Visualizing Uncertainty in Natural Hazards

Abstract:

Good visualizations are designed to answer a particular question or the needs of a particular task. They are created as comprehensively as possible taking into account numerous factors such as the application domain, established conventions in the community, nature of the question or task, technical constraints such as interactivity or large data sets, presentation concerns such as visual clutter and complexity, and the quality of the data. Care must also be taken to ensure that any artifacts are not inadvertently introduced into the visualization. This paper provides an overview of current visualization practices and techniques that incorporate data uncertainty in the presentations. Emphasis is placed on geospatial data sets. The paper also describes some of the challenges and research directions in uncertainty visualization research.

Papers:

Alex Pang, ``Visualizing Uncertainty in Natural Hazards'' (preprint), commissioned by Mid-America Earthquake Center and funded by NSF. July 14-15, 2006. Published in: Alex Pang, ``Visualizing Uncertainty in Natural Hazards", in Risk Assessment, Modeling and Decision Support: Strategic Directions Series: Risk, Governance and Society, Vol. 14, edited by Ann Bostrom, Steven P. French, and Sara J. Gottlieb, Springer, 2008, XIV, Chapter 12, pp. 261-294. ISBN: 978-3-540-71157-5.

Images:

Dashed contour lines to indicate uncertainty.

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