ADVICE: Decision Support for Complex Geospatial Decision Making Tasks

How can complex decisions, featuring multiple data sources and conflicting constraints, be supported by computer interfaces? We take a human factors approach to the problem by focusing on meeting users’ cognitive decision making needs and addressing their perceptual challenges. An analysis of the historical trajectory of geospatial decision support reveals several issues and gaps. The configurable data overlay systems ubiquitous in weather forecasting and military command and control, that pass for decision support systems, require more and more mental effort of users with increases in the number and complexity of data sources. We lay out the design of a decision support system called ADVICE as a module that augments geospatial data overlay systems that allows users to reason about the impact of data. ADVICE possesses several task-centered features that apply the science of cognitive decision making to its interface. ADVICE allows users to build an integrated impact visualization that represents an appropriately weighted geospatial objective function for the decision at hand. Additional features provide the ability to compare the utility of different geospatial locations and regions, and intelligently explore the impacts of constraints. The system is also designed to meet the contextual control needs of users. That is, upfront user setup done in time-relaxed planning is handsomely repaid in execution, when time-pressured re-planning may be required. Although developed for geospatial decisions, the concepts are widely applicable to other types of decisions with multiple conflicting constraints.