Supporting informed decision-making under uncertainty and risk through interactive visualisation

Abstract

Informed decisions are based on the availability of information and the ability of decision-makers to manipulate this information. More often than not, the decision-relevant information is subject to uncertainty arising from different sources. Consequently, decisions involve an undeniable amount of risk. An effective visualisation tool to support informed decision-making must enable users to not only distil information, but also explore the uncertainty and risk involved in their decisions. In this paper, we present VisIDM, an information visualisation tool to support informed decision-making (IDM) under uncertainty and risk. It aims to portray information about the decision problem and facilitate its analysis and exploration at different levels of detail. It also aims to facilitate the integration of uncertainty and risk into the decision-making process and allow users to experiment with multiple “what-if” scenarios. We evaluate the utility of VisIDM through a qualitative user study. The results provide valuable insights into the benefits and drawbacks of VisIDM for assisting people to make informed decisions and raising their awareness of uncertainty and risk involved in their decisions.