Development of a prototype for uncertainty-aware geovisual analytics of land cover change

Abstract

Analyses of spatiotemporal data are affected by different kinds of uncertainty, and various studies have shown that their impact can be severe. This is especially true for land cover change analysis based on remotely sensed data – it has been shown that ignoring uncertainty can lead to unreliable results. Approaches are needed that incorporate information on uncertainty into the analysis. However, usable models and methods are still rare and the supposed positive effect of uncertainty information has not been extensively studied. In this contribution, we describe the development of ICchange, an interactive visual prototype for the exploratory analysis of land cover change following a geovisual analytics approach. Apart from serving as proof of concept, the prototype will be used to evaluate the role of uncertainty information during change analyses. We conducted a qualitative evaluation of the prototype using low-level tasks to test basic usability. The input from the study is used to improve the design. A special focus is placed on the visual representation of uncertainty in one of the views that did not perform satisfyingly. The prototype presented here will be used in future studies to evaluate the role of uncertainty in real-world change analysis.

Keywords:

• geovisual analytics
• change analysis
• uncertainty
• land cover
• categorical change

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Jörg Münchow, Tonio Fincke, Jan Dawidzinski, Johannes Kröger, and Julian Timm for voluntarily taking part in the study and for their ideas and suggestions regarding the prototype. Helpful comments on the article provided by Jochen Schiewe (HafenCity University), Till Nagel (FH Potsdam), Mark Iliffe (University of Nottingham), Jennifer Mason (The Pennsylvania State University), and Maya Donelson (HafenCity University) were also greatly appreciated.