Data Visualizations for Dynamic Decision Support
Jill L. Drury, Gary L. Klein, Mark S. Pfaff, Loretta D. More · 2008
To enhance support of emergency response decision making, we are investigating decision aids that use simulation models to predict the range of plausible consequences of each potential course of action. Because of the rapid pace of systems such as emergency operations centers, the models would have to frequently recalculate the cost of each possible decision choice (in potential property damage, injuries, and loss of life) and the user interface displaying the results would need to facilitate rapid understanding of a changing landscape of possible futures. This paper describes a user test aimed at determining whether a model-driven visualization was useful, and evaluate the principled design of unambiguous and ambiguous decision-making test situations. Two groups of participants received identical textual descriptions of situations and were asked to decide the number of emergency response vehicles to dispatch. One of the groups also saw a visual depiction of model results. The decision-aided group’s decisions were closer to the normatively correct decisions, and both groups had higher confidence and shorter decision times for unambiguous situations. Author Keywords Situation space, situation awareness, decision space,