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

  • Authors:

  • Ingmar Rauschert;Pyush Agrawal;Rajeev Sharma;Sven Fuhrmann;Isaac Brewer;Alan MacEachren

  • Affiliations:

  • The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 10th ACM international symposium on Advances in geographic information systems
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Geospatial information is critical to effective, collaborative decision-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 interface 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.