Designing a human-centered, multimodal GIS interface to support emergency management

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Authors: Rauschert, I.; Agrawal, Pyush; Sharma, Rajeev; Fuhrmann, Sven; Brewer, Issac; MacEachren, Alan; Wang, H.; Cai, Gorary;
Publishing Info: Tenth acm international Symposium on advances in Geographic information Systems , --(--), 119--124.
Year: 2002

Everyone's Keywords: Geovisualization; user centered design; user interfaces;

Abstract: Geospatial information is critical to effective, collaborative deci-sion-making during emergency management situations; however conventional GIS are not suited for multi-user access and high-level abstract queries. Currently, decision makers do not always have the real time information they need; GIS analysts produce maps at the request of individual decision makers, often leading to overlapping requests with slow delivery times. In order to overcome these limitations, a paradigm shift in interface design for GIS is needed. The research reported upon here attempts to overcome analyst-driven, menu-controlled, keyboard and mouse operated GIS by designing a multimodal, multi-user GIS inter-face that puts geospatial data directly in the hands of decision makers. A large screen display is used for data visualization, and collaborative, multi-user interactions in emergency management are supported through voice and gesture recognition. Speech and gesture recognition is coupled with a knowledge-based dialogue management system for storing and retrieving geospatial data. This paper describes the first prototype and the insights gained for human-centered multimodal GIS interface design.

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