: 474
• Demerits/cons: 244
• Facilitation:
Human: 156
AI: 215
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8. Results
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District Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Total
Number of posts in theme 1 5 1 1 2 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 2 1 3 1 2 1 4 1 4 4 12 48
Number of posts in theme 2 71 19 27 29 29 16 10 5 13 7 39 30 44 18 21 33 36 22 17 12 11 101 610
Number of posts in theme 3 35 16 4 11 11 24 11 3 7 2 5 6 7 8 10 9 12 10 6 7 4 8 216
Sum of posts (theme 1 - 3) 111 36 32 42 40 40 22 10 20 10 44 38 52 29 32 44 49 36 24 23 19 121 874
Issue 99 24 23 17 45 13 14 9 6 6 41 10 38 22 6 20 73 21 15 11 3 83 599
Idea 81 18 28 15 31 18 14 3 17 8 26 20 29 15 28 29 24 30 8 14 9 111 576
Pros 61 19 22 24 28 24 17 6 11 7 29 14 39 9 8 23 15 15 14 12 7 70 474
Cons 34 6 9 11 9 5 2 0 10 4 12 13 16 9 11 15 12 6 5 8 5 42 244
Sum of ideas, issues, pros &
cons 275 67 82 67 113 60 47 18 44 25 108 57 122 55 53 87 124 72 42 45 24 306 1893
Number of participants 79 31 29 37 31 26 16 10 18 8 36 35 48 25 28 44 40 35 22 20 19 96 733
Number of H facilitator posts 14 6 8 5 7 7 6 4 7 5 8 6 6 6 5 7 7 6 6 5 7 18 156
Number of AI facilitator posts 25 9 8 10 10 10 6 3 6 3 11 9 12 7 8 11 12 9 6 6 6 28 215

9. Results
9
Themes Date Issue Idea Pros Cons Total
Theme 1
12-May 3 6 1 2 12
13-May 8 30 15 0 53
14-May 7 2 4 2 15
Total 18 38 20 4 80
Theme 2
15-May 57 57 39 37 190
16-May 46 0 0 3 49
17-May 151 172 132 58 513
18-May 30 38 24 13 105
19-May 69 56 24 43 192
20-May 128 58 90 41 317
21-May 14 26 54 7 101
Total 495 407 363 202 1467
Theme 3
22-May 7 37 5 10 59
23-May 4 17 8 5 34
24-May 15 29 18 6 68
25-May 15 14 17 3 49
26-May 12 13 30 6 61
27-May 0 0 0 0 0
28-May 33 21 13 8 75
Total 86 131 91 38 346
Ideas + Pros > Issues + Cons
Stance of agent facilitation as
issue solving

10. Results
10
0
200
400
600
Theme 1 Theme 2 Theme 3
Issue Idea Pros Cons
Participants were asked to
give solutions to not working
functions
Ideas > issues
More opinions on functions
not working, but the agent
facilitation stance, help to
generate ideas and pros by
asking the participants to
give the solution
Issues > Ideas

11. Results
11
0
200
400
600
12-May
13-May
14-May
15-May
16-May
17-May
18-May
19-May
20-May
21-May
22-May
23-May
24-May
25-May
26-May
27-May
28-May
Theme 1 Theme 2 Theme 3
Issue Idea Pros Cons
More opinions in theme 2
Specifically addressing what
to be discussed makes it
easier for people to give their
opinions

12. Discussion
12
Questionnaire
Survey
Current online AI-facilitated discussion
system using D-Agree
• Number of districts covered: 4 • Number of districts covered: all 22
• Number of participants: 82 • Number of participants: 733
• Onsite survey: 2 months, offsite
arrangements, several months
• No onsite survey, 17 days offsite
discussion time + few days
arrangement time
• Participants: Gozar representatives
No residents
No female participants
• Participants: all citizens
124 female participants
ethnic minorities
• Answer only to the questions asked • Discussion
• More insights
• Awareness rising
• Build trust
• Security issues • No security issues

13. Conclusion
• We used online discussion tool, D-Agree as a social experiment data
collection method where conversational agent used to gather, analyze and
facilitate the discussion.
• The agent facilitation played an important role towards solicitation of
opinions (ideas and pros than issues and cons) by supporting the
participants issue-solution stance.
• Our next direction is to conduct qualitative content analysis of the
opinions for Gozar policy-making.
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