| Mostly a single person holistic (i.e. Design & Evaluation) four years effort, the current human-centered design research is close to current solutions employed for saving lives. Aligned with Visual Analytics US national security priority, it builds on state of the art 3D Geographic Information Systems that support situated decision-making and actions for Crisis Management, Emergency Management and Business Continuity. Compared to these existing solutions, further requirements are identified such as the possibility to interactively dive and explore the underground infrastructure of an emergency zone. Furthermore, since "main threats by essence are 3-dimensional (3D)" (Terje Johnsen, Division Head at the OECD /IFE/Halden Reactor Project), the main research topic focuses on combining 3D visual information related to the natural environment and natural events, with 3D visual information related to human creations, including analytics and technical systems, for providing comprehensive mission-critical situation awareness and support for communication during critical situations. The main contributions of the current research are the utilization of 3D gaming engines, that enable to dive and explore critical infrastructure situated underground beyond flying, and the proposed structured analytical visual framework that links various entities in the form of causality networks, process representations and what-if consequences in the same 3D interactive visual scene. Furthermore, the set of methods proposed for the formative evaluation of the 3D integrated interactive visual scene enables to gather user experience and feedback and also to provide a unique type of visual behavior in the form of visual patterns.. |
