Seattle area leaders plan to introduce a technology that would enable the public and private sectors to tackle problems such as urban growth and transportation through advanced computer visualization, simulation and modeling.

The idea is based on Arizona State University's Decision Theater, a facility that uses wall-size video screens, and moving charts and maps, to enable policymakers and business leaders to "see," in three-dimensional detail, the outcomes of decisions they might make about various issues, from urban growth and transportation to education and health.

The Arizona Republic describes the Decision Theater, launched in May 2005, as a "technical marvel that makes PowerPoint presentations look like cave drawings."

Tayloe Washburn, a Seattle land-use attorney and vice-chairman of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, says the University of Washington, Microsoft Corp., the City of Seattle, King County and the Puget Sound Regional Council are all interested in setting up the technology here. By 2008 or 2009, he says, leaders hope to decide how to introduce the technology and how to pay for it.

One question is whether to build it as a large facility like ASU's Decision Theater or to scale it down to the level of a plasma TV screen. "We're also asking ourselves, 'Should we conduct a pilot project,'" Washburn says.

Several months ago, a delegation from the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, including Washburn, and city officials and business executives, paid a three-day visit to Phoenix, which included a visit to the Decision Theater. "The real beauty of this is that you can sit in that theater and be presented with what is behind the screen a lot of data," Washburn says, "but you can evaluate the important stuff in a very simple and direct way, which is wonderful."

The potential applications, he adds, are numerous. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that both on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and on the 520 bridge, we are struggling to visualize and choose among alternatives."

The University of Washington and Puget Sound Regional Council, for example, both use computer modeling to examine various issues. However, ASU's Decision Theater takes the examination and communication of those issues to the next level by immersing people in a real-time, visual experience.

The Decision Theater is a 260-degree theater with seven rear projection stereo sources that display panoramic computer graphics or 3-D video content. Funding for the facility included $3 million from an Arizona philanthropist, with additional funding coming from ASU.

The City of Tempe, for example, used the Decision Theater to create a 3-D geographically-accurate model of the city to help it visualize buildings that have been proposed, permitted or that are under construction to see their impact on the area. And Arizona has used Decision Theater to map out water supplies, make projections of the impacts of a drought and to test water-supply policies.

It's not difficult to imagine how Puget Sound, for example, might use something like Decision Theater. The region is projected to add another 1.7 million people and 1.2 million jobs by 2040. The ability to visualize and experience those numbers, to see where those people and jobs might go, and what kind of impacts they might have on our transportation and economic systems, and on our environment could lead to insights and solutions that a PowerPoint meeting just can't deliver.

According to ASU's website on Decision Theater, representatives of China, India and Finland have visited the theater and expressed interest in developing similar technologies. And the website quotes Tim Ceis, deputy mayor of Seattle, this way: "For me, being able to have a tool like this when we're engaged in very complex public policy questions - to be able to use science and this type of technology and make it visually available to constituencies involved - that's a fantastic opportunity. I'd love to see something like this in Seattle."