Improving the Communication of Emergency and Disaster Information Using Visual Analytics

Technological advances in communication and the ubiquity of mobile devices have changed the role of emergency information during disasters. Information can now be easily shared between disaster managers, first responders, government agencies, and the public via websites and social media. However, is it unclear how the emergency information is accessed, understood, trusted, and used. This paper first reports on case studies of how disaster information is currently communicated in Queensland, Australia. Second, we propose concepts from visual analytics to improve the quality and effectiveness of communicating information. Third, we propose metrics and situation awareness experiments to measure the quality and effectiveness of new systems.