Impact Mapping for Geospatial Reasoning and Decision Making

Area of Science:

• Geographic Information Science
• Cognitive Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Geospatial decision-making tasks can be cognitively demanding, leading to fatigue and bias.
• Impact mapping externalizes data into an integrated decision surface, aggregating and visualizing combined utility.
• Previous research suggests benefits for geospatial decisions, but dynamic decision-making impacts were unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of composite impact maps in aiding geospatial reasoning and decision-making.
• To investigate the influence of impact maps on dynamic decision-making, considering factors like fatigue and anchoring bias.
• To determine conditions under which impact mapping is beneficial or detrimental.

Main Methods:

• A two-stage disaster relief resource allocation task was designed.
• The experiment systematically manipulated the presence of a composite impact map.
• The number of attributes presented to decision-makers was also varied.

Main Results:

• Composite impact maps significantly increased the utility of selected sites.
• The presence of impact maps led to more re-planning decisions and fewer information display views.
• Workload was reduced, with greater benefits observed when more attributes were evaluated.

Conclusions:

• Composite impact maps improve repeated geospatial reasoning and mitigate anchoring bias.
• This improvement stems from reduced cognitive demands required to interpret multi-attribute information.
• Impact mapping is a valuable data visualization technique for high-demand geospatial decision environments.