Visualizing Geospatial Information Uncertainty: What We Know and What We Need to Know

Developing reliable methods for representing and managing information uncertainty remains a persistent and relevant challenge to GIScience. Information uncertainty is an intricate idea, and recent examinations of this concept have generated many perspectives on its representation and visualization, with perspectives emerging from a wide range of disciplines and application contexts. In this paper, we review and assess progress toward visual tools and methods to help analysts manage and understand information uncertainty. Specifically, we report on efforts to conceptualize uncertainty, decision making with uncertainty, frameworks for representing uncertainty, visual representation and user control of displays of information uncertainty, and evaluative efforts to assess the use and usability of visual displays of uncertainty. We conclude by identifying seven key research challenges in visualizing information uncertainty, particularly as it applies to decision making and analysis.