uViz: Information Uncertainty Portrayal

Systems that integrate and present data from multiple sources often ignore the probabilistic uncertain nature of the information they are handling. Such systems are often designed with pre-determined thresholds or other algorithms to make binary go/no-go decisions, rather than presenting the entire picture and all data sources. Indeed, simply displaying all information sources and uncertainties used in making a calculation can be unwieldy and confusing to decision makers. Yet in the absence of uncertainty information, the decision maker is forced to create a mental picture of the scenario using perceived notions of probabilities and their interactions.

ATC-NY prototyped uViz, an intuitive, interactive visualization system to display uncertainty information associated with both raw data sources and derived information. uViz focuses on spatially-oriented data and provides a layered view, where users can select the level of detail displayed about any particular piece of information: single values that are the result of estimation algorithms, modeling error distributions, and so forth, all the way down to raw sensor error information and human observations. As information uncertainty generally increases as observations age, existing probabilistic models that incorporate time can also be employed, allowing visualization of past or future scenarios as well as time-lapse animations.