Decision Support Interface for Tsunami Early Warning in Indonesia - Dealing with Information Fusion, Uncertainty, and Time Pressure

Abstract

In recent years numerous tsunami events in the Indian Ocean, most prominent the December 2004 disaster, demonstrated the need for an effective tsunami early warning system. The work presented here is embedded in the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) project. The system combines a variety of sensor technologies such as terrestrial observation networks of seismology and geodesy, marine measuring sensors, satellite technologies, and pre-calculated simulation scenarios. The versatile sensor and simulation data is integrated, processed, and assessed by the newly developed Decision Support System (DSS). The DSS aims at the best possible situation awareness and decision-making of the operator to enable him to disseminate an appropriate warning at the earliest point in time if required. For this purpose, we attach great importance to the DSS user interface. Due to a high degree of initial uncertainty, operation under time pressure, and the challenge of combining a considerable amount of data to a global picture following regular user interface design guidelines is not sufficient. In this work the main principles of situation awareness design are examined and mapped onto design decisions, work in progress, and future prospects.