designing a human-centered, multimodal gis interface to support emergency management
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.
multimodality gis interfaces support emergence management informal critic effect collaboration access abstraction queries maps order interface design research mouse geospatial data data visualization interaction voice gestural recognition speech speech and gesture recognition dialogue systems paper prototype multimodal human-computer-interface interactive maps human knowledge real-time multi user decision making human-centered design collaborative work