Assessing Damage – Can the Crowd Interpret Colour and 3D Information?

ABSTRACT

The goal of this study is to investigate how efficiently and effectively collapsed buildings – due to the occurrence of a disaster – can be localized by a general crowd. Two types of visualization parameters are evaluated in an online user study: (1) greyscale images (indicating height information) versus true colours; (2) variation in the vertical viewing angle (0°, 30° and 60°). Additionally, the influence of map use expertise on how the visualizations are interpreted, is investigated. The results indicate that the use of the greyscale image helps to locate collapsed buildings in an efficient and effective manner. The use of the viewing angle of 60° is the least appropriate. A person with a map use expertise will prefer the greyscale image over the colour image. To confirm the benefits of the use of three-dimensional visualizations and the use of the colour image, more research is needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-disaster visualizations
• users study
• crowdsourcing
• change detection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gaëlle Seffers

Gaëlle Seffers obtained her MSc degree at the Department of Geography at Ghent University in 2018. In her thesis she examined different visualization types to detect collapsed buildings after a disaster using crowdsourcing.