How to assess visual communication of uncertainty? : a systematic review of geospatial uncertainty visualisation user studies

Abstract

For decades, uncertainty visualisation has attracted attention in disciplines such as cartography and geographic visualisation, scientific visualisation and information visualisation. Most of this research deals with the development of new approaches to depict uncertainty visually; only a small part is concerned with empirical evaluation of such techniques. This systematic review aims to summarize past user studies and describe their characteristics and findings, focusing on the field of geographic visualisation and cartography and thus on displays containing geospatial uncertainty. From a discussion of the main findings, we derive lessons learned and recommendations for future evaluation in the field of uncertainty visualisation. We highlight the importance of user tasks for successful solutions and recommend moving towards task-centered typologies to support systematic evaluation in the field of uncertainty visualisation.